Office Shenanigans: The Wanamaker Ghost

The Wanamaker Building is a historic Philadelphia landmark: the building’s pipe organ (still played to this day) was used at the St. Louis World’s Fair, and its annual Christmas Light Show features over 100K lights and an audio track narrated by Julie Andrews herself. Such a storied building would have to hide a ghost story or two…especially after I manufactured one.

The Wanamaker Building elevator banks allow people to take out ads through the Captivate Network for the perfectly reasonable sum of $65 a day. I spent over 7 years riding those elevators up and down, and always wondered whether people paid any attention to those ads. So I constructed an experiment to see if I could get people to pay attention to those elevator ads, as an in-office April Fool’s Day prank.

Part 1: The Wanamaker Ghost Hunting Society

All day on April Fool’s Day, the Wanamaker Building elevators asked people to join the (Unofficial) Wanamaker Ghost Hunting Society by going to WanamakerGhost.com.

Once building residents made it to the site, they were treated with fake security cam footage from four different cameras positioned around the office, showing highly professional and indisputable proof that the Wanamaker Building was haunted. This video showing an apparition grabbing a soda from the office refrigerator is my personal favorite proof that ghosts are real, although I highly suggest watching the full series.

Particularly curious prospective ghost hunters would learn that nothing untoward happened to the founding members of the Society, and that membership was closed due to overwhelming interest. It’s important to note that everything was fine.

Part 2: An April Fool’s Day Flop
The groundwork was laid, and the elevator ad went live on April 1st without a hitch. After spending approximately 10 minutes riding the same elevator, I determined that Captivate’s ad rotation for the day meant my elevator ad was set to a variable rotation rate, with appearances averaging out at about once every 3 minutes. I may have encountered our CEO during one of those trips…she was more than a little taken aback by my explanation of what I was doing, to say the least.

Since a trip from the lobby to our offices took about 30 seconds, there was something around an 8% chance a given coworker would see part of the ad on any given trip — not the best of odds, but assuming the average coworker would take 3 elevator trips, ballpark odds would put a given employee’s chances of seeing the ad at ~25%. With hundreds of coworkers as potential victims, those are respectable reach numbers!

Only one problem: nobody came.

During the first day of my Wanamaker Ghost campaign, 43 people checked out the site…but the vast majority did so in response to a Facebook post revealing my chicanery, after the last of my coworkers called it a night and went home. After accounting for a few members of the Social team who were read into the scam, we were looking at 7 or 8 coworkers who were curious enough to check things out.

I do owe a shout-out to the visitor from the Department of Housing and Urban Development, though— I didn’t know we shared buildings until running this campaign, but really appreciated your support. You delivered some of the best engagement we saw all day.

Part 3: Life After Un-Death
So, the Wanamaker Ghost ad campaign was a flop. Did that mean the idea was bad? No, not really. Remember that Facebook post I mentioned? Over the next few days, it got considerably more engagement than the prank itself.

What’s more, once I started telling my coworkers what they missed, the views came pouring in. The video of the elevator ad has been viewed 96 times at the time of this posting. The security cam footage did even better, with each unlisted video bringing in between 100–200 views. The first video showed a particularly good half-life, wasting over 2 hours of peoples’ time in the past year.

I no longer live in Philadelphia, but like to imagine that I haven’t entirely left the city, through my ghostly legacy.

A Few Lessons That Haunt Me Still
It’s easy to write off the Wanamaker Ghost experiment as an abysmal failure…and yet, I consider it one of my greatest successes, both critically and from the metrics perspective.

• Some Things Were Meant to Be Experienced Vicariously
  Sure, practically no one responded to the elevator ad when it happened…but the story of what people could have experienced sparked the imaginations of friends and coworkers. If the number of people who claim to have found the website unassisted actually did, the Wanamaker Ghost site would have seen double the visits it actually did. The story of the Wanamaker Ghost Hunting Society is better than the actual experience of it…and so, people write themselves into it.
• When In Doubt, Test It Out
  I always wondered whether people paid attention to office elevator ads…but until I tested it myself, I’d have no way of knowing. Since running that test ad, the company took out an in-office ad of their own, although I’m sworn to secrecy on its context. I went in with no clue what to expect: they went in, armed with metrics and experience to back up the decision.
• Fake Security Cam Footage is Surprisingly Fun to Fake
  When I went in over the weekend to film my fake footage, I had a grand old time running around the office and looking like an idiot, hoping none of my coworkers had urgent projects that would lure them in for some off-hours work that would spoil my April Fool’s Day surprise.

Just look at that bespectacled ghost, reading a book in the cafe! Can you think of a better way to spend the weekend?

…no, seriously — can you? I’m open to recommendations.

Last time on Office Shenanigans: Michael writes a resume for a very good (and accomplished) puppy