OfficeMax project ElfYourself became the hottest Christmas website during for the second year in a row. Simple idea to make people upload their picture and place into dancing elf body made site the most successful phenomenon in 2006 and 2007. According to Ryan Vero, OfficeMax vice president, company wasn’t expecting such a big exposure of the project.

Julian from Sacramento, CA made the best ElfYourself video for YouTube.

He used a program called iShowU for the Mac to capture his elf video.

  Viral success came to ElfYourself through word of mouth, blogosphere, and social networks like FaceBook, MySpace, Digg, Flickr. Later it was picked by major media agencies and press:

•  CNN: OfficeMax’s ElfYourself.com is One of the Hottest Holiday Web…
•  USA Today: Interactive campaigns build buzz with fun. 
•  Yahoo News: WEBSITE OF THE DAY - elfyourself.com

   In December 2007 OfficeMax reported that more than 65 million visitors created 41 millions elfs. ElfYourself again became Alexa Mover and Shaker keeping other holiday sites way behind.

   What web marketers should learn from ElfYourself: 

1. OfficeMax created the most adorable and funny website which simply attract people.
2. Everything made simple to upload picture, place into elf body, enjoy preview, and share with friends.
3. Registration, payment, annoying ads simply skipped.
4. Website was perfectly designed, it doesn’t show any visible bugs in the system.
5. ElfYourself is not the only one website like this OfficeMax created. Scroogeyourself, was less popular than ElfYourself. It shows that creators was trying multiple ideas before succeed.

Me and my girlfriend as elfs. Click to see our ElfYourself.