Office Max kicked off the 2006 holiday season with ElfYourself.com, a viral site created by Toy New York where users could transform pictures of themselves into singing, dancing elves. The site didn't bombard users with the Office Max brand. The site created 11 million elves between Nov. 27 and Dec. 31, more than 41,000 elves an hour at its peak, says Toy New York co-founder Ann Bologna.

An ElfYourself creation

The campaign probably didn't make people rush out for stocking stuffers of hanging files and printer ink. On the other hand, traffic to OfficeMax.com increased 20 percent over the previous holiday season, even though the only link was a small tab in the corner of the ElfYourself window.

"They would have considered a 6 percent increase good, so 20 percent was a phenomenal success," Bologna said.

Meanwhile, she adds, a certain social networking site recently called Toy New York about a marketing campaign. Why? Because the executives had spent three hours one work day on ElfYourself.