So what’s new this year? There are two new elf dances! In addition to “Disco Elves”, “Country Elves”, and “Elf Classic”, you can choose to model your creation off the “Hip-Hop Elves” or “Singing Elves” dances. The “Charleston Elves” won’t be coming back this year.

Further more JibJab has removed its required account registration, due to a significant dropoff between 2007 and 2008 - 193 million sites visits vs 55 million. On TechCrunch JibJab CEO Gregg Spiridellis explains that the required registration in 2008 led to an anticipated dropoff, but resulted in a huge jump in its userbase, which is more valuable to the company in the end.

Instead of the required registration OfficeMax integrated Elf Yourself with Facebook Connect, which will give users an one-click signin to the site and access to photo albums and your profile pictures, and will also help ElfYourself go even more viral as videos get distributed through Facebook News Feeds. Share options include posting to Facebook and tweeting to Twitter.

Other networks to share to are: MySpace, Orkut, Bebo, Tagged, Blogger, Hi5, Live Spaces, Piczo, Freewebs, LiveJournal, BlackPlanet, MyYearbook, Wordpress, Vox, Typepad, Xanga, Multiply, iGoogle, Netvibes, Pageflakes, MiGente, Yahoo, Ameba, Eons, Overblog and Livedoor.

To save a copy of your video, before the holiday season and the Elf Yourself campaign ends costs $4.99. Other personalized gifts you can buy are mugs, ornaments, mousepads, greeting cards, blankets and playing cards, ranging between $4.99 and $59.99.

Time will tell, if this year’s Elf Yourself with help of the registration removal, the increased JibJab userbase and a possible Facebook and Twitter effect can beat Elf Yourself’s 2007 astronomical numbers.

Last year, 122 million elves were created, a total of 35 million “Elf Yourself” cards were sent (source: CNET) and ElfYourself.com scored 55.5 million site visits. Since it launched in 2006, the seasonal site has chalked up 284 million visits.

Singing

Classic

Country

Hip Hop

Disco

Apparently, in the book, the main character Edward Cullen drives a Volvo. This simple notion caused for Twilight fans to wanting to drive a Volvo as well. But can a vampire really help sell cars?

Volvo likes to thinks so: according to Doug Speck, president and CEO of Volvo Cars of North America, ‘Volvo is central to Edward’s character in the Twilight saga.’ Now, with the new film on its way, the car brand put out a challenge by launching a new online promotion together with The Twilight Saga: New Moon. At www.whatdrivesedward.com fans can sign up for the chance of winning two tickets to the movie premiere in L.A. at November 19th. And, of course, Edward Cullen’s car: the new Volvo XC60.

The contest consist of various phases and challenges participants to solve six different puzzles. Once each puzzle is solved, entrants can submit them online and they will receive email notifications once the next phase has begun. In doing so, Volvo involves the fans rather than simply having them leave behind their e-mail address. However, a given fact is that most of the Twilight fans are teenagers and young adults. With campaign, part of a grand product placement deal with Summit Entertainment, Volvo is hoping to reach another target audience through the fans: their mothers:

“Presumably with Twilight being a teen girl franchise, they are hoping that the message might be picked up by moms to use the Volvo to take their adolescent little vampires to soccer practice,” said Lucian James of the brand’s strategy consultancy agency

Source: Brandweek

Looking at the amount of views, the viral video proved to be highly viral. The most viral element of the campaign is the question lots of people have asked themselves: is this video real of fake?
Great seeding achievements.

After the seeding of the campaign on various platforms and blogs, the campaign continued with a large (traditional) media campaign, driving traffic to the action site with outdoor posters, radio commercials and online banners. Offline, the BMX riders promote the campaign with events in which people are able to get their bike checked on descent lightning.

Banner of the campaign on the homepage of Dutch largest social network Hyves.

By using a viral video before the initial start of the traditional campaign, the safety message caught attention, created awareness and most important: it caused brand recall when looking at the outdoor posters. I like it!

Once you go to the YouTube channel the page starts falling apart. Although a decent ad, we have seen this before with Wario from Nintendo.

This week’s Viral Friday #1 position goes to Ken Block’s Trax STI Car. At ViralBlog we are very impressed with the viral videos Ken Block and his team manage to produce; the successful videos promoting Ken, DC Shoes, Subaru, Monster and his other sponsors just keep on coming. The runner up spot is for Google Maps Navigation. Google’s Android is booming, and now Google introduces its own, free, turn-by-turn mobile navigation software. Motorola DROID: Stealth Commercial completes this week’s top 3. Ever since Motorola released its DROID phone through its Droid Does campaign, there has been a lot of buzz about the Google Android 2.0 based smartphone.

Do you want to see this week’s list from 1 to 5? Go on then, and have a look! We’d like to hear your opinion about the virals. Have fun!

Get our ViralBlog asset: the Viral Friday Widget! By default the widget shows you the latest Viral Friday, but it’ll also show you the seven most recent postings on ViralBlog.

1. Ken Block’s Trax STI Car

At ViralBlog we are very impressed with the viral videos Ken Block and his team manage to produce; the successful videos promoting Ken, DC Shoes, Subaru, Monster and his other sponsors just keep on coming. This video is online since last Monday and already earned the top spot for this week with almost 770,000 views. This time the team turned a Subaru Impreza STI into the world’s fastest snow cat, packing 400bhp.
“It combines a two of my favorite things in life: driving a rally car in the snow and snowboarding in the powder in the backcountry.” says Ken. Full specs and the full story at dcshoes.com/auto.

2. Google Maps Navigation

Google’s Android is booming, and now Google introduces its own, free, turn-by-turn mobile navigation software. It is part of Google Maps for mobile and is available for phones with Android 2.0. The above video is a demonstration video showing the most impressive things the application can do. For a detailed report check Gizmodo. So if you do are always in a coverage area you do not have to pay anymore for navigation software (only for your Android 2.0 phone). On YouTube since October 27, the video got over 855,000 views from all over the world.

3. Motorola DROID: Stealth Commercial

And now some more Android. This new commercial about the Motorola DROID is just great! In fact ever since Motorola released its DROID phone through its Droid Does campaign, there has been a lot of buzz about the Google Android 2.0 -based smartphone. This new commercial is a minute-long spot, obtained by Boy Genius Report TV and features jets, falling bomb-like capsules and apparent sentience of Droid. The Motorola DROID will be available starting TODAY for $199.99. The commercial generated almost 290,000 views within 3 days.

4. Eichborn Fliegenbanner

At this year’s Frankfurter Buchmesse, 200 advertising flies attended. The flies were carrying a little banner attached with wax, promoting the publisher Eichborn. This video shows the result. The idea came from communication agency Jung von Matt/Neckar, responding to the publisher’s subtitle: der Verlag mit der Fliege. Though the stunt caused some stir here and there, none of the flies were harmed: the wax melted after a while so the banner fell off by itself. The video generated over 630,000 views since October 20.

5. The Google Story

This video tells (as its title correctly states) the Google Story. A cute animation takes the viewer from BackRub through all the developments Google has achieved in the past 11 years. The video has been posted on YouTube almost a month ago, but did not get picked up until recently. Now, it has 291,523 views. The video is quite fast-paced, agrees Digital Buzz Blog. But that seems appropriate, considering the story of Google is a fast-paced one too. Luckily, a slow motion version is also available on YouTube.

The story of how Frederic the Great turned the ordinary spud from undesirable to something people would break the law for is one of the examples Rory Sutherland, Vice Chairman of the Ogilvy Group, uses to explain how advertising can be beneficial by adding perceived value in our lifes. The potato story is just one of many hilarious anecdotes Mr Sutherland uses to postulate how advertising can improve our lifes.

Whilst this may not be your typical content for Viralblog, the video has ‘only’ 28,000 views and can hardly be called viral, but I do believe this is something everyone in the industry should see. Not only because it’s enormously entertaining, but because it’s full of rich and interesting information and nuggets of wisdom.

Recently Mr Sutherland has been pleading his case for the adoption of behavioural economics in the advertising business. Behavioural economics is a field which has recently enjoyed a lot of attention thanks to best selling books such as Nudge, Predictably Irrational and The Paradox of Choice.

Having read the above mentioned books I can only say I wholeheartedly concur with Sutherland’s notion and would encourage anyone working in the field of communications to start by watching the presentation above, to be followed by getting your old skool paper fix in one of the three mentioned books from Amazon.

Go watch and read. Now!

OfficeMax first launched “Elf Yourself” for the 2006 holidays and has turned the free e-greeting site into an annual holiday tradition returning each season with new bells and whistles for the public to enjoy and spread holiday cheer. In 2007, ElfYourself.com attracted 193 million visits in six weeks to become the most viral initiative on record. A look back at each campaign, the results and lessons learned.

Elf Yourself 1.0 (2006)

OfficeMax hired two marketing agencies, Toy in New York and EVB in San Francisco, in 2006 to come up with fun sites that would help distinguish OfficeMax from its competitors. The agencies created about 20 different Web sites, including nine holiday games and sites to create e-cards. The e-card site “Elf Yourself” proved to be most popular of the multiple sites created.

In the earliest ElfYourself.com version you had the the possibility to turn just one person into a crazy dancing elf. All you had to do was find a photo of yourself (or your partner, boss, enemy, etc), select the facial area in the photo (with help of a web-based tool to scale and rotate your chosen shot) and submit the result. Additional you got the option to record a personal voice message to go with it through a toll-free number. Once completed, you could preview the result or email it to a friend.

Elfyourself.com was an instant success and got 200 unique visitors per second in 2006, with 8 new elves created per second. Elfyourself.com received more traffic in 2006 than popular holiday destinations Hallmark and American Greetings, see graph. On Flickr and Youtube you can still find some Elf Yourself 1.0 examples.

Elf Yourself 2006 Campaign Metrics (five weeks, 12/1/06 to 1/7/07)

• Over 36 million site visits
• Over 11 million elves were created (41,000 per hour at its peak)
• Users spent a combined equivalent of 600 years on the site
• Over 79,000 MySpace hits
• Fastest mover on Alexa Rankings, reaching 267 most visited site
• #2 on Entertainment Weekly “Must List”
• Over 100 User created videos on YouTube
• Over 2 million Google search results

“The campaign exceeded our expectations by tenfold,” said Bob Thacker, OfficeMax senior vice president of marketing and advertising. “It dramatically increased awareness of our brand.” The company is likely to repeat the campaign for the 2008 holiday season, he said.

Elf Yourself 2.0 (2007)

By the second holiday season, ElfYourself.com had become an online holiday destination. This time you could upload a headshot of yourself and three other friends or members of your family, to create a troupe of festively dressed dancing elves. In 2007 after six weeks of being live, the holiday site, ElfYourself.com, attracted a booming number of visitors and hit the bull’s eye of viral success, leaving Subservient Chicken, the Whopper Freakout and Monk-e-Mail all in the dust.

“Elf Yourself” images showed up on Flickr and Photobucket, and user-generated videos were uploaded to YouTube and Vimeo. Fans added ElfYourself.com to Digg, Mixx and StumbleUpon and posted e-greeting tweets on Twitter. The site spread like wildfire across social media and into mainstream culture.

Elf Yourself 2.0

Elf Yourself 2007 Campaign Metrics (11/21/07 to 1/2/08):

• More than 193 million site visits with 123 million elves created
• Average number of ElfYourself movies created per user: approx. 2 movies
• Over 210 million elf dances were viewed
• 60 elves were created per second
• Users spent a combined 2,600 years on the site
• 5,456 blogs posts about ElfYourself (Google Blog Search, 11/07 to 1/08)
• Average time on site: 7.5 minutes
• One in 10 Americans visited ElfYourself.com (Nielsen Online Strategic Services)
• Ranked No. 51 most visited website on the web (HitWise Intelligence, 12/07)
• Top-ranked site in the Humor category, holding the position for the last 3 weeks. (HitWise Intelligence, 1/08)
• Ranked the most popular Entertainment – Humour website visited by Australians and New Zealanders in December 2007 (Hitwise)
• Some 53% of visitors returned to the site
• Ranked No. 1 site on “Movers & Shakers” (Alexa Rankings)
• Ranked among top 1,000 sites in 50 countries (Alexa Rankings, 12/07)
• Three awards wins, including the “Best Word of Mouth Marketing Campaign”, People’s Choice Award for “Best User Defined Experience” and “Best of Show”
• Featured on CNN American Morning, ABC World News Now, Good Morning America, TODAY Show, TNT Sports News, Fox News, NYT BITS Blog, Rosie Chat, & TBS The Daily Flog.
• 63% of participants who shop for office supplies at least 10 times per year were aware of Elf Yourself.
• 95% of those who visited Elf Yourself claimed they would likely visit Elf Yourself again in 2008.
• More than one-third of those who visited Elf Yourself said the site influenced their decision to visit OfficeMax, and about one-third of visitors said the site improved their perception of OfficeMax.

ElfYourself 3.0 (2008)

ElfYourself.com relaunched again in November 2008. OfficeMax partnered with JibJab to add entertaining new features and capabilities. In addition to more elves (up to five photos) and new dances (Classic, Disco, Charleston or Country), the ability to send the personalized video as holiday eCards, do a “QuickPost” to social media sites, or share with friends via a new Facebook application, users could also take their custom elves offline (for small fee) by downloading videos or creating custom photo gifts – playing cards, ornaments, mouse pads and coffee mugs. Consumer anticipation grew as the holidays got closer with thousands of people visiting the site daily according to Quantcast.

Elf Yourself 3.0

ElfYourself 3.0 Campaign Metrics (11/21/08 to 1/9/09)

• Total elves created: 122 million
• Total site visits: 55.5 million
• Average number of ElfYourself movies created per user: 4.5 movies
• Average time on site: 15 minutes
• 14,080 blog posts about ElfYourself (Google Blog Search, 11/08 to 1/09)
• ElfYourself widget was installed more than one million times
• 636,500 YouTube views of user-generated ElfYourself videos
• 7,262 fans of ElfYourself on Facebook
• 1,500 tweets about ElfYourself on Twitter
• 683 photos of ElfYourself on Flickr
• 75 Diggs for ElfYourself.com

OfficeMax 2008 Campaign Goals

• Deeper engagement
• Greater brand association
• Higher user-retention
• Stronger social media presence

ElfYourself 4.0 (2009)

Will OfficeMax revive Elf Yourself yet again for a fourth annual holiday season? Only time will tell, but with holiday spirits at an all-time low during tough times around the world, ElfYourself.com would definitely be a nice addition this season and help us all get in the holiday spirit. Let’s hope for more elfing 4.0 and spreading cheer!

Update: November 5th. As you can see below Elf Yourself will relaunch in about 5 days.

Hints of an Elf Yourself return:

Elf Yourself being filmed in Union Square on November 3rd

OfficeMax.com: “Elf Yourself coming soon”

@ElfYourself Twitter page

OfficeMax replies my question on their Facebook page

Tweet by @OfficeMax with link to a tweetphoto

Website of last year: “Check back next holiday season for more ElfYourself fun!”

Lessons Learned

Elf Yourself phenomenal viral success characteristics:

• Simplicity: make it quick & easy
• Participation: get people involved
• Personalization: let people make it their own
• Unexpected: surprise people
• Humor/Entertainment: evoke an emotion; By making the site enjoyable to use, users flocked to it and spread the word themselves, creating a viral marketing campaign.
• Distribution: use ALL media to tell a story
• Communities: make the consumer your marketer
• Portability: weave your content into their digital life
• Cater to your audience: OfficeMax recognized that while most of its customers use the Internet as an information source, they also appreciate a novel experience. “We gave people something enticing to do, and they spent a long time with us, an average of seven minutes,” said Thacker.
• Experiment: Don’t be afraid to experiment with different sites and strategies. “We tried twenty different holiday sites (in 2006) and saw which ones stuck,” Thacker said.

About OfficeMax
OfficeMax, Inc. is one of the world’s largest B2B and B2C office supply chains. Listed on the New York Stock Exchange (OMX), the chain sells to customers in North America, Europe, Australia, and New Zealand. Its biggest sales season is the annual back-to-school period in its markets. But the chain also sells digital cameras, televisions, and other products that are popular during the holiday season.

Many thanks to Elizabeth Cleveland of Elm PR.

Source: Adweek, PR Newswire, CreativeCow

It’s a live-action short movie (14 minutes long) that is packed with beautiful special effects. Released just a week ago, the video now has over 1 million views on YouTube. Although that is very impressive, there is something else worth noticing.

Recently we come across more and more viral videos that are much longer than the 30 to 60 seconds we usually see. This Assassin’s Creed film is a perfect example. In viral marketing terms this shows there is huge potential for the entertainment industry.

Because of the length of the video, this live-action short makes the potential players and audience connect emotionally with the characters on the game, and that will probably make the chances of them buying the game higher.

Just how big the impact of game, or movie, trailers is can be measured with video metrics technology from our weekly Viral Friday sponsor ViralTracker, who provide companies and brands with a way to measure the reach and response of their online videos.

Continue reading for detailed information, statistics and insights on the video.

The video has been watched almost 3.500.000 times, been commented on 3.600+ times, favored almost 32.000 times and rated 9.000+ times. And all of these in about 1.5 months.

A great reason why this video went viral is the title: 100 GREATEST HITS OF YOUTUBE IN 4 MINUTES. With this title, even though the caption annoys me, viewers get direct insights what to see in this video. 100 greatest of the online video library in only 4 minutes! Gave me a wow-effect (must have been one hell of an edit) and a I-must-see-this-video thought when reading the title.

The video includes all different kind of viral moments. From “RickRoll” till “keyboard cat“, from “commercial virals” till “sneezing pandas” and from “diet coke + mentos” till “Charly bit my finger!“. All of these can be found in this less then four minutes of a roller coaster down internet memory lane.

When checking out the statistics among audiences globally, some funny details are revealed:

The video has been watched most in Russia, Eastern Europe and North America. Most of the videos are from these countries, so these extra views can be explained. However, I do think the lack of views in African countries are odd. Also, the age and gender of the dominant viewer (male between 25 and 54 years old) can have an explanation: most likely, this group has been raised with these videos while the newer generation (the youth between 14 and 24 years old) haven’t touched the videos in the compilation movie that much.

Martini released this 2.51-minute video, which evolves around ‘Martini Moments’. According to brand, Martini Moments are all about feeling good and everything falling into place. The video has this nice summer vibe to it due to the scenes and the music.

The campaign was created by Watson & Lewis:

‘The objective was to remind the audience of Martini and all the brand represents: Italian beauty, enjoying the moment and accessibility of a stylish drink.’

The Martini Moments campaign was developed for the Dutch market and focuses solely on online. So, no television commercial: but YouTube, Facebook and Hyves. These are the pillars of the campaign and fans can easily connect to either one of the social networks through YouTube. Once a member Martini updates them with the latest news and insight offers, such as the chance of attending the official campaign launch party. Hopefully Martini will not stop providing their fans with info and insight at the end of this campaign, but will consider it the start of a long-term relationship.

And in case you were wondering, the song is ‘A night like this’ by Dutch singer Caro Emerald.