Please brands, no April Fools' Day pranks this year

April Fools' Day is nearly here and, in more typical times, that'd mean a bevy of brands pulling their usual "fun" pranks.

To those brands, I plead: Please, no. Not this year.

Not as the coronavirus rampages throughout the globe, sickening and killing thousands of people. Please. We just do not need the dumb jokes, the fake products, the corny nonsense.

More than 3 million Americans lost their jobs last week. It stands to reason some of the brands that would normally do so-called pranks have laid people off. Pretty much everyone is scared.

Things are bad! They are getting worse! In all likelihood, they will continue to get worse!

You've seen these pranks — if you're forgiving enough to consider them "pranks." Last year, for instance, we got "Petlexa" from Amazon, Whopper toothpaste, and chocolate mayonnaise from Heinz. And those were apparently the good brand pranks.

At absolute best, these sorts of things make you do a little sniffle laugh. Usually, they come off as an obvious ploy from a brand that's trying so hard to convince you they're a person.

So often, these things go wrong.

"April Fools jokes suck in general, they are the bottom of the barrel," said Ed Zitron, CEO of the media relations firm EZPR.

But amid the coronavirus crisis, it's an especially bad idea to put out some "fun" fake thing. And just to be clear, if you're a quarantined individual or someone who's stuck at home who wants to kill time with a harmless April Fools' Day prank: feel free. We're talking about brands here. So if you're a PR or branding person thinking of doing a big joke on April 1, here's some simple advice: Just stay at home and don't instead.

This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.

"Whatever brand is stupid enough to do this is going to be Twitter’s main character for the day," Zitron said.

The internet has already grown relatively tired of the shtick where brands co-opt a semblance of humanity. A company playing a "joke" to try to rake in cash or attention during the coronavirus crisis will almost certainly not go over well.

This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.

Anecdotally, there seem to be fewer pitches about April Fools' Day hitting journalists' inboxes. Perhaps that it is a good sign brands are backing off from the holiday, considering the deadly, frightening pandemic. Zitron wasn't so sure, guessing there'd be a brand that would try to combine April Fools and the virus into something truly awful.

"It’s going to be something around the virus, something just so myopic," he said. "Then some dipshit is going to say 'there's no such thing as bad press' ... I want to be clear there is such a thing as bad publicity."

Zitron said PR folks often lose their sense of reality and try to force an angle no matter what the subject matter. If someone attempts to do that with coronavirus this April Fools, it would be a terrible idea.

"The only thing I’m unsure of is how insensitive it’s going to be," Zitron said. "We have the potential of a Barry Bonds of insensitive PR."