Digital Stuffing

Macy’s have pulled together a whole load of digital tools for this Christmas, with the Macy’s Believe Site

First you have the opportunity to Be Claus (I’m guessing it was called Claus Yourself at some point), loading up your picture and putting on the beard, hat and Christmassy jingle – then embed the lot. (I’d embed, but it seems not to work on here)

Be Claus from Macy's (screenshot from site)

There’s a Post Office, where you can download letter-headed paper to write your letter to Clause to make sure he know what you want this year. For each letter received, they are going to donate $to the Make-a-wish foundation (up to $1million)

Then you have the story of Virginia’s letter, an epistle from an 8 year old girl in 1897 who wrote to the New York Sun as she trusted the press enough to tell her the truth about whether Santa Claus existed. The Sun answered, bu not directly, doing its best to keep her hopeful whilst not telling an outright lie!

They’ve also got a pretty good supporting download site, where you can grab a lot of content for your blog post, like the letter to the Sun, banner ads, or this commercial

Click to play

Virginia letter to the Sun about Santa Claus (from Macy's download site)

I like the whole package here, there’s a lot of stuff and a lot of assets to grab and in effect advertise Macy’s. But there seems to be little in it for the average blogger, little incentive except the Be Claus tool. Why should I put banner ads on my site – do I get a revenue share? Not quite, but if I’m on the list of bloggers identified by the outreach team (You Cast Corp, the Social Media company that is doing the connections and hosting the assets) I could get a $20 dollar gift voucher, according to the email posted by Dave at Intuitive Life. Dave praises the email sent, as at least there’s been some thought into the email, some personalisation. I agree, there’s a good balance here between form letter and personalisation, a good balance of effort and efficiency.