Ever wanted to look like an Elf and dance around in your own little elf music video? You could buy an elf costume and recruit your friends to film you dancing around town like a fool, or you could just ElfYourself in a holiday-themed OfficeMax social media marketing campaign. The end result is certainly hilarious—I laughed for an eternity —but what’s the payoff for OfficeMax?

What’s the Point?

Why did OfficeMax go to all the trouble of creating ElfYourself when the campaign itself doesn’t seem to be selling anything related to office supplies or targeting the enterprise office supply gatekeepers? Yes, you can buy and/or download the custom movie for $4.99 or buy mugs and other memorabilia with your elf-self, but I doubt that’s going to result in big holiday business for OfficeMax.

With all the social options made available to ElfYourself creators, is OfficeMax simply trying to increase brand awareness and make us laugh, combining positive brand associations with the viral nature of the web? That could be it, it’s certainly a lower cost, more personalized alternative than an ad buy on a large television network. It’s also positioned to be seen by a larger audience if the gimmicky social media marketing initiative wins the hearts and minds of the web savvy and attention-loving Me Generation.

As a participant in online memes, I love it. As a consumer and holiday shopper, I’m not sure what to think of the whole thing. It certainly seems to be the wrong type of word-of-mouth marketing for a company like OfficeMax. It’s not like I’m telling all my friends and readers that OfficeMax is the place to satisfy the office supply whore in you.

So I’m puzzled.

Maybe at the end of the day they just want want my email address so they can market to me later? What do you think? What does OfficeMax get out of this equation?

I do make one fine little dancing elf though.

–

Jennifer,

I have been reading your blog and I really enjoy your articles, and that is why I am writing you. We have recently launched a self marketing webesite that is free for users in the sales and service industry.

Have you ever needed that perfect some one for a certain job and didn’t know where to start looking for them? You may ask around, but if no one can refer you to someone then you usually end up opening up the phonebook or going online, you end up just looking at lists and lists of businesses. How do you choose that Insurance guy or that Realtor? Throw darts at your computer? Choose a cool sounding name? This is where MyCityFaces.com comes in!

MyCityFaces.com is a service industry networking and advertising site allowing people to post profiles for free, offering products they sell or a service they perform by including photos, videos, contact info and an about me section. It also allows consumers to go to their local city, choose a category, and peruse the profiles and find someone that is qualified and understands their wants and desires.

MyCityFaces.com was started out of the need for everyday people to advertise themselves in a personable and professional manner, and for others to find the right person for everyday needs. To help, we’ve built the premier Web service for bringing people together…Face to Face!

This fresh approach has not been over done, chewed up and spit out!. We are not another business networking site or a traditional directory site, we are the must “have a profile” self advertising site on the Internet today! Think of us as LinkedIn meets Myspace. We feel the service industry is often ignored and people resort to advertising themselves on social networking sites, which is not the most professional medium, and often obscures that line between business and personal. On MyCityFaces.com people can in a respectable and classy adult way, have a profile, tell about what they do, recommend others on the site and post photos, coupons, and videos. Think of it as an Internet billboard and an electronic business card. MyCityFaces.com will replace the “other” sites as the premier service industry advertising site!

Today there are tens of thousands of people in any city in any given occupation, we bring a personable side to finding that Handy Man, or that new Hairstylists. Finally a way to test drive before you call!

MyCityFaces.com is for the individual people to advertise themselves, we focus on the people that make up a business first! You can go to the site and find a hairstylists that fits your needs and you can learn a little about them before you schedule that appt. You can see what there qualifications are or just find out if you are going to see eye to eye with them. What if you are the conservative type or want a funky style you would get a lot of info from their profile. Also how many times have you found that perfect stylists only to find out they left the salon and you have no way of contacting them, and since the salon they were just at wont tell you where they went you can now return to their updated profile. They can keep a profile on mycityfaces.com and just update it with the new salons name. The same goes with any service.

By creating a profile with photos of you, your product, your place of business, and offering coupons, discounts, an about me section and even video, you become a real person to someone looking for your service. It’s more than just a name on an ever growing list.

While we are new to the San Diego market, I think your readers would benefit highly from this free self advertising platform in this challenging economy.

Check out http://phoenix.mycityfaces.com for an example city.

The perks of having Jason wear your shirt include:

• The price – it’s a pretty cheap price to pay for the exposure he’s offering online and off
• Daily video on YouTube and Ustream
• Daily photos on the blog and Flickr
• Daily posts on the blog and Twitter
• Company logo on the calendar

When I discovered the site (iwearyourshirt started following me on Twitter), I was so impressed by the ingenuity of the idea that I asked Jason Sadler, the man behind the shirt, to chat with me via Skype so I could get the real scoop.

Here’s what I found out…

Jason’s been working in the web space for 10 years, and he has hands-on experience with social media and various online marketing initiatives. The iwearyourshirt idea came to him at the end of the October, he got the website up a week later, and started promoting his idea via Facebook, Twitter, and email. Just a few short weeks later, Jason’s garnered a ton of interest with all of January and February already sold out, and widely celebrated days like New Year’s Eve and Valentine’s Day selling out as well.

I asked Jason how he planned to provide the same quantity and quality of exposure for each t-shirt purchaser given that some days are more inherent to exposure than others. Jason says that he doesn’t expect any forseable obstacles to making sure each t-shirt is promoted both online and off; he’s fully prepared to livestream everything from his everyday activities to family gatherings and opening presents on Christmas day.

Jason isn’t alone in his ground breaking marketing initiative, there’s also Girl in Your Shirt who was covered by TechCrunch and certainly has the cute girl factor working in her favor. But Jason seems pretty confidant that he’s got a large enough network to compete, and he asserts that he’s no copycat—iwearyourshirt was launched before Girl in Your Shirt. Something tells me that both entreprenuers will do just fine. Given our economy, there’s a huge opportunity for startups and small businesses to reach a broad audience at a super cheap price.

I’d really love to hear your thoughts on this. Are you considering using Jason’s upper half to promote your business? What day would you buy and why? Personally, I’m contemplating purchasing my birthday and forcing Jason to wear one of my tiny sleeveless @jbruin tees, but that would just be cruel.

Malone and Marashlian, a part from being likable and incredibly hilarious (check out their Halloween costumes), are living and breathing the core of community building by making themselves entirely available to the users of their product. Their using Ustream.tv to broadcast live daily from their offices in Sorrento Valley. Got a question, problem, or just want to maximize your usage of their software? Just ping Troy during business hours on PeloTV and he’ll not only answer your question, but he’ll show you how to do it yourself using WebcamMax, a super awesome camera utility that allows you to switch to a view of your desktop (I found a neat alternative for the Mac called CamTwist), to visually walk you through the step by step process of your inquiry. It’s customer service meets community building using the best of social media, and I absolutely love it.

I was surprised to find such innovation so close to home, but it turns out that Malone and Marashlian haven’t always been so savvy. In fact, Malone’s old school marketing and PR approach led him to Marshal Kirkpatrick, a New Media Consultant and Lead Writer for ReadWriteWeb. Malone emailed a plethora of bloggers with a press release looking for web coverage only to find that his approach was fruitless and flawed. Kirkpatrick was the only blogger to respond, and Malone decided that he’d rather have Kirkpatrick’s help as consultant than a single blog post. Obviously Malone’s decision has paid off. He’s making innovative strides and thinking like a savvy web entrepreneur.

I give him huge kudos for trying something new and not being afraid of taking risks. Did I mention that in the process of switching to this “new” marketing approach they totally eliminated their marketing budget that was thousands of dollars per month? Small business owners, are you paying attention? Let’s just hope that Pelotonics can scale their customer service efforts with their growth. Good luck guys!

…automatically identify any uploaded video clips from a number of shows produced by MTV Networks (including my personal favorite “The Daily Show”), and will display an overlay when the clip is played that shows which episode the clip originally came from, its original air-date, and links to online stores where users can buy the entire episode.

and…

Auditude can fingerprint a portion of a video that is only a few seconds long and identify which show it was originally taken from. Once the clip is identified Auditude will overlay an ad within the video, allowing publishers to monetize their content even when it was uploaded by someone without permission and without any legible tagging information.

Why it Matters

MySpace, via Auditude, is acting as the legal mediator between all of us who uploaded licensed content and the usually stodgy network types, like MTV (and most likely other networks that follow suit). Essentially it’s a win for everyone involved. The user gets to upload their content without fear of having it removed, the network gets an ad placemant, MySpace gets a cut, and suddenly a format for monetization of online video becomes tangible.