Yes, I Elf’d someone!

As a marketing professional by day, part of my job is to create unique and creative campaigns that will attract people to our web. One of those approaches is a viral campaign. Much like the flu, if one person sees it (contagious), then it can be assumed their significant other, friends, family, etc will see it (catch it).

Kudos to Office Max’s Elf Yourself marketing campaign, which attracted 193 million visitors and was the best viral campaign in the history of the Web. More than 123 million “elves” were created in just SIX weeks. I will openly admit that I took part in this site and Elf’d my sister, bro-in-law, nephew and niece. The kids got a kick out of it, dancing like their elf’d-self while my sister thought I recently started taking drugs Regardless, I thought it was hysterical and genius! It reminded me of Christmas 2006 when Home Depot put a flat screen on sale for a ridiculously low price during Black Friday. Their motive was to drive traffic to the store, similar to Office Max’s Elf campaign, which had absolutely NOTHING to do with their core business.

I saw this video blog on PodTech. The video shows Bob Thacker, senior vice president of marketing and advertising at Office Max, discussing his brand engagement strategies and the costs for the campaign.