We’ve been involved in some pretty interesting and crazy research over the years, but when sifting through some old work files the other day we came across notes and screenshots from a project we did for Claus Enterprises—yup the one and only—headquartered at the North Pole.
Clause Enterprises had purchased a small elf company to help augment their gift wrapping division, and the Elves from the new business had immediately raised concerns with Elven Resources about Santa.
Sure, he’s the big guy, but the way he was treating the elves was starting to push the friendship. They were complaining that Santa had increasingly made Christmas all about him, when they were the ones that ran around and did all the hard work.
So, Claus Enterprises got in touch with us asking for a ‘day in the life’ of some of the elves. They wanted to share the elves’ stories and do a marketing campaign aiming to re-ignite the prominence of elves within Christmas.
As all good UX researchers know, you need to go to the edges of a profile to get the gold, so we sought out a good mix of happy elves vs. dissatisfied elves; those that loved Santa, and those that hated him…
We asked them to submit a digital photo diary via SMS, documenting a ‘day in the life of’ their workplace experiences with Santa in the hectic pre-Christmas period.
This is one of the diaries from a pretty dissatisfied elf. We don't think she lasted long at Claus Enterprises after this… It’s kinda funny to read, but highlights many of the key issues the project helped identify. Before this we had no idea how dysfunctional the whole operation was. Enjoy!
