In the wake of an horribly failed April Fool’s stunt, local grocery concierge startup Honestbee came clean about their campaign earlier than expected this morning.
Yesterday, the grocery delivery service came under serious brickbats when they gamely announced a new pop-up store called Explorer Joe Exotic Meats, offering the sale of panda meat, koala sausages, komodo dragon eggs and other illegal nourishments.
As anyone would have expected, folks went up in arms over the tasteless joke and responded appropriately on their Facebook page, showering Honestbee with boycotts and furious displeasure.
This morning however they’ve sent out another press release stating that it was all a stunt to raise awareness about illegal wildlife trading. Admitting that they intended to conjure anxiety, Explorer Joe’s online store switched from selling exotic meats to ‘exotic treats’ — selling candies like gummy bears, Kinder Joy eggs and Meiji’s Panda Yanyan sticks.
“We believe in raising awareness on illegal wildlife trading, even if it meant that going to the extreme of evoking real feelings in the people that care about this cause,” they wrote.
“We wanted to create conversation and spur thoughts on what is going on and what instead we should be doing as a global nation to put a stop to these alarming extortion of precious wildlife creatures that mother nature has bestowed upon us.”
Their Explorer Joe homepage also switched tack to a more savoury message about stopping illegal wildlife trade. Links were provided to various wildlife conservation organisations, calling for donations and support for WWF, Wildlife Reserves Singapore, and Save The Koala.
In response to each and every angry comment on their Facebook page (and there are tonnes of them) Honestbee simply copypasta-ed a standard response and a link to their explanatory blogpost.
“As honestbee does not condone nor facilitate in the trade of illegal wildlife, we felt it is extremely important and urgent to highlight this global problem so that we, as a global nation, could be aware, enlightened and pro-active in taking measures to stop illegal wildlife trading,” said company CEO and co-founder Joel Sng.
An April Fools’ stunt that went out of control too fast? Despite the well-intentioned message at the end of it all, it did leave too much of a bitter taste behind — just a matter of ineffective conceptual execution. Better luck with the viral campaigns next time.
