While April Fool’s Day is often filled with fun and follies, the last day of April is a time to remember and renew a daily commitment to truth, transparency and authenticity. Photo by Jametlene Reskp on Unsplash
On April 1, we make fools of others — or ourselves. It’s practically a national sport (and I’m a very willing participant — QR codes on clouds??).
So, it’s only right that April ends on a higher note.
Did you know April 30 is National Honesty Day?
I’ll be honest with you, since authenticity drives everything behind my PR work, this is one of my favorite days on the calendar.
In fact, it could just as easily be called National Authenticity Day. (I’ll have to look into that.)
Why is April 30 National Honesty Day?
You can thank M. Hirsh Goldberg for creating National Honesty Day.
Goldberg was a former press secretary and author. While researching and writing “The Book of Lies” in the early 1990s, Goldberg created National Honesty Day.
His reasoning was simple: if April begins with a day dedicated to lying and deception and jokes, it should end with a commitment to truth.
Love it. Hard to argue with that logic.
The holiday encourages honesty in politics (whew, good luck with THAT!), relationships, consumer relations, and everyday life. Goldberg’s thinking was that the antidote to April Fool’s Day wasn’t more pranks. Instead, it was accountability. Still relevant today, and maybe more than ever.
One Day, 364 Reminders
Here’s the thing about National Honesty Day: one day isn’t enough. The real point of April 30 isn’t to be honest only for the day and be whatever for the next 364.
We should look at it as a reminder. A reset. A gut check. A worldwide manifesto that authenticity isn’t a campaign. It’s a 24/7 commitment.
In communications — whether you’re a PR or marketing pro or a CEO — there are five areas where honesty has to show up every single day.
- Start With Yourself – You’re the source. Everything you say and do — at work and outside of it — flows from who you are. If your foundation isn’t built on honesty and authenticity, nothing else in this list matters.
This isn’t about being perfect. It’s about being real. Knowing where you stand. Being consistent. And when you get it wrong, own it fast. - Your Internal Communications – If your organization preaches one thing externally and lives another thing internally, your employees know. Honest, authentic internal communications shouldn’t be a nice-to-have. It should be bouncing off your walls, woven into your mission, vision and values, part of your onboarding and regularly reinforced at every level. Most importantly, it has to be modeled by your CEO and executive team. They set the example. Period. Full stop. No exceptions.
A company that tells its employees one story and its customers another is sitting on a powder keg.
- Your Customers – Are you 100% authentic and transparent with your customers? Really? Think about the last time a brand promised “free shipping” and then quietly added a handling fee at checkout. Or a subscription service that made canceling a 45-minute odyssey through chatbots and hold music. That’s not a customer experience problem. That’s an honesty problem dressed up in UX clothing.
Your customers are not naive. They notice. And when they feel deceived, even in small ways, they leave. And they tell others.
- Your Marketing and Promotions – Are you completely truthful in your advertising, marketing, PR, and social media? Because “truthful” is a higher bar than “technically not a lie.”
Every piece of content you put into the world represents your brand, whether it’s your website, your collateral, or your LinkedIn posts. If you’re overpromising, cherry-picking data, or hiding behind buzzwords to obscure a mediocre product, that’s not positioning. That’s deception with a strategy deck. Your audience will catch on. I believe the truth always comes out, eventually. You won’t want to be around when it does.
- Your Media Relations – Nothing exhausts me more in the PR business than spin. Pure, uncut, carefully constructed spin — the kind that technically answers a question while saying absolutely nothing. Be spin-free in your media relations. If you don’t know the answer, say so. If it’s bad news, get ahead of it. If you mess up, then fess up and make things right immediately.
Journalists aren’t your adversaries, but they will be if they feel manipulated. And once you’ve burned that bridge, good luck getting a fair shake the next time you need coverage. Honesty in media relations isn’t just ethical. It’s a PR imperative.
Make Honesty a Habit, Not a Holiday
National Honesty Day is a great prompt. Use it. But don’t let it be a one-day event you check off and forget.
The brands and communicators that consistently win in the court of public opinion, with their employees and their customers, are the ones who’ve made honesty non-negotiable.
Yes, every day should be National Honesty Day. April 30 serves as just the reminder.
3 Big Takeaways
- National Honesty Day was created specifically to counterbalance April Fool’s Day, but its real value is acting as a reminder that authenticity isn’t a tactic — it’s a foundation.
- Honest communication starts from the inside out: with you, your leadership, and your employees before it can ever be credible with customers, the media, or the public. If your internal culture isn’t honest, nothing external will save you.
- The brands that earn lasting trust aren’t the ones who lie the least. Instead, they’re the ones who’ve made honesty an iron clad practice across every touchpoint, from marketing, sales and PR to every single stakeholder you have.
Which of these five areas is your biggest honesty challenge, and what are you doing about it? Do share!
Stay authentic and honest — not just today, but every day.
Jeffery E. Pizzino, APR (seen here in a vintage photo circa 1983 serendipitously doing a Clash impersonation in a since-forgotten location) is a spin-free public relations pro who is passionate about telling the why of your story with clarity, impact and authenticity. He began his PR career in 1987 at Ketchum Public Relations in New York City but has spent the majority of his career as a solopreneur. He’s the Chief Authentic Officer of the Johnson City, TN-based public relations firm, AuthenticityPR. He also functions as the fractional CCO for his clients.
Jeff has an MBA in Management from Western International University and a Bachelor of Arts degree in Communications — with an emphasis in PR — from Brigham Young University (rise and shout!). He’s also accredited in public relations (APR). This Milwaukee, Wisconsin native holds an Italian citizenship and plans to live and work there someday. Jeff and his storyteller wife Leticia have four children and four grandchildren. In his extremely limited nonwork hours, he studies Italiano, practices guitar, write songs, gardens, works out, disc golfs, reads, listens to New Wave music, serves as an assistant communication director in his church, watches BYU football, enjoys watching the original Mission Impossible TV series, and plays board games (mostly Dominion and Seven Wonders). No, this guy’s never bored and looking for something to do. Email Jeff.
