Office Max's Elf Yourself: ad:tech People's Choice Awards Finalist
Of all the activities associated with Christmas, sending out greeting cards is probably the most tedious. It takes time, effort, thought, and money, and you potentially feel guilty if you forgot to send a card to someone who sent one to you. Even receiving them rarely evokes the same nostalgia they once did. Since the Internet keeps us all more accessible than we were in the past, receiving communications from a friend isn't as big a deal as it once was. With elfyourself.com though, OfficeMax made the ordeal both easy and fun once again.
To be clear, people don't closely associate elves and office products, so at first glance it is difficult to see why OfficeMax would use this method to connect with their audience. However, considering how enjoyable it is to send these elfish greeting cards and the demand that exists for it, the answer seems to simply be that it works.
Now the only question is if "working" in the viral sense equals "working" in the retail sense. The evidence is indisputable in the first case and undecided in the second, at least in the short-term.
Remarkably, the website does not annoy people with flashing banners that promise the greatest-ever sale in the history of OfficeMax. It isn't even what some overeager advertising professionals would call "strongly branded."
That's not the point.
It's simply a service for people looking to connect with others at Christmas - a thoroughly entertaining and subtly self-depreciating greeting that's easy to use and distribute - that, oh by the way, was brought to them by OfficeMax.
Therein lies the real genius of the concept.
By rejecting the narcissism people have come to expect of advertising - by getting the "brand message" out of the way of the audience's goals, the site, instead of being an accessory to the brand, becomes an instance of it.
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