Office Max is an office supply store in America.
They sell the usual stuff.
Stationary, desks, chairs, coffee machines, telephones, computers.
Not exactly a riveting category.
Not much of a story.
Not the brief you’ve been waiting for.
Oh yes, and there’s no media.
So how can you generate some advertising that people will notice?
That get’s exactly to the people you want.
In the environment you want.
That people will participate with.
And it will create its own media.
In fact, how about getting people to actually do the advertising for you?
And then circulate it to a personalised list of friends and relatives?
Nah.
Never happen, right.
Well check this out.
OfficeMax have a free Christmas card on their website.
It’s a little animated film of several elves dancing and singing Christmas carols.
It looks pretty banal, but here’s the twist.
You can download a photograph of yourself, plus friends and/or family.
You fit the photo into the little shape provided.
The programme then puts that head on one of the elves and matches up the mouth movements.
When you play it back you have yourself, plus friends and/or family, dressed up like elves.
Singing and performing a silly dance.
It’s crude, and of course it’s corny.
But that’s the whole point of Christmas.
It’s the one time of the year it’s okay to look embarrassing and silly.
Who isn’t going to circulate that around the office?
And to anyone they think will get a laugh out of it.
And when these other people get it, they can make their own cards too.
And they can put pictures of their friends and/or family on it.
And they can circulate them.
And on and on.
And all the while people are getting to know the name of OfficeMax and what they do.
In exactly the right environment: the office.
And all OfficeMax had to do was put it out there.
Their prospective customers do all the work.
And they do all the media.
The media becomes everyone in their email address book, and their Christmas card list.
It’s the perfect deal.
Everyone gets what they want for free.
People in their office at their computers get a fun Christmas card for free.
OfficeMax get publicity for free.
They get their name recommended between friends for free.
The really clever part for me is the Trojan Horse nature of it.
People will open emails when they recognise the name of the sender.
But if OfficeMax just sent out loads of unsolicited emails themselves no one would open them.
They’d just get treated like junk mail, and deleted as soon as they arrive.
But not these.
These get circulated and opened up and laughed at.
Maybe they even get saved over Christmas.
And sending them on is just a click away.
They become part of the Christmas fun, part of the environment.
So now when anyone in the office needs any office equipment, at least OfficeMax is top of mind.
For free.
This is what my daughter did on Sunday.
See, it even made it onto a blog.
Where hundreds of people will see it and maybe make their own version.
How creative is the thinking behind all this?
RSS Feed
Twitter
Email
Lovely. Rather like http://www.tackfilm.se/en/?id=1259761028071RA14 (yeah that’s me in the photo).
But obviously, if that’s at all indicative of the future, it’s going to put food on the tables of far fewer advertising agencies. Unless clients like this spend money like that every day.
Effing Brilliant. I now love Office Max. Stick that, Rymans.
That’s the point of Christmas?
I’m glad I’m not a Christian that comment would really hack me off.
Plus, this is an OLD OLD idea. It’s a great idea though, so thanks for the reminder!
I also like this - it’s a digital twist on the exquisite corpse game I used to play as a kid, you know, draw a head, fold the paper over, pass it on, they draw a body…
http://www.thebigexquisitecorpseexperiment.com
yes, this is very old idea. even my previous agency did one. few years ago. not that nicely done though.
http://ex-blank-page.blogspot.com/2009/12/in-reply-to-daves-great-posts-99.html
Ah, Jib Jab http://sendables.jibjab.com/. They’ve been doing this for years. Last year their Disco Elf Yourself card was a massive hit http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z844Zvm1pmw though I have to admit it’s only now that I notice the OfficeMax logo.
been done! Jib Jab do a huge range of different ones, last year i sent loads around, really funny!
http://sendables.jibjab.com/
This isn’t new and has been done for years now. Still works to a degree, but I think younger audiences are getting a little bored of just putting their or one of their friends heads on a predetermined animation. It doesn’t seem very clever anymore and it doesn’t have that ‘I wish I had sent that first’ appeal.
Hi Riki,
The point for me wasn’t the technique.
I guess we’ve all seen that before.
It was using it at Christmas,at a time when everyone’s Christmas Card list becomes your media schedule.
A classic example of idea over execution.
Hi Dave and everyone else.
Have you read Alex Bogusky’s newish book, ‘Baked In’? It sets out his theory about how the current paradigm of product development THEN marketing is outdated. How the marketing should be ‘baked in’ to the product. Really interesting.
Anyway, this post reminded me of a great example he’s got in there. And1 were an American basketball trainer challenger brand up against Nike, Adidas etc in the 90s. The big boys had all the cash and all the top sports stars signed up on sponsorship deals. And1 had risen from selling playground-inspired clothes/trainers and were known as champions of playground basketball. They couldn’t afford to sign up the famous NBA stars. So they decided to sign up the playground basketball players - and make them famous instead. They put together a VHS compilation of the best players performing amazing moves, set to underground hip hop. The tapes became legendary - but you could only get them with a pair of And1 trainers. The tape being given away with the trainers was making the trainers famous - the ad was actually part of the purchase. And And1 sales went from 50 milion to 300 million. Clever, eh?
It could be useful to have a little bit of history. This is the 3rd (or maybe 4th) year that Elf Yourself has been around. the first year, Office Max threw a whole load of ideas up, small sites around Christmas. Elf Yourself is the one that got traction. They have released it every Christmas since, each time a little different. They have partnered with JibJab this time and I think last year as well, given JibJab’s success with the formula.
Each year, they have a lot more traffic, a lot more people taking part and even better, you get anticipation. How are they going to do it this year. it’s a simple idea, they just do take a different twist.
I gotta say I know tons of people who really don’t go in for these kind of distractions but then again we can’t talk to all of the people all of the time. Having said that it certainly gets the brand out there for not much outlay and gives them a fighting chance to steal a march on their competition Isn’t that what it’s all about? Incidentally the competition are doing what exactly… diddly squat?
Not about this post sorry but i just want to say thankyou for putting such great posts up on this blog.
I’m in my 2nd year of advertising at Birmingham city university and the posts on here have really given me so much to think about and a unique insight into the inside workings of creativeness and advertising.
I’m also doing a presentation today as part of my course and I am doing it on you and the way ur posts can help so many student understand the key features needed in successful advertising.
Even if you see the comments here, the name being registered is Jib-Jab and not Office Max. besides, the call for action line is too weak. “For Holiday Gifts contact Office Max”.
Fun to do, but no brand connection and certainly no recall. No one would know, what they sell. The idea of making consumers your medium is brilliant, not captured here though to its fullest.
looking good dave, looking real good
I’ve been sent this three or four times already and it certainly has the ‘viral’ factor, but until I read your post I didn’t realise it was for Office Max at all. I thought it was just another JibJab game. This seems to be another example of a great idea for the wrong client. It doesn’t make any the link to the brand except for their logo. It’s tough to create any online content that cuts through but that isn’t the only job and I wonder - in the same way you mentioned an interviewer who thought the Liverpool St flash mob dance was for Vodafone - how much awareness will actually be generated for the client.
Jamie,
Fair point, I think it could do with more branding too.
How about XmasMax with OfficeMax?
SantaMax, PresentsMax, NoelMax, EggnogMax, CarolsMax, MincePieMax, TurkeyMax, like that.
Nice idea, nice little blog post. This idea has been done so many times over. Just goes to show you don’t have to reinvent the wheel.
The comments about this idea being done many times before have been done many times before.
If I want to look at Typography, I turn an ad upside down.
If I want to see if the copy flows, I read it out loud to someone listening.
If I want to change a shot, I’ll stick it in photoshop and bastardize it.
If I want to know how the punter will respond, I say to myself:
I’m not a creative, I’m a punter, and if I get excited, for whatever reason,
that tells me it’s a great idea inspite of myself.
It’s so important to remove self from the context of judging ads.
Otherwise you end up judging execution, and that’s not what makes a great ad
because execution is subjective.
My sister likes Sir Cliff Richard, I don’t.
Does that make Sir Cliff wrong?
No. It just means he appeals to a different market than me.
It is so important to understand this.
just like to point out that while this idea may have been done many times over, this is the FOURTH year OfficeMax has done it. and it gets bigger each year. hard to argue with success.
For everyone saying this is old, it IS old! This campaign was done a good few years ago.
Good thing about something cool on the internet though is that it can transend the average campaign lifespan, constantly being discovered and re-discovered by new people, Like Dave T here.
Every month or so I still get Emails from people about BK’s Subservient Chicken even though that’s by ad standards, ancient.
(My Captcha is very Xmas themed today and features the word ‘Scrooge’)
Hi Vin,
It just goes to show you how a great idea just keeps growing if it’s not interfered with.
Repetition, repetition, repetition. We all live such busy lives these days, unless we all have a ‘Susan Boyle’ moment together, it takes 4 years for some of us to find out because online is not a group activity like football, but more of a group of individual’s activity like Rambling. That’s why it’s so important to remember “If it aint broke don’t fix it,” but with the average turnover of marketing managers being 2 years max in any job these days, who is the brand guardian? The doorman?
They are having a grey Christmas in Italy this year….
http://web.me.com/kevingordon/ROI/TAKE.html
The above post was an error.
This is what they’re up to in Italy
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cyaUzW1U1Kg
When Greg Dyke was in charge of the BBC he used to say it’s only a repeat if you’ve seen it before.
True, but I don’t think the creative magic that makes this still viral after 3 (maybe 4) years is down to the good people at OfficeMax but the very talented bunch at JibJab, OfficeMax merely piggybacking along for the ride.
To be honest it could be any brand which to me means it’s not good marketing.
I’ve discovered a new online activity called Cross-Shopping.
For instance, if you’re a male and you fill in your wife’s car insurance online on your own computer, you are likely to get bombarded with large bra ads from Bravissimo.
I wonder what Hugh Heffner thinks of all this.
I just found this:
http://www.threadless.com/
Its a really cool idea as well.
Tom.
You’re right that is brilliant.
I just ordered all my Christmas presents there.
Bogusky talks about it in his book.
Great story behind it.
If you loved that you should check out this really cool site. It allows you to upload your own video clips to the site and share them with the world. I think It’s called YouTube or something like that and it’s totally awesome!
Sweet video on the whole thing here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oHg5SJYRHA0
Check this out too! It’s really interactive:
http://tinyurl.com/l6tq74
Thanks for the post Dave. If you like music, you should have a look at this application created by Apple. It allows you to listen to music digitally, though your computer machine. Have a look here - you can see a preview so you don’t need to dive straight in without knowing what you’re getting yourself into: http://www.apple.com/itunes/
Good luck, best wishes, and thanks again for your insightful thoughts, Errol
Even the Royals are at it:
http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/royals/2776862/Royal-couples-elfy-sense-of-humour.html
Guy.