• by Aaron Baar , November 30, 2010

Leave it to OfficeMax, the office products retailer behind the wildly, virally popular "Elf Yourself" holiday promotion, to come up with another holiday time-waster sure to get a load of traffic this season.

"We wanted to come up with a cool app experience that could be linked to a specific product or service," Jeff Haddon, mobile team lead for OfficeMax, tells Marketing Daily. "We do a fair number of campaigns throughout the year that are loosely related to what we do, but we thought this was a good way to bring them together."

The Naperville, Ill. retailer has introduced Holiday Party Bingo, an iPhone application that works in conjunction with a Facebook app. On Facebook, people are asked to create their own bingo game with categories ranging from "Last Man Standing" and "Most Elftastic" to "Appetizer King" and "World's Wildest Dancer." Players can then make predictions about their own holiday party by nominating friends or coworkers in those different categories.

The corresponding app (which is obtained through a special Facebook code) gives players the ability to view their board live during the event, as well as take uploaded photos of the party to Facebook. After the party, players have the opportunity to order a 2011 calendar (through OfficeMax ImPress).

The idea evolved jointly through the company and direct and digital interactive agency Rosetta, which had originally conceived of an iPhone app only. But as the idea developed, "we felt it looked like a Facebook app as well," Haddon says.

The Facebook component will also help the application spread virally -- particularly as OfficeMax has so many different promotional campaigns running during the holiday season, Haddon says. (In addition to the Bingo game, OfficeMax is once again keeping its ElfYourself.com site live during the holiday season. The retailer has also created a separate Facebook Application, "Elfmas Town," where users can play holiday games, earn points and exchange them for promotional items at OfficeMax.)

"We have so many different promotions now, [determining] who gets the limelight is challenging," he says, noting the Bingo app will rely on OfficeMax home page traffic and viral media to spread among consumers. "That has been an effective way to spread these things around. With Facebook, that virality is much easier."