The ever irreverent pureplay Kogan has successfully pranked News Limited’s bluechip broadsheet, The Australian, with an April Fool’s prank about it delving into bricks and mortar retail.
The electronics retailer, one of Australia’s largest e-commerce sites, sent out a press release to media outlets (including Inside Retail) yesterday saying it was opening a flagship store in Westfield’s Chadstone shopping centre.
The Australian promptly published a story, “Kogan To Open Bricks and Mortar Store”, in response, perhaps without first taking into account the release’s date – April 1 – or it’s decidedly sarcastic tone.
“While you won’t be able to read reviews and what thousands of customers thought about our products, you will be able to hear what our incentivised sales staff have to say about them,” says Ruslan Kogan, founder and CEO, in the release.
“The rent in Chadstone is up there with the highest in the world, but it offers us an unprecedented opportunity to set up a store in Australia’s Fashion Capital.”
Kogan also has a dig at the cost of fitting out physical stores and lengthy instore wait times, in a press release clearly designed to point out the advantages of online retail.
If these tongue-in-cheek comments weren’t obvious enough, however, the release also goes onto claim that international celebrities Ellen Degeneres, Ricky Martin, and heart throb Ryan Gosling will attend Kogan’s store launch.
The Australian has since taken its story down from online, with the web link currently leading to an “internal error” message, however, online news site Gizmondo managed to take a screenshot of the story first.
Online superpower Google also managed to prank some using its search engine with a variety of fools, such as a “SCHMICK” addition to it’s Street View map function.
