Ola’s April Fool’s Day Prank caught the eyes and hearts of many but not for good! Netizens proved themselves to be smart by not falling for Ola’s prank of the year but forgot to make the most of the marked day of fun and laughter.
Ola has successfully pranked us all over the years with its amusing and innovative pranks but tables turned this year when their prank Ola Restroom left people fuming in anger. While the advertisement sends out a strong message of having more public restrooms, it looks like the idea of a mobile toilet van failed to create a positive impact on the audience.
Introducing Ola Restrooms. A place to go, for a generation that’s on the go. #OlaRestrooms #NoPressure pic.twitter.com/H7vQh0JktR
— Ola (@Olacabs) March 29, 2019
The socially active brand with an approximate audience of over 500K launched the campaign #OlaRestroom toilet on-the-go on the 29th March that one can book via app leaving an outbreak of trolls and lash outs on Twitter by the audience.
One amongst the many tweets were of that of Noopur Raval, a PhD candidate in Informatics at University of California Irvine who tweets under the handle @tetisheri. She believes that it was a cruel joke to play in India as we as a country face the biggest open defecation problem in the world due to severe lack of public toilets.
Pointing out how the campaign to privatise toilets ignored the low pay and poor working conditions at the company due to its drivers have which time and again protested many of whom are burdened with loans and cannot afford to repay or sustain their livelihoods.
https://twitter.com/tetisheri/status/1112195968131190784?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1112195968131190784&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fqz.com%2Findia%2F1584443%2Fapril-fools-prank-ola-restrooms-upsets-indian-twitter-users%2F
https://twitter.com/PedestrianPoet/status/1111939918522212352?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1111939918522212352&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fqz.com%2Findia%2F1584443%2Fapril-fools-prank-ola-restrooms-upsets-indian-twitter-users%2F
And like the usual Twitter also saw many opening their chest of suggestions for Ola and advising them to make better use of their money rather than spending on such marketing gimmicks.
@Olacabs only if you put this money into installing ACs in your cars and not spend brushing up your marketing skills for April Fool's day, I'll accept you as a trusted brand:https://t.co/MGTWRfVecN#ola #cars #customer #UX #april #fool
— Sankalp Sinha (Building highvalue.team) (@sankalpdomore) March 31, 2019
As of today 1st April Ola recognised its actions and launched an initiative to build sustainable sanitation in India by collecting donations through its app for Gramalaya, an organisation that works towards providing better water and sanitary facilities in rural areas .
“Over the next six months, you can contribute Rs 1 towards this cause, with every Ola ride,”
it said in a blogpost.
With so much anger enraging here’s a little reminder of the fun day April Fool’s Day is meant to be! So we can make the most of it! And as for Ola there’s always a next year!
