Elf Yourself visitors skyrocket

Chances are, you or someone you know received an email over the holidays that linked you to a singing and dancing elf. Chances are, the face of that elf was a picture of you or a colleague or a loved one.

More than 193 million people "got elfed" this holiday season, according to Bill Bonner, senior director of external relations for OfficeMax, the company that has offered the program for the past two years. That's a significant increase over the 11 million uses it received in its inaugural run in 2006.

"The 2007 numbers were outrageous — we surpassed the 2006 numbers pretty early in the campaign, so we knew there was some pent-up demand for it," he said. "We had people going to the URL throughout the year, checking to see if something was there. We had people emailing us, asking if we were going to bring them back. We knew there was demand waiting for it, but we didn't know how high that demand would be."

Elf Yourself was actually one of 20 online entertainment sites that OfficeMax commissioned in 2006 — 20 sites built for less than the cost of a single television ad. Elf Yourself was the breakout hit of the pack, but all of them were built around what might be viral marketing's central tenet: Make it a fun experience, and customers will do your marketing for you.

"Advertising is a party crasher," Bonner said. "If you can bring some champagne with you, it's a little more welcomed."

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Creating buzz without creating backlash

Of the untold attempts made at creating viral buzz, only a handful have truly resonated with viewers, and Elf Yourself is one of the few that has stuck around for consecutive years.

"Elf Yourself sets the bar in my mind, because it's got the potential to become an annual franchise," said Jim Calhoun, chief executive of PopularMedia, a viral marketing firm whose retail clients include Borders, Sephora and Epic Records. "Assuming marketers don't lose sight of what made it successful in the first place, OfficeMax now is in position to get your attention every holiday season for the next decade."

Bonner said he wouldn't be surprised if his company turns the elves into an annual tradition, but not everyone agrees that that is such a good idea. Kathy Sharpe, chief executive of Sharpe Partners, a digital marketing agency whose clients include Circuit City, says Elf Yourself came dangerously close to "death by success."

"The first time it was funny," she said. "But the execution wasn't complex enough to support interesting variations as participation built, so as momentum peaked people knew what it was before they opened it. This kills the need to open, and it just becomes another annoying email."

To what end?

Whether or not people will want to revisit the elves year after year, the larger question remains: Did the campaign bring any real benefit to the retailer, either in the form of increased sales or increased brand awareness?

"I'm not sure what direct sales were generated," said Brad Powers, CEO of Active Response Group, which has built viral campaigns for the Atkins family of products. "It's not like a consumer would upload all their family photos into the Elf Yourself tool and then say, 'Oh, I need to go to Office Depot to buy X or Y.'"

Powers' Freudian mention of Office Depot points to perhaps the bigger problem, and that is getting customers to associate the experience with the correct brand.

"I doubt that it worked at all," said Rob Frankel, branding consultant and author of "The Revenge of Brand X." "In fact, I'd be willing to bet that a substantial number of people who enjoyed the promotion cannot correctly identify the brand it was intended to promote."

A survey conducted by Retail Customer Experience hints that this may be true. In a survey of 24 people who recently viewed Elf Yourself, only five recalled that it was a production of OfficeMax, while 10 incorrectly attributed it to competitors Office Depot and Staples, and nine had no idea what the sponsoring brand was.

The power of humor and personalization

Two forces are at work behind most successful viral campaigns, from Burger King's Subservient Chicken to Purina's DOGGIE-MAIL: humor, and the ability to customize and personalize the experience. The former allowed Web visitors to tell a giant chicken what to do and watch the "live" response; the latter lets users upload a photo of their pet, place it into an animated setting and send a humorous email to friends.

Sharpe's company conducted original research in 2006 on what drives people to take part in a viral campaign, and humor was the number one motivator. The problem, she said, is that not everybody agrees about what is funny — and the result is often humor that aims at the lowest common denominator.

"Humor can help, but humor can also backfire," said Calhoun. "In general marketers are not nearly as funny as they think they are."

Calhoun said the real reason for the success of Elf Yourself is not just that it is cute or amusing, but that it is personalized and easily allows users to create connections that are themselves entertaining.

Dale Carnegie famously said that there is no sweeter sound to any person than the sound of their own name — and similarly, people are drawn to any experience that places them at center stage.

"Humans are narcissistic creatures," said Joseph Carrabis, founder of viral marketing firm NextStage Evolution. "Even those of us who hate how we look will look at our own reflection — or ourselves on YouTube — to see that those things we hate are still there. Couple that narcissistic tendency with something that's easy to do and that people can be successful enough at to show to others, and you have a winner every time."