OfficeMax Relaunches Elf Yourself
Last month we announced the popular holiday viral of OfficeMax would return any time soon. The wait is over! One of the most popular holiday websites from last year has launched again! This time you can upload a headshot of yourself and three other friends or members of your family. The faces are then transplanted onto the bodies of a troupe of festively dressed dancing elves.
Last year the holiday themed viral microsite ElfYourself.com helped contribute to a 20% increase in holiday traffic to OfficeMax’s website. The microsite received over 36 million hits (according to AdAge) in just five weeks, beating Burger King’s Subservient Chicken (19 million in one year) and CareerBuilder’s Monk-E-mail (9 million in eight months) both of which are continuously held up as the benchmark for viral success.
JibJabbin’ also notes with support of a graph that elfyourself.com received more traffic in 2006 than popular holiday destinations Hallmark and American Greetings. So go on, start the Elfamorphosis, and spread this fun and hilarious ‘gift’ to friends, family, co-workers, your boss or any other person who needs a holiday cheer!
Sources: Kris Abel, Catch Up Lady, Joey Interactive
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I did this with my family and sent it to all other family but nobody can load it. I recieved one and I can no longer load it to view. Is there a problem? Jane
yeah elf yourself seems to take longer to use every year. found this this year instead- you make your own queen’s speech by putting words in a teleprompter and the queen reads them out, lots of opportunity to make her say dirty things about riding on the throne. http://www.oneismostamused.co.uk/
(sorry for repost, link didnt work)
I did this with pics of my dogs and sent it to all my family, only one person has been able to load it, and now I can no longer load it to view. What’s the problem? Frankie
It is a cute and creative idea, but forget about sending it to others. It either will not go thru or is not received on other end. After endless tries, we just play with it on our computer and don’t try to forward it to friends and family.
It’s fun at first but very frustrating after uploading pictures 5 different times only to lose them every time you try to send them.. I rec’d one from my cousin and hers works great but I can’t even save to my computer ..it goes back to the original..Has anyone figured out why this isn’t working yet? Would love to send these out to friends and family..really funny idea if it worked..
Promomagazine:
As of yesterday, more than 38.7 million elves had been created with more than 58 million people having visited the site. Visitors spend an average of seven minutes interacting with the microsite, Office Max said.
“It’s taken on an even bigger life than it did last year,” Bob Thacker, senior vice president, marketing and advertising for Office Max, Inc. said.
The campaign runs through early January. Online marketing and in-store flyers are promoting the campaign. Toy and EVB handle the campaign for Office Max.
There are five in our family and we want to elf ourselves. Can you help????
i think dis website iz a scam poo poo poo
Opening page wont completely load on one of my computers and the other a Mac will not upload the pictures which are less than 2 mb. Very frustrating!
very interesting, but I don’t agree with you
Idetrorce
At first i thought it was funny but i tried it arfter i had sent and it didn’t load why?!
I’m so angry!!!!
is there anyway to help if so please tell me
i saw sombody do it to my head teacher so i thorght i sould give a try at home but the same thing happend to me as the person above what to do? what to do?
Elf Yourself is very popular, and generates even more traffic than last year. So at peak times it might occur that the site has loading problems. You can try to ask your question at Yahoo! Answers or you can use the feedback option at ElfYourself.com: Send an Email to ElfFeedback@OfficeMax.com.
Uploaded my family and sent it out to all my friends and everyone received it.Worked great for me.
I called the phone number to speak (elf) and entered the code given which is 1619-4804-92 and your voice mail kept coming up “code is incorrect” I called several times and repeated the code given and it still came up “incorrect, try again!” What’s wrong. Would someone pls get back to me asap. (818) 342-7584 Thank you, Arlene Krasner
[...] (mehr über die phänomenale Elf-Kampagne erfahren sie hier…) [...]
My friend sent one to me. VERY FUNNY! I was able to load hers with absolutely no problem. Needless to say from all the negative feed back I’ve been hearing about elfyourself, it wouldn’t upload my pics. I have been trying for days. This is very very frustrating.
This morning an employee at Zicht got to see the following screen “Elves on Strike“, when visiting Elfyourself. Negotiations have been settled, and Elfyourself.com is back in the air.
Site does not work. Unfortunately, after uploading photos, it will not send. Cute site, right idea, but does not function.
very cute idea but after you upload the pictures and view them you cannot view them again and anyone you send them to cannot view them
it took 3 tries before it did the final load for me, not sure… possibly high traffic volume? Did get a bit frustrated at the labour involved, but so desperately wanted to do it as it was way too funny to see other family members doing it. 4th try, it worked fine, and had no problem viewing it nor did others I sent it to… Seems to be a flukey thing if it works; just glad it did for me, finally! wheeeeeeee
As of Jan 3rd, GoElfYouself is offline. The problems with uploading are typically user error. Having the correct file size (no larger than 2MB) and format (.jpg, .gif, etc.) is the usual problem. Then when you save the Elf production, it copies a link to your clipboard which you must paste into an email to send to friends. Failure to paste this link to an email is a huge problem for those who think they are able to send through the website. You can’t! On the flip side, once a proper link is sent, it may take a while for the ElfYourself video to load. This may be a problem with the receiver’s connection speed or website bandwidth. Many people are using the site when it’s active. The key is to be patient when waiting for the video to load and you may have to “refresh” or “reload” if it hangs while loading.
Anyway you’ll have to wait ’til next year to try these tips as the “Elves are gone for now.”
http://www.elfyourself.com/
they take the damn site down after xmas so u can no longer load it
See also: http://www.scroogeyourself.com
There both funny
[...] where everyone is sharing YouTube videos right & left or making cute little games where you turn yourself into an elf & sing songs has become [...]
sucks now!login now to be spammed and your friends to,don,t do it!
I have made quite a few for family and friends and they all worked out very well…but it took quite a while to make them work…I don’t know if the delay was caused by the Internet server or the Flash Player..it was frustrating sometimes. But I still think they are a lot of fun. Keep them going. It is the second year that I have made them up.
Last year it worked fine. This year it took me about an hour and a half to download th pics and then when I downloaded the dance after 15 minutes it went back to the homepage and I lost all of the pics. Bad experience. There are other sites out there that are free and they work mushygushy.com
Elfyoursel sucks this year. You cannot call in and make the elves say what you want. I think this was the only feature that made the site fun. I am so disappointed at the boneheads who thought it would be a good idea to take the feature away. I never use it now. Last year I elfedmyself everyday.
I elfed all my kids last year and it was great fun! But, this year I have tried for 3 hours with no success. I keep getting errors. Why are so many people having trouble? I am disappointed that it has been so difficult!
I can’t even get the thing up because it keeps telling me i dont have a Flash Player…. after I have loaded one several times.
hehehe im joking there is no web site
this is very funny but it dosnt work i di it on my dad
[...] come from depression times, was continually supported with OfficeMax marketing campains like Elf Yourself, Schooled, and Save A Penny. Each of these campaigns were risky, but all delivered huge ROI and [...]
[...] come from depression times, was continually supported with OfficeMax marketing campains like Elf Yourself, Schooled, and Save A Penny. Each of these campaigns were risky, but all delivered huge ROI and [...]