There's
an old saying - when life gives you lemons, make lemonade.
In
2006, Office Max launched their "elf yourself" holiday campaign. As I noted at the time, while engagement with
the dancing elves was high, most people who forwarded the email could not name
the company that sponsored it. Worse
yet, the company reported a decline of $7 million in sales while the promotion
was running. So it was a good example of
how high engagement can be meaningless when it comes to generating sales.
But
the promotion exceeded engagement goals with 36 million visits in 5 weeks, so
Office Max turned the promotion into a yearly event. Not surprisingly they also continued to see
revenue declines. A merger with Office
Depot has not helped, so this October they announced a pivot, and a deal with
CompuCom that will move them from a traditional business products retailer to a
business services company.
So
imagine my surprise when I saw that they were continuing the Elf Yourself
promotion. To what end? Will it increase
sales? Or will it just be another toy
for people to play with?
It
appears that Office Max believes the latter, so they are attempting to monetize
the app. The new mobile version allows
people to elf themselves by adding faces of 5 friends, who will then dance
together to a variety of tunes. But,
only one song is free. The rest require
an in-app payment of 99 cents for each song, there are a total of 19, so that's
$6.
With
over 1billion customized elves since the campaign began they might be on to
something. (Martin, 2017)
So
what do you think? Have you elfed
yourself in the past? Did you buy stuff
from Office Max/Office Depot after you did?
Will you elf yourself this year?
Will you pay for additional songs?
How much money are you spending on online apps? What types of apps are you buying? And most importantly, will you buy something from Office Depot this
holiday season?
Martin,
C. (2017, November 23) ElfYourself Back
For The Holidays, Now With Augmented Reality.
mediapost.com. Retrieved November 29, 2017, from
