Comments on: Viral Marketing: Can Dancing Elves Move Product Off Shelves?

By: Linda Bustos

Linda Bustos — Thu, 31 Jan 2008 21:26:57 +0000

Great observation. Maybe someone will post that data

By: Kevin

Kevin — Thu, 31 Jan 2008 20:55:23 +0000

Interesting take on this by asbestos-dude. If anyone on this board had a subscription to Hitwise we could prove (instead of “bet”) whether OMX is getting more traffic than Staples or OfficeDepot when someone searches on “office supplies” or “post-it notes.”

By: DNA

DNA — Thu, 31 Jan 2008 20:34:12 +0000

Agreed. I suspect this was dreamt up by an SEO person

By: asbestos-dude

asbestos-dude — Thu, 31 Jan 2008 20:32:02 +0000

Guys, never mind the brand and direct sales implications, this is search engine dynamite! The domain elfyourself.com (which is linked to by nearly 30,000 other websites) links directly (and only) to the officemax.com homepage. Conventional internet marketing dictates that this will have a huge impact on officemax.com’s ability to rank in Google on competitive terms. I’d love to see their stats – I bet it’s a big win.

By: Linda Bustos

Linda Bustos — Wed, 30 Jan 2008 21:35:44 +0000

@ Robert,
Excellent comments. Perhaps the real winner here is Toy, the marketing brains behind the campaign. They succeeded at making the viral very very popular. But they’re not responsible for sales or customer experience.

Sending you a Staples easy button was a good move, hey? Now you have year-round branding in your office that people love. A marketer’s dream.

By: Robert Gorell

Robert Gorell — Wed, 30 Jan 2008 21:05:24 +0000

I don’t see how Office Max is really differentiating themselves here. As you point out, Linda, Staples is using humor too — even though Alice DOES say “school’s out fore-ev-uh” in the next line. (He can lie to his kid all he wants, but does he have to lie to us? Et tu, Alice?)

Anyway, Staples has already beaten Office Max with dumb, simple stuff like the “easy button.” They mailed us one of those damn things with a shipment once. Now everyone who walks past it thinks they’re hilarious when they can just hit and — boom! — instant corporate mantra.

“That was easy!”

As far as I can tell, nobody (save for office managers who’ve been burned by one or the other in a clutch situation) really cares about — or understands — the differences between these two brands.

Office Max is going to have to do better than “funny” if they want to be considered best of breed. That being said, what has Staples done other than beat them to the punch(line)?

By: Social Shopper

Social Shopper — Tue, 29 Jan 2008 13:38:12 +0000

This was a great campaign, however I have to say that I received an ElfYourself of me from a friend, and never knew what company it came from. It seems like I’m the exception to the rule though, given the high search volume for Office Max related terms over December. I would be really interested to analyse the long term impact of these kinds of campaign on sales/brand awareness.

By: Jason Billingsley

Jason Billingsley — Tue, 29 Jan 2008 07:26:20 +0000

Didn’t they let you send the thing to a friend (I unfortunately didn’t see the campaign when it was live)? If so, think about the amount of names they collected. The notification emails could contain branding, offers, etc. If they requested opt-in permission, the value of generating a list that large is substantial. Is it targeted? Probably not. But, with effective drip marketing they could filter a pretty qualified list out of it.

By: Linda Bustos

Linda Bustos — Tue, 29 Jan 2008 04:25:54 +0000

They should bring the elves in-store next year. Instead of getting your photo with Santa, come in and get your photo with the elves.

Or an elf-babysitting service. Drop your kids off while you do your real Christmas shopping. The elves will keep them company and hey, buy some toner and postit notes while you’re at it?? Doesn’t IKEA do something like that all year round

By: kathryn milette

kathryn milette — Tue, 29 Jan 2008 03:25:09 +0000

i like that office max wants to differentiate themselves through personality and humor. office supplies are dull! i thought the campaign was hysterical. but, unlike the m&m one (which @rebecca mentions and I haven’t been there yet) when elfing yourself you go to the microsite, and there is an itsy bitsy office max logo on it. if you don’t notice it, there’s no indication the dancing elves have anything to do with office max. i agree with you — i think its definitely a long term strategy that will need to be constantly nurtured, and maybe develop some link to OM (dancing thumb tacks anyone?;)