The three fundamentals of a good viral campaign:
1) Keep it simple
2) Make it personal
3) Give people a reason to pass it on
“All advertising is unwanted, so if you’re going to crash the party, bring some champagne with you.” – Bob Thacker, SVP of Mkt at OfficeMax
Articles about the viral hit have been everywhere over the past month and a half. This weekend alone, I read four different articles throwing out statistics like “There were 123 million elves created this year, up from 11 million last year” “40% of all visitors to Elf Yourself were 55 or older” and “Users spent a combined average of 2,600 years on the site.”
I am not here to criticize the fact that it was a great viral campaign, it was. Credit is due to Office Max and their agency, Toy, for creating such a simple and fun website that everyone is STILL talking about. What has bothered me is that most of the articles I read didn’t mention if the campaign actually boosted Office Max’s sales or brand recognition.
Until now!! Advertising Age came out with an article asking the important question….
How much help did the OfficeMax brand get from its silly little helpers?
“That’s always the danger with this kind of advertisement… They’re cute, they’re funny, but they’re not necessarily related to the brand.”
In terms of brand recognition, Office Max is a winner “Of the 20 most common search terms in the four weeks of December, six of them included the words “Office Max,” indicating that brand awareness had carried through.”
Now I wait to see if their profits reflect all of these statistics.
Some recent Elfyourself articles:
The mad, craziness of CES has come to an end for myself.
It was an amazing show with 150 inch plasma screens, Hydrogen Fuel Cell Prototype Cars, new cellphones and booths that were bigger than my apartment.
I uploaded and tagged most of my pictures onto my Flickr account for you all to take a look at when you have a chance.
I also have a ton of notes from the different seminars I went to (apparently, this social networking/web 2.0 thing is big) including Personalized Media Platform, User-Generated Media, The Next Generation in Video , and Widgets…. Look for another post with some seminar highlights.
“Four out of the top ten websites are web 2.0 sites… This is not a fad.”
The OfficeMax “Elf Yourself” campaign, had more than110 million visitors.
“Elf Yourself” has hit the bull’s-eye of viral success: It has seeped into pop culture. Broadcasters at several local stations, The Today Show and Good Morning America created their own dancing holiday greeting for viewers. For the second year, the campaign was a winner.
The secret: Keep it dead simple, make it personal and give people a reason to pass it on. These sites might not win awards or wow other creative directors, but they drew big audiences.
“Digital agencies often get wrapped up in thinking it won’t be interesting if they don’t use the latest and greatest technology,” said Daniel Stein, CEO of EVB. “That’s a fallacy.”
“There are no rules, and next year the rules will change,” said Ari Merkin, CCO at Toy. “The best thing you can do is be in the right place at the right time.”
Ok, the clip I just posted was for MySpace only so didn’t come up, because (I was just informed) that you cannot embed items onto Word Press blogs.
The clip is now on MySpace page and it is a pretty cool viral campagin. It is a trailer of the movie and J.J. Abrams comes up in the beginning saying that whoever has the most widget grabs will win a hometown screening of the movie. Cloverfield’s MySpace page where you can grab one for yourself.
P.S. I freaking HATE horror/monster movies, yet I love a great marketing campagin so I just have to see this movie!