Did You Elf Yourself?

 

If you work in marketing, you undoubtedly have heard about the amazing success of Office Max’s Elf Yourself online viral campaign. In fact, even if you DON’T work in marketing, there’s a very good chance you know about this effort, which ran over the holidays. That’s because an astounding 110 million people experienced the elf effect themselves during the campaign’s run (If by some strange circumstance you have no idea what Elf Yourself is—you just came out of a two-month coma, or you spent the last six weeks in a Tibetan monastery, for example—it consisted of a site that allowed people to upload photos of themselves and loved ones and place the pictures on the bodies of dancing elves, then send a link to anyone who would find this interesting. The best way to describe the result is that it was very cute).

  

Elfers even set up their own Flickr page to proudly display their photos, and dozens of them uploaded their handiwork to YouTube. Tons more blogged about it and put their Elf selves on their blogs. Good Morning America even ran a story on it. All that makes Elf Yourself the most successful viral campaign in the history of the internet, by a long shot. At least if you measure success by pure numbers. And we are talking huge numbers here, with an ROI that must certainly be off the charts. Whether it has had any real impact on Office Max’s business in an entirely different matter, which we will address in the next post.  

  On a side note, if you google Elf Yourself, the paid search ad that appears on the results page is for Toy, the agency that created the campaign. That’s smart.   

But exactly what made Elf Yourself so popular, and so wildly viral? Here is a good article from AdWeek that includes a decent analysis. At Attention Shoppers! we also have a pretty good idea why people had an irresistible urge to turn themselves, their family members and even their pets into dancing elves:

 

1. It was quick and easy—the interface and photo upload user experience was very well done
2. The end result, for many people, was something they had never experienced before, and technically and creatively it was excellent—it made people smile
3. It was a very singular campaign—the folks at Toy and Office Max who were in charge of the project didn’t overcomplicate the experience
4. It was all about personalization. As we are quickly learning, personalization is one of the keys to viral and WOM success. People love making themselves the center of attention, and the internet makes that easier than ever
5. And, very importantly, Elf Yourself launched during the time of the year when people most want to share greetings with others.

  So keep all this in mind when your clients demand the nearly impossible and ask you to create something like Elf Yourself for them. Because they will.