26.4 million Americans -- one out of every 10 -- visited a holiday site that let them paste personal pictures on top of dancing elves, and then send the movie to friends.
Quick. What company sponsored it?
If you guessed Office Max, you're right. The company name was included in 6 of the 20 most common Internet search terms during the 4 weeks of December. Maybe you were one of them. We got elf emails from a half-dozen friends and family members. It definitely was funny the first time, sort of.
The idea was that visiting the Office Max site, and making the connection between the movie and the company, were good things for the brand. "We were looking to build the brand, warm up our image. We weren't looking for sales. We are third-place players in our industry, so we are trying to differentiate ourselves through humor and humanization," explained the company's marketing honcho in Advertising Age.
Now that the store has been duly branded, I wonder what Office Max could have done to see impacts on its actual business:
- It could have had something to do with paper clips: If you buy the merits of thematic associations in branding (and I don't), couldn't the elf movie at least have had some element that linked it to an office products store? Conceptually, Office Max could have run a spot showing a gun pointed at a dog's head, with the VO "come and buy something immediately, or the puppy dies." The mid/long-term benefits of content-neutral branding is questionable. Perhaps the dancers could have used giant pencils as canes or something
- What else could have happened on all those site visits? 26.4 million people showed up to download a stupid movie, and all they have to show for it is a statistic? There could have been anything added to the site, from a mercenary sweepstakes to some registration/engagement element, to better exploit all that attention.
- In the end, it still wasted my time, however pleasantly: Sure, we're still "talking about it," but so what? The only people who collect a surcharge from such branding "results" are the gurus who make a living claiming that such branding has any value (don't you just love that circular logic?). Office Max makes zilch on it. Could the funny spot have included some benefit, like a discount? Maybe an incentive to visit the store? How about some follow-up, as the promo is invisible on the site now?
Ultimately, what matters isn't brand awareness, but sales, and there's no reason why even the most obtuse, funny, and irrelevant branding tool can't (or shouldn't) have a connection to prompting sales. To think that there's reason for it otherwise is to ensure that your communications stay obtuse, funny, or irrelevant.
Which is what the Office Max's elf campaign may well be, in the end.
Note to self: let's watch how retail and Internet sales did during the period the elf video was available. That would be a quick measure on whether the movie was any elf'n good.
Link to original post