OfficeMax Analyzes Handwriting Online
OfficeMax is touting its TUL private-label pen brand with tongue-in-cheek handwriting analysis online.
The promotional site TUL.com features a fictitious graphologist (played by satirist Andy Bobrow), who offers absurd interpretations of visitors’ handwriting, then recommends a TUL pen.
Consumers can submit an actual handwriting sample by mailing in a postcard that accompanies TUL print ads in October issues of Wired, InStyle, Esquire and Dwell magazines. Participants give their e-mail address, which they use to retrieve their personal analysis on the site.
Web site visitors write a sentence on paper, then answer six questions about their handwriting sample to trigger a witty analysis from Bobrow’s “Dr. Ackerman,” who’s dressed in a white doctor’s coat.
“Online marketing is driving new levels of interaction with potential OfficeMax customers,” said OfficeMax Executive VP-Chief Merchandising Officer Ryan Vero in a statement. “As consumers laugh at Dr. Ackerman’s graphological insights, they’ll be inadvertently discovering the personality of the TUL brand itself.”
OfficeMax will give away 300,000 pens through sampling flights in nightclubs, restaurants, hotels and office buildings in Los Angeles, Chicago, Miami and San Francisco. DDB Chicago handles DDB Chicago handles the site; Innova Marketing, Minneapolis, handles sampling through Oct, 15.
Naperville, IL-based OfficeMax launched TUL in September, its first-ever private-label brand designed from scratch. Design firm Gravity Tank, Chicago, handled the line of pens and dry-erase markers.
The online jest follows an ambitious back-to-school campaign: OfficeMax and ABC Family made a one-hour film of the midsummer prank they pulled on middle-school students who were given a wacky test to show they were ready for high school. Singer Jesse McCartney pitched in, giving a surprise concert in the middle-school gym once the ruse was revealed (PROMO Xtra, Aug. 22, 2006). DDB Chicago handled that campaign as well.
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