OfficeMax Partners with JibJab to Bring Internet Sensation 'ElfYourself' Back for 2008 Holiday Season
Partnership Gives Pop Culture Holiday Tradition Boost in Functionality and User Experience
NAPERVILLE, Ill., Nov. 17 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- OfficeMax(R)
Incorporated (NYSE: OMX), a leader in office products and services, and JibJab
Media Inc., a leading innovator in online entertainment, today announced a
partnership that brings OfficeMax's smash hit campaign, ElfYourself.com
(http://www.elfyourself.com/), back to the web for a third annual holiday
season of spreading cheer.
OfficeMax and JibJab, best known for online political parodies such as
'This Land', began conversations following the 2007 holiday season when the
companies scored the number one and number two positions respectively for
fastest growing sites on the web, according to comScore. Over six weeks during
the 2007 holiday season, ElfYourself received more than 193 million site
visits, and more Americans were visiting ElfYourself.com
(http://www.elfyourself.com/) than Facebook.com (http://www.facebook.com/),
according to web measurement firm Quantcast.
ElfYourself enables users to create free personalized holiday eCards by
uploading their photos and transforming themselves, family and friends into
dancing elves. OfficeMax and JibJab have jointly enhanced the ElfYourself
experience by increasing the number of elves a visitor can create, from four
to five, as well as offering three new dances including a disco dance, country
dance and the Charleston.
"Over the past two holiday seasons, the elves have become not just a
holiday tradition but a popular culture phenomenon that we hope generations
will enjoy for years to come," said Bob Thacker, senior vice president of
advertising and marketing for OfficeMax. "This season, we're thrilled to offer
consumers more digital capabilities to spread holiday cheer with our beloved
elves."
This year ElfYourself will be running on JibJab's Starring You(R)
Technology platform that not only enables users to create personalized online
videos, but also get their personalized elves printed on greeting cards and
holiday gifts such as ornaments, mouse pads, coffee mugs, and playing cards.
For a small fee, users can also get a downloadable version of their video that
they can watch offline, burn to a DVD or watch on their mobile devices.
"OfficeMax's ElfYourself is the most successful viral marketing campaign
in history," said JibJab's co-founder and CEO, Gregg Spiridellis. "We're
thrilled to be partners with OfficeMax and bring our unique creative
capabilities and technology platform to their ground breaking ElfYourself
campaign."
About OfficeMax
OfficeMax Incorporated (NYSE: OMX) is a leader in both
business-to- business office products solutions and retail office products.
The OfficeMax mission is simple. We help our customers do their best work. The
company provides office supplies and paper, in-store print and document
services through OfficeMax ImPress(R), technology products and solutions, and
furniture to consumers and to large, medium and small businesses. OfficeMax
customers are served by more than 30,000 associates through direct sales,
catalogs, e-commerce and more than 1,000 stores. To find the nearest
OfficeMax, call 1-877-OFFICEMAX. For more information, visit
http://www.officemax.com/.
About JibJab
JibJab helps people share laughs. From viral political videos like "This
Land" to Sendables(R) eCards and personalized Starring You!(R) products,
JibJab's artists, technologists and business people are on a mission to make
the web a funnier place. A hundred years ago, entrepreneurs revolutionized
the entertainment industry with film. Today, at JibJab, we're doing it with
computers. For more info, go to JibJab.com/about.
OfficeMax Media Contacts JibJab Media Contact
Bill Bonner Jennifer Rook Joey Infortuno
630 864 6066 630 864 6057 310-314-4375