When a TV show works hard to truly impersonate reality, it's only natural that they would make an effort to break down the wall between entertainment and real life.
One of the reasons why NBC's The Office is so popular is that, while exaggerated, most people who have worked in an office can draw parallels between Dwights and Angelas on the screen and Dwights and Angelas in their own workplaces. It is essentially a live action Dilbert strip, and it rings true.
I am pleased to say that The Office has a vivid digtal life thanks to two sites, DunderMifflin.com and DunderMifflinInfinity.com.
Let's start with the brochureware site, DunderMifflin.com. Like all such sites, DunderMifflin.com is frighteningly boring and insular. take a look:
The copy is splendidly mediocre. It reminds me of that Friends episode where Kathleen Turner played Chandler's father, who was a female impersonator. A woman playing a man playing a woman. The copywriter who wrote DunderMifflin.com must be a good writer to write mediocre copy so well. If that makes any sense.
Browse around this site and see how viral is done. It's not at all over the top -- rather it is executed just as a second rate paper distributor would create a website.
Now let's move on to DunderMifflinInfinity.com,the Intranet for Dunder Mifflin. If you don't watch the show, Infinity was the brainchild of one of the main characters on the show. For this Office marketing site, Infinity serves as a rich and vibrant fan community where people can do the same sorts of things they might on a MySpace, but with a distinctly Officey flavor. The site also offers weekly tasks, like a contest to define the best company mission statement.
So, why join a narrow community like this? Well, because The Office is the Office, perhaps the best slice of TV available today. Who wouldn't want to talk to others who know the magic of Schrute Bucks?
This is a passionate community. Check out some of these UGC videos in support of new "branches of Dunder Mifflin:
Now that's community!
Thanks for reading, and don't forget to write.
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