For the second year in a row, OfficeMax in the US launched an incredibly successful online viral site called ElfYourself during Christmas. Essentially, the site asks you to “spoof” yourself or others by uploading a headshot pic as the head of a silly dancing elf. At its peak, the site generated an average of 41,000 elves per hour or 11 elves per second (from Promo Magazine).

Not surprisingly, the site even created buzz in China where “spoofing” (i.e. e-gao/恶搞) is practically a sport for netizens. As we see this month's IWOM watch, netizens spoofing in China can lead to both positive and negative images for brands. Brands in China who can follow OfficeMax’s lead and come up with campaigns that make the brand a platform to incentivize and tap into netizens creativity and funnel it towards positive spoofing will have a great opportunity for campaigns with similar success.

Sample Quote
真好玩,笑死偶也,太有意思了
The site is really funny and interesting. (link)
是一个可以恶搞的东东，把自己的照片换上，会看到让人喷饭的效果.
The site can spoof someone by yourself. It will be funny if you put your photo on it. (link)

Summary
For Christmas day, many receive greetings and wishes from relatives and friends via phone calls, email, and SMS. In addition to these formats, Elfyourself provides a very funny and unique format to give you an opportunity to make a special wish. You can upload anyone’s photos, make a funny dancing image with his/her portrait, and send to your friends.

CIC View
Spoofing has been a part of net culture for sometime in China. We can see that netizens also enjoy spoofing brand content such as TVC and ads (see example here). In some cases, this really hurt the brand image. But from consumer side, spoofing can also have a more positive effect. It plays a role to bring fun and happiness to others close to a relationship with the brand. Spoofing has potential to be an effective method to engage consumer into campaigns more proactively.

Below is a screen shot of the index for the full IWOM watch report

Other CIC IWOM Watch related posts that may be of interest:

-CIC Watch Half-Year Review released (download the full report)
-CIC watch: "You" - Time's Person of the Year - also lives in China (download the full repor