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Kiran Aditham
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Kiran Aditham is a Business Management grad from the University of Central Florida, Aditham earned his stripes as a freelance writer in music/arts publishing.

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OfficeMax Invites Consumers to Go Elf Themselves

Written on
December 8th 2006
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by Kiran Aditham  |
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But how did a small agency lure such a major brand? It turns out that Toy President Anne Bologna was once a colleague of OfficeMax VP of Marketing and Advertising Bob Thacker at BBDO. “They were on each other’s radar and had some awareness going on,” Gignac explains. “Bob Thacker was one of the people responsible for making Target what it is today. So, they are very creative clients, which makes them great partners because they have a vision and they’re willing to take risks because they know what it takes for brands to get noticed just from being on the agency side so long.”

While the other obvious challenge was erasing stereotypes about the OfficeMax shopping experience, there were budget limitations to contend with as well. “We didn’t have much a budget and we were like, ‘how do we make the most impact with this money?’ We figured the best way to do that was to try to take the money they would’ve spent on media and put it all into production.”

With such a lofty campaign to implement, Toy, who concocted all the concepts in-house, used its minimal budget to lure not one or two, but 8 different boutiques—EVB, Grow Interactive, Hello Design, Mindflood, Struck, Templar Studios, The Vacuum Design, WDDG—to help with the creative and ultimately finish the job. “We figured that one interactive company probably couldn’t handle all 20,” Gignac admits. “So we had to split it up a little bit. We tried to use all small interactive agencies like ourselves, people that would do just a killer job and put their all into these sites.”

The end result is one that provides plenty of entertaining ways to pass the time away during this busy holiday season. But in the end, the ElfYourself campaign ultimately proves that OfficeMax isn’t just your average paper store. “To get people to make the connection to shop at an Office Supply store is a pretty big leap for the holidays,” Gignac says. “So we figured our first task was how we get people to connect OfficeMax with the holidays. They actually have some really cool holiday products, whether it’s MP3 players, digital cameras or speaker systems. They have this cool videogame chair that has the speakers in the head. It’s the stuff you wouldn’t expect.”

While the metrics weren’t reported in terms of send-to-a-friends and site traffic, the Elfyourself campaign, which will run through the holidays, did get a good initial nudge from Thacker and the higher-ups at OfficeMax. “We have the benefit also of OfficeMax sending it to roughly 35,000-40,000 of its employees,” says Gignac. “It was a nice kickstart to getting the word out there.”

Gignac believes the campaign somewhat sets a precedent. “We think this is something as far as we know that hasn’t really been done before. Most sites you see for any campaign is less than a handful, so why not do the biggest, craziest thing ever?”

Take the sleigh ride yourself to see just how crazy and big it is at ElfYourself.com.



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