Case Study | Shuaism

Have you seen any of Office Max’s new Penny Pranks videos? If you haven’t you really should go and take a look, they’re fun, funny, and well worth the few minutes it takes to watch each one.

If you’ve seen these on tv you might have noticed that instead of sending you to Office Max’s website they tell you to go to their You Tube channel (http://www.youtube.com/PennyPranks) to see more after their quick little outtro about how they’ll take your pennies. When watching them on the You Tube page the videos ask you to visit http://www.OfficeMax.com/Penny which is where it comes full circle to their site where you can find out more about the penny promotions and what’s on sale at Office Max.

In the short time that most of the videos have been on You Tube they have generated a decent amount of views. Collectively they have generated over 3 million views. Even if you take out a decent percentage for people who saw each video you would probably still have well over 2 million voluntary views of these commercials. Unlike television, You Tube viewers are not a mostly captive audience, they have to purposely go there and watch these. So this indicates a desire to watch these commercials.

The Penny Pranks account has some interesting stats if you look in the upper left of their account (or below):
Joined: July 15, 2008
Videos Watched: 104
Subscribers: 7,775
Channel Views: 202,487

One thing you might notice is that all the videos except for 3 have only been on the site for 3 weeks, the other 3 have been there for over a year. This of course required some investigation and after a few minutes on Google I found a press release about the Penny Pranks which shed some light on it:

Hidden-camera videos feature hilarious attempts to purchase goods with ‘nothing but pennies’ to call attention to OfficeMax’s annual Penny Promotions

NAPERVILLE, Ill., Aug. 5 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ — OfficeMax Incorporated (NYSE: OMX), a leader in office products and services, has released new Penny Pranks videos in support of its “Back To School for Pennies” program, featuring a different assortment of school supplies for the cost of just one penny during each week of the back-to-school season. In 2008, the OfficeMax Penny Pranks viral video campaign attracted more than 3 million views on YouTube. Those videos are now joined by seven new videos for 2009, featuring hilarious hidden-camera scenarios where purchases are attempted using “nothing but pennies.”

I don’t remember them showing last year do you? These seem rather well done in their thought and execution and definitely rate high on the creativity scale. Their combination of creative and memorable marketing mixed with a killer deal (school / office supplies for a penny) make it an irresistible combo. So much so that I went down to the Office Max and picked up some penny (and some not quite a penny) supplies for the old home office.

So what do you think? Do you feel like it’s a success? Do you feel like it’s something new, fun and interesting? The only thing I’d like to see Office Max do is take the campaign one step further and have people submit their own Penny Pranks and then have their peers vote on them and the best video would get a $2,000 shopping spree or something like that. I think it’s a great campaign and hope it continues to do well.

What are your thoughts? Do you like it, do you hate it, is there another social media campaign you really like that’s happening right now? Let us know in the comments below.

Thanks for reading,
Josh

There has been A LOT of talk about Motrin lately and their delayed reaction and how they angered people and etc. It’s still a hot topic on Twitter, and honestly I find the whole thing a bit absurd. Not how they depicted Mom’s, but the overzealous reaction to a commercial that was trying to be funny and “hip”. The tone of the commercial, the way it was done was not in a serious manner, it sounded like a cheesy Mother’s Day card sponsored by Motrin.

As the title suggests this is all I’m going to say about it and so to make this quick and dirty I’ll present my ideas with some bullet points and a few links at the end sending you to what other people think about it.

My Thoughts

Can’t help but think that incredibly harsh reactions like this will only scare companies away from social media. They will begin to fear screwing up and be more worried about not offending anyone than trying and learning from their mistakes.
We need to learn to take things a little less serious on the internet. When something is presented by Tetris shaped text and a really lame crazy face animation at the end it’s probably meant to be lighthearted and take with a grain of salt and two Motrin.
The larger the brand the slower they move. With the numbers as low as they are for big brand participation in social media, is it really a surprise they weren’t listening to what the internet had to say?

Now for some links from what other people had to say about the whole deal.

Media Bullseye – Forget Motrin, Take a Deep Breath
Janet Fouts -When Motrin Moms Attack
John Carson – Motrin’s Miserable Monday

And here is where I also debut a new feature on my blog posts. In my ever going crusade to be more of a social media artist I’m going to post links to related articles that I have saved in my Delicious book marks.

Related Delicious bookmarks – Motrin

Questions, comments, thoughts???

Thank you for reading,
Josh “Shua” Peters

Tag Archive: Case Study

Office Max Penny Pranks are comedy (and social media) gold

The only thing you will hear me say about Motrin and Social Media