Elf Yourself 2009 Is Live!
About a week ago, I wrote an article about the history of Elf Yourself and asked the question: Will Elf Yourself return in 2009 again? On the OfficeMax site, Twitter, Flickr, YouTube and Facebook all kind of hints appeared of a possible return. And 12 hours ago, 12 o’clock midnight US time, Elf Yourself 4.0 is live again! Just like last year OfficeMax teamed up with JibJab.
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
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Well for my money they have done a pretty good job of stretching what could have been a tired idea.
Good on em. Looks like a cash cow for another year
Great post, Paul – this is the most comprehensive review of Elf Yourself I’ve seen in terms of numbers and the success of this greeting!
You’d think this concept would get old, but it remains fun and addictive!
The integration of both Facebook Connect and Twitter, here and lots of recent campaigns, illustrates the importance of encouraging and facilitating a viral loop to your users.
I’ve written a bit more about it here: http://bit.ly/1D3xZE
Cheers,
Jackie
[...] sphere from way back, but their personalized digital sendables have skyrocketed far beyond the Elf Yourself campaign which ViralBlog reports already chalked up 284 million visits since its launch in 2006 [...]