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Elf yourself
Simon Trist just emailed me a great viral campaign called “Elfyourself“, which features David, our Design Director as the leading star. The idea is to paste your picture on the body of the elf and the elf will then dance around in a funny way (in a really funny way).
It’s a brilliant viral, because it actually gives the recipient something of value (a good laugh) and as we know - if the recipient enjoys the content of the email they will (probably) pass it on to their friends or colleagues (89 percent of US adult users share content with friends by email).
The psychology behind virals is, according to Andy Chen, a combination of belonging and sharing. The sharing process strengthens bonds and relationships, and virals becomes an excuse to engage with friends, family and colleagues to strengthen those bonds.
I enjoyed “Elfyourself” a lot, and I created my own version and passed it on to a couple of friends. Perhaps I unconsciously did it to strengthen my relationships, hope it worked!
Not all viral campaigns work. Elfyourself works, because it’s funny (humour is the most shared content via email), the branding is subtle - instead of smothering the recipient with an obvious commercial message it allows the recipient to engage with the brand which consequently gives the recipient an opportunity to become a media creator instead of a media consumer.
A viral doesn’t need to be like “elfyourself” to be successful -its more complicated than that. Advertising Age has a list of “The 10 viral videos you should have seen“. “Elfyourself” is not included but there are other campaigns from 2006 that could be worth looking at.
Happy holidays everyone!
Are there any active sites out there right now that do what Elf Yourself did?
Hi Brenda, check out this campaign (also by officemax) http://www.everythingsareindeer.com/