And did both JibJab and OfficeMax managed to keep their Elf Yourself campaign fresh? Read along!

Elf Yourself
For the people not familiar with Elf Yourself, here’s a small wrap-up. Elf Yourself is a Christmas holiday application where people can transform themselves and other ‘victims’ into elves.

With that they are able to participate in the most wicked dance moves, which is obviously quite hilarious! The application makes nifty use of upload opportunities. You can use photos in any range, as long as it has a face in it.

You can use photos stored on your computer, make a new one by using your webcam or just by logging in to Facebook to get that perfect face.

 
In terms of usability, the creators did a very good job. Select a photo, enhance it and position the mouth area for some serious mouth movement and the quality time can begin. After these seconds lasting procedure you are ready to see yourself (and others) in dances, varying from Funk, Hip Hop, Country, Classic and 5 other brilliant settings.

To keep the Elf experience alive, the mostly brilliant results can be shared through email, Facebook, Twitter or with an embed on your owned media. Was your creation that brilliant, then you might want to download it (costs $4.99), since online versions will be erased starting in January.

Did you made a creation close to epic? Elf Yourself makes it tangible for you with their online store.

Gift items include ceramic mugs, mousepads, playing cards, puzzles in tins, magnets, posters, collectable ornaments, DVDs and print greeting cards – each personalized with your ElfYourself photos.

Elf Effect
CMOs should be tuned in right now. What can a non-business connected campaign do for your brand, in terms of awareness, preference and purchase intent?

Well, earlier editions reported at least 180 Million visits and 123 Million faces were used for the actual application.

So that made Elf Yourself no longer a stack of gold but much more the mother load. OfficeMax saw a 190% increase to its web-traffic and a sustained a steady increase in online and walk-in sales.

In 2010, Julie Krueger, senior vice president of e-commerce and direct marketing at OfficeMax, titled Elf Yourself as a “gift from OfficeMax to their consumer”. 

David Berkowitz, senior director of emerging media and innovation at interactive marketing firm 360i, said that even if there’s no logical connection to anything OfficeMax sells, the program works from a name-recognition standpoint. “It gets their name out there.” And with more than 180 million visits, you definitely can be sure of that.

OfficeMax

OfficeMax Incorporated (NYSE: OMX) is a leader in both business-to-business office products solutions and retail office products.

The company provides office supplies and paper, in-store print and document services through OfficeMax ImPress, technology products and solutions, and furniture to consumers and to large, medium and small businesses.

OfficeMax customers are served by approximately 35,000 associates through direct sales, catalogues, e-commerce and more than 900 stores across the USA.

JibJab

JibJab is a digital media company dedicated to making funny things worth sharing since 1999. The company consists of the best artists, comedians, writers, musicians, performers, technologists and business people to produce world-class original entertainment on the Internet.

Want to get started and make a Elf Yourself creation yourself? Click here!

What was your experience with ElfYourself? Let us know!

But nowadays we have so much information available that we for example need infographics to showcase it.

I think the organisation visual.ly has a fun look at it… So what is visual.ly
have a look for yourself;

Click here to view the embedded video.

Will this help us in the fight against filter failure? I do not know; however it will help us in auto generating visuals and information visualisations… anywhere and everywhere.

We’ll keep track of this tool!

Edison Chen in RenRen commercial. Watch this video on YouTube

Edison Chen, a leading actor in Hong Kong appearing in films such as Infernal Affairs (later re-made as The Departed) and The Dark Knight, shocked the Asian world in 2008, when a total of approximately 1,300 explicit photographs with some of the biggest movie and recording stars in Hong Kong and the Chinese world were distributed to Chinese language websites, forums and chatrooms.

The scandal started after naughty pictures were taken from Edison Chen’s laptop in 2006 by a computer shop technician that was repairing it. The files were first copied on CD and later published on the internet. The photos included celebrities such as Bobo Chan Man, Cecilia Cheung Pak Chi, Gillian Chung Yun-Tung, Joey Yung, Yu Chiu, Vincy Yeung, Yumiko Cheng, Mandy Chen, Rachel Ngan, Candice Chan, Jolin Tsai and Maggie Q. The photo scandal ended a lot of careers and forced Edison out of Asia and the entertainment industry.

In June 2009 Edison Chen returned to Hong Kong and talked in an exclusive interview to CNN Talk Asia about the matter. Now social network RenRen has used footage of that interview to create an internet commercial. See the particular scene where Edison is asked “Tell me about the moment that you realised that these photos where everywhere?”:

The girl featuring in the RenRen commercial, is a main actress in the sex crisis. When Edison mentions “internet” or 互联网, the subtitle translation in the video is “RenRen” or 人人网. What’s most impressive about the internet commercial, is that at the end of the clip, the core message is something like “find your previous one-night-stand partner on RenRen…”

The video can be found on Tudou (土豆网) and Sina (新浪). Both videos are uploaded last week.

Many thanks to Jason Zhan Jia of the social media and digital marketing blog In2Marcom in China.

Harbin beer ice sculpture. Watch this video on YouTube.

On December 24 the above video, entitled “零下34度！年终巨献！惊爆你的眼球……!” was uploaded to the popular Chinese video sharing site Youku (优酷网). In the clip four Chinese citizens create an ice sculpture of Harbin’s Saint Sophia Cathedral by pouring Harbin beer on a square at a temperature of 34 degrees below zero or minus 29 Fahrenheit.

In 10 days time the video has been watched 1+ million times on Youku (优酷网) and has spread to other popular Chinese video sites such as Tudou (土豆网), 56.com, 6.cn (六间房), Ku6 (酷6网) and Joy.cn (激动网), where it’s viewed an additional 300,000 times. The 91 second video has no call to action in the end screen or refers to a promotional site.

It’s unknown if this video is created as a fan-made video or is initiated by an agency to create buzz for the campaign Media.asia recently reported on: wwwins Consulting Shanghai launches a digital campaign across major Chinese portals (Sohu, Sina, MSN, Tudou, Youku and Kaixin) to promote Harbin’s 2010 FIFA World Cup Campaign, which encloses a meet & greet competition with Dutch soccer legend Ruud Gullit (路德·古利特), the ambassador for Harbin’s 2010 FIFA World Cup campaign.

Beer market in China
China became the largest beer producer in the world in 2002. China’s beer production has reached 40 million tons per year, more than the production of 24 million tons by the United States, the world’s second-largest beer producer. Germany, which has a long history of beer production, produces 12 million tons of beer a year.

Source: 56minus1.com

Organizing For America: Barack Obama
Organizing For America (OFA), the successor organization to ‘Obama for America’, has created a personalized video card featuring President Barack Obama, as well as ordinary Democrats from around the country, thanking supporters for their dedication.

The video in which the recipient’s name is incorporated in various places of the clip has already been forwarded by at least a million people to their friends, an Organizing for America spokesperson told NewTeeVee. Launched Thursday December 17 the site featuring the video has seen 5 million visitors in the first seven days. Everyone who sends out a card is added to the newsletter list. The names of the receivers aren’t kept.

Rebel Virals
Viral agency Rebel Virals from Bristol have successfully produced and seeded their Christmas card for 2009, entitled “Jack Bauer interrogates Santa”, featuring Santa Claus along with Jack Bauer aka Kiefer Sutherland from the television series 24. Santa’s been apprehended for suspicious behaviour and Jack wants answers.

The video with over 20 duplicates on YouTube and placements on various other video networks, has been viewed over 1 million times and got featured on MSNBC.

NORADsanta.org
NORAD Tracks Santa is a service offered on Christmas Eve by NORAD, the North American Aerospace Defense Command, a joint organization of Canada and the United States. Every year on Christmas Eve, “NORAD Tracks Santa” follows Santa Claus, as he leaves the North Pole and delivers presents to children around the world.

This year, the tradition called for a 25-hour operations center where more than 1,200 volunteers from the military and the Colorado Springs community answered more than 74,000 phone calls and 3,500 e-mails from people around the world asking the location of Santa. More than 13 million visitors from 231 countries also tracked Santa on the website at noradsanta.org. The site, which featured both an interactive map and the Google Earth map, offered photos, videos and family-friendly games for visitors throughout the month of December.

The program gained over 27,000 twitter followers in a month’s time and the NORAD Tracks Santa Facebook fan page continues to grow with more than 410,000 fans. On NORADsanta’s YouTube channel several videos uploaded a week ago have been watched between 5,000 and 1 million times.

Source: NewTeeVee, The Inspiration Room, Colorado Connection, Wikipedia

Adam Lambert was the runner-up of the season eight of American Idol and with his performance of his first single “For Your Entertainment” he has been lighting up Twitter accounts and gossip blogs since Sunday.

For his first televised performance since the finale of American Idol, Lambert aimed for the kind of controversy Britney Spears and Madonna are known for generating, completely stunning the audience at Los Angeles’ Nokia Theatre and the millions watching the American Music Awards live on ABC with his unique and unexpected show. Rolling Stone didn’t label Lambert the Wild Idol for nothing, and Lambert definitely delivered on his promise of a “sexy” performance as he closed the live show with simulated oral sex from a male backup dancer and a brief make-out session with his male keyboardist.

The video has created a lot of buzz on the internet and is uploaded by a lot of people. But since yesterday a lot of the videos have been taken down and it’s now only available a few places. This video has generated more than 38,000 views since yesterday, so still some to go to reach the 5,000,000 views Madonna and Britney generated with their Video Music Award performance in 2003. Be sure to check out what people are buzzing about on Twitter.

Elf Yourself elves invade Union Square

Read more about Elf Yourself? See “Will Elf Yourself Return in 2009? YES!” (a retrospective) and “Elf Yourself 2009 is Live!” (focus on 2009 campaign). Read more about Flash mobs? Check out the article “Using A Creative Flashmob As A Viral Element” by Matthijs Roumen or do a ViralBlog search or YouTube search.

ElfYourself Flash Mob Rehearsal

Read more of Paul’s articles on Viralblog. You can connect with Paul via Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, SlideShare, Del.icio.us or send him an email at paul@viralblog.com.

So what’s new this year? There are two new elf dances! In addition to “Disco Elves”, “Country Elves”, and “Elf Classic”, you can choose to model your creation off the “Hip-Hop Elves” or “Singing Elves” dances. The “Charleston Elves” won’t be coming back this year.

Further more JibJab has removed its required account registration, due to a significant dropoff between 2007 and 2008 – 193 million sites visits vs 55 million. On TechCrunch JibJab CEO Gregg Spiridellis explains that the required registration in 2008 led to an anticipated dropoff, but resulted in a huge jump in its userbase, which is more valuable to the company in the end.

Instead of the required registration OfficeMax integrated Elf Yourself with Facebook Connect, which will give users an one-click signin to the site and access to photo albums and your profile pictures, and will also help ElfYourself go even more viral as videos get distributed through Facebook News Feeds. Share options include posting to Facebook and tweeting to Twitter.

Other networks to share to are: MySpace, Orkut, Bebo, Tagged, Blogger, Hi5, Live Spaces, Piczo, Freewebs, LiveJournal, BlackPlanet, MyYearbook, WordPress, Vox, Typepad, Xanga, Multiply, iGoogle, Netvibes, Pageflakes, MiGente, Yahoo, Ameba, Eons, Overblog and Livedoor.

To save a copy of your video, before the holiday season and the Elf Yourself campaign ends costs $4.99. Other personalized gifts you can buy are mugs, ornaments, mousepads, greeting cards, blankets and playing cards, ranging between $4.99 and $59.99.

Time will tell, if this year’s Elf Yourself with help of the registration removal, the increased JibJab userbase and a possible Facebook and Twitter effect can beat Elf Yourself’s 2007 astronomical numbers.

Last year, 122 million elves were created, a total of 35 million “Elf Yourself” cards were sent (source: CNET) and ElfYourself.com scored 55.5 million site visits. Since it launched in 2006, the seasonal site has chalked up 284 million visits.

Singing

Classic

Country

Hip Hop

Disco

Read more of Paul’s articles on Viralblog. You can connect with Paul via Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, SlideShare, Del.icio.us or send him an email at paul@viralblog.com.

OfficeMax first launched “Elf Yourself” for the 2006 holidays and has turned the free e-greeting site into an annual holiday tradition returning each season with new bells and whistles for the public to enjoy and spread holiday cheer. In 2007, ElfYourself.com attracted 193 million visits in six weeks to become the most viral initiative on record. A look back at each campaign, the results and lessons learned.

Elf Yourself 1.0 (2006)

OfficeMax hired two marketing agencies, Toy in New York and EVB in San Francisco, in 2006 to come up with fun sites that would help distinguish OfficeMax from its competitors. The agencies created about 20 different Web sites, including nine holiday games and sites to create e-cards. The e-card site “Elf Yourself” proved to be most popular of the multiple sites created.

In the earliest ElfYourself.com version you had the the possibility to turn just one person into a crazy dancing elf. All you had to do was find a photo of yourself (or your partner, boss, enemy, etc), select the facial area in the photo (with help of a web-based tool to scale and rotate your chosen shot) and submit the result. Additional you got the option to record a personal voice message to go with it through a toll-free number. Once completed, you could preview the result or email it to a friend.

Elfyourself.com was an instant success and got 200 unique visitors per second in 2006, with 8 new elves created per second. Elfyourself.com received more traffic in 2006 than popular holiday destinations Hallmark and American Greetings, see graph. On Flickr and Youtube you can still find some Elf Yourself 1.0 examples.

Elf Yourself 2006 Campaign Metrics (five weeks, 12/1/06 to 1/7/07)

• Over 36 million site visits
• Over 11 million elves were created (41,000 per hour at its peak)
• Users spent a combined equivalent of 600 years on the site
• Over 79,000 MySpace hits
• Fastest mover on Alexa Rankings, reaching 267 most visited site
• #2 on Entertainment Weekly “Must List”
• Over 100 User created videos on YouTube
• Over 2 million Google search results

“The campaign exceeded our expectations by tenfold,” said Bob Thacker, OfficeMax senior vice president of marketing and advertising. “It dramatically increased awareness of our brand.” The company is likely to repeat the campaign for the 2008 holiday season, he said.

Elf Yourself 2.0 (2007)

By the second holiday season, ElfYourself.com had become an online holiday destination. This time you could upload a headshot of yourself and three other friends or members of your family, to create a troupe of festively dressed dancing elves. In 2007 after six weeks of being live, the holiday site, ElfYourself.com, attracted a booming number of visitors and hit the bull’s eye of viral success, leaving Subservient Chicken, the Whopper Freakout and Monk-e-Mail all in the dust.

“Elf Yourself” images showed up on Flickr and Photobucket, and user-generated videos were uploaded to YouTube and Vimeo. Fans added ElfYourself.com to Digg, Mixx and StumbleUpon and posted e-greeting tweets on Twitter. The site spread like wildfire across social media and into mainstream culture.

Elf Yourself 2.0

Elf Yourself 2007 Campaign Metrics (11/21/07 to 1/2/08):

• More than 193 million site visits with 123 million elves created
• Average number of ElfYourself movies created per user: approx. 2 movies
• Over 210 million elf dances were viewed
• 60 elves were created per second
• Users spent a combined 2,600 years on the site
• 5,456 blogs posts about ElfYourself (Google Blog Search, 11/07 to 1/08)
• Average time on site: 7.5 minutes
• One in 10 Americans visited ElfYourself.com (Nielsen Online Strategic Services)
• Ranked No. 51 most visited website on the web (HitWise Intelligence, 12/07)
• Top-ranked site in the Humor category, holding the position for the last 3 weeks. (HitWise Intelligence, 1/08)
• Ranked the most popular Entertainment – Humour website visited by Australians and New Zealanders in December 2007 (Hitwise)
• Some 53% of visitors returned to the site
• Ranked No. 1 site on “Movers & Shakers” (Alexa Rankings)
• Ranked among top 1,000 sites in 50 countries (Alexa Rankings, 12/07)
• Three awards wins, including the “Best Word of Mouth Marketing Campaign”, People’s Choice Award for “Best User Defined Experience” and “Best of Show”
• Featured on CNN American Morning, ABC World News Now, Good Morning America, TODAY Show, TNT Sports News, Fox News, NYT BITS Blog, Rosie Chat, & TBS The Daily Flog.
• 63% of participants who shop for office supplies at least 10 times per year were aware of Elf Yourself.
• 95% of those who visited Elf Yourself claimed they would likely visit Elf Yourself again in 2008.
• More than one-third of those who visited Elf Yourself said the site influenced their decision to visit OfficeMax, and about one-third of visitors said the site improved their perception of OfficeMax.

ElfYourself 3.0 (2008)

ElfYourself.com relaunched again in November 2008. OfficeMax partnered with JibJab to add entertaining new features and capabilities. In addition to more elves (up to five photos) and new dances (Classic, Disco, Charleston or Country), the ability to send the personalized video as holiday eCards, do a “QuickPost” to social media sites, or share with friends via a new Facebook application, users could also take their custom elves offline (for small fee) by downloading videos or creating custom photo gifts – playing cards, ornaments, mouse pads and coffee mugs. Consumer anticipation grew as the holidays got closer with thousands of people visiting the site daily according to Quantcast.

Elf Yourself 3.0

ElfYourself 3.0 Campaign Metrics (11/21/08 to 1/9/09)

• Total elves created: 122 million
• Total site visits: 55.5 million
• Average number of ElfYourself movies created per user: 4.5 movies
• Average time on site: 15 minutes
• 14,080 blog posts about ElfYourself (Google Blog Search, 11/08 to 1/09)
• ElfYourself widget was installed more than one million times
• 636,500 YouTube views of user-generated ElfYourself videos
• 7,262 fans of ElfYourself on Facebook
• 1,500 tweets about ElfYourself on Twitter
• 683 photos of ElfYourself on Flickr
• 75 Diggs for ElfYourself.com

OfficeMax 2008 Campaign Goals

• Deeper engagement
• Greater brand association
• Higher user-retention
• Stronger social media presence

ElfYourself 4.0 (2009)

Will OfficeMax revive Elf Yourself yet again for a fourth annual holiday season? Only time will tell, but with holiday spirits at an all-time low during tough times around the world, ElfYourself.com would definitely be a nice addition this season and help us all get in the holiday spirit. Let’s hope for more elfing 4.0 and spreading cheer!

Update: November 5th. As you can see below Elf Yourself will relaunch in about 5 days.

Hints of an Elf Yourself return:

Elf Yourself being filmed in Union Square on November 3rd

OfficeMax.com: “Elf Yourself coming soon”

@ElfYourself Twitter page

OfficeMax replies my question on their Facebook page

Tweet by @OfficeMax with link to a tweetphoto

Website of last year: “Check back next holiday season for more ElfYourself fun!”

Lessons Learned

Elf Yourself phenomenal viral success characteristics:

• Simplicity: make it quick & easy
• Participation: get people involved
• Personalization: let people make it their own
• Unexpected: surprise people
• Humor/Entertainment: evoke an emotion; By making the site enjoyable to use, users flocked to it and spread the word themselves, creating a viral marketing campaign.
• Distribution: use ALL media to tell a story
• Communities: make the consumer your marketer
• Portability: weave your content into their digital life
• Cater to your audience: OfficeMax recognized that while most of its customers use the Internet as an information source, they also appreciate a novel experience. “We gave people something enticing to do, and they spent a long time with us, an average of seven minutes,” said Thacker.
• Experiment: Don’t be afraid to experiment with different sites and strategies. “We tried twenty different holiday sites (in 2006) and saw which ones stuck,” Thacker said.

About OfficeMax
OfficeMax, Inc. is one of the world’s largest B2B and B2C office supply chains. Listed on the New York Stock Exchange (OMX), the chain sells to customers in North America, Europe, Australia, and New Zealand. Its biggest sales season is the annual back-to-school period in its markets. But the chain also sells digital cameras, televisions, and other products that are popular during the holiday season.

Many thanks to Elizabeth Cleveland of Elm PR.

Source: Adweek, PR Newswire, CreativeCow

Part 1 What If: Pamela

The (viral) video campaign, released last month, revolves around the question “What if?”. Imagine Michael Knight without Kitt, Pamela Anderson without plastic surgery or Lennon without McCartney. Without their perfect match their lives could have turned out to be rather less successful …

Part 2 What if: Lennon without McCartney

Part 3 What If: Knight Rider without KITT

Part 4 What If: Johan Cruyff had pronunciation lessons

Part 1 with “Pamela Anderson”, launched on May 19, is the most popular one of the series with over 150,000 views (generated on YouTube, 123video.nl and Kewego). Part 2, also launched on May 19, follows with 60,000 views (generated on YouTube and 123video.nl). Part 3, launched on May 26, received 35,000 views (mainly from YouTube). Part 4, launched also on May 26, with Dutch soccer legend Johan Cruijff is watched the least with just 7,000 views on YouTube and 123video.nl.

Although the videos were also uploaded/duplicated to Yahoo Video, MyVideo.nl and Zideo.nl, these videosharing sites perform very poorly.

The videos watched together in total of over 250,000 times have yielded good uptake in the Dutch and Belgian blogosphere, like Flabber, VKmag, Kladblog, Skoften, Biertijd, Loodzwaar, ZV Magazine, AttuWorld and TasteLikePizza.

Promoting 4 videos can be difficult and needs a careful thought viral strategy plan, whereas not all videos tend to get uptake, due to missing viral elements and bloggers only embed the best one or two videos. Viral strategies to promote more than one video for a campaign can be: a big bang strategy (all at once), one by one (every week or two weeks a new part) or in batches. In this case with Part 1 (60% of the total views), Part 2 (24% of the total views), Part 3 (14% of the total views) and Part 4 (3% of the total views), did rather well. The video views are spread more evenly, indicating (almost) all movies are liked, also when looking at the ratings and comments.

Compared to the number of video views with some of the most succesfull viral cases in the Netherlands, such as X-Travel, Hacker Max Cornelisse and Dutch Cybersex viral, the Asics campaign misses high international uptake to perform as well.

The “What if?” concept is inexhaustible and can be applied to e.g. Obama, Esmee Denters, Michael Jordan etc. I personally think, that if the actors were just more look-a-like and the videos less budget, the campaign could perform better. Another idea for the next series, is let the public decide (crowdsource), who they want to see next.