M&Ms and Zazzle Team Up for Valentine Viral
Earlier today we discussed the Elf Yourself campaign for OfficeMax and how its benefits will be long term branding rather than immediate sales. Rebecca Bolwitt pointed out another campaign for M&Ms.
M&Ms and Zazzle’s viral has a built-in ecommerce component. After you M&M-ize yourself you can add your character to a number of customizable products from Zazzle, including t-shirts, mugs, postcards, neckties, baseball hats and even postage stamps.
After you create your character, you can move to the “MPorium” where you can choose a product to personalize.
The customer is notified that they will be taken to a third party site (Zazzle) to complete orders.
Examples from Zazzle:
The advantages of this campaign over the elves is it can run all year long, and there is an immediate opportunity for an ecommerce transaction. The site offers truly unique gift ideas, and a way for users to capture their memory in physical form. The downside is that the microsite is very Web 2.0 and isn’t likely to appeal to the over 55 crowd.
Interesting idea, but I wonder when it’ll be done to death. It’s very “Me too” - The Simpsons and South Park did this eight months ago, and everyone has been jumping on the bandwagon.
Is this still fresh or just another recycled bag of last year’s black-and-orange Halloween candy?
It could be me too, but M&Ms has been merchandising itself for years. I remember visiting a friend (over 30 yrs old) and he and his girlfriend both had collected a TON of M&M merchandise. Perhaps its nostalgia, I don’t know what makes someone that passionate about candy.
Did the Simpsons and South Park campaigns allow you to create products with it or just pictures/emails? I never really checked them out myself.
I agree that M&Ms has been great at merchandising themselves over the years, esp. the M&Ms shop in Las Vegas - 5(?) floors of M&M goodness…
The Simpsons campaign just gave you a JPEG file; what you did with it was up to you, although I think most were just used as Facebook avatars.
What’s interesting about these campaigns is seeing how people view themselves, and how honest (or deluded) they are. Than again, it’s just for fun and a lot of fantasy is involved - I guess that’s why it’s so popular.
Smarties still rule, though.
LOL Dave, you’re showing your Canadian colours. I don’t think Americans have smarties, coffee crisp or Crush cream soda.
We had blue smarties way before M&M’s ventured beyond yellow, orange and brown :D
Nice idea. But I don’t see a real sence behind that. What’s the use for it excepting that it looks nice?
Hi Duke, thanks for stopping by our blog.
I think this type of campaign is popular because it can be personalized - you can see what you’d look like as a Simpson, a South Park-er, an M&M or a dancing elf. In this case, you can create a product out of it and everyone has a laugh.
This is gonna have to get played-out eventually :D
MyM&Ms was actually included on Internet Retailer’s Hot 100 for 2008. I forgot about that…
M&M’s is not at is first attempt. They did already a big buzz with “mymms.com”