So far my overview of this holiday's top promotions have mainly covered viral marketing programs that have consisted of uploading photos of friends, family, co-workers and pets and having fun sharing them. I recently got some updates on the holiday viral promotion that started it all, Office Max's ElfYourself.com, so now I felt it was time to include this campaign.
I've written several posts over the past year about ElfYourself.com which was developed two years ago during the 2006 holiday season by digital marketing agency EVB and then really took off during the 2007 season. It has now become an annual holiday tradition where millions of people worldwide visit the holiday site to turn themselves, family, friends and pets into hilarious dancing elves.
New this year at ElfYourself.com 3.0, users can upload up to five photos and select one of four holiday dances – Classic, Disco, Charleston or Country. The site generates a personalized movie staring your photos of dancing elves that users can send as holiday eCards, “QuickPost” to social media sites, or share with friends via a new Facebook app. Take a look at a few sample ElfYourself movies here:
The Disco Elves movie feature's OfficeMax’s Bob Thacker and Ryan Vero and JibJab’s Gregg and Evan Spiridellis.
Also new this year in addition to more elves and new dances is the option to purchase a digital download of your movie so you can keep it forever at a cost of $4.99. You can also apply your ElfYourself image to merchandise and purchase custom photo gifts such as coffee mugs, mouse pads, ornaments and playing cards. So Office Max is now making a profit directly from these little guys, which they hadn't been before. OfficeMax also partnered with JibJab for this year's campaign to add many of the new entertaining features and capabilities.Here are the campaign goals that they set for this year:
- Greater brand association
- Higher user-retention
- Stronger social media presence
Here are some of the stats so far on how the campaign is doing this year (11/21 - 12/15):
- Total elves created: 57,000,000
- Average number of ElfYourself movies created per user: 4.5 movies
- Average time on site: 15 minutes
- Blog post on ElfYourself (11/08 - 12/08 - 11,088 mentions)
Well I guess this blog post adds to that number. Anyhow, it's a fun promotion. We had someone at my office make one of the four of us managers and passed it around. This weekend I'm heading down to Myrtle Beach again to see my family and we'll just have to make one or two of these for a good laugh to have together. Enjoy and if we don't have a chance to touch base again soon, I wish you a very Merry Christmas.
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