Created as part of the back-to-school campaign for Taubman's upscale shopping centers, YearbookYourself.com allowed users to upload a photo of themselves and be morphed into yearbook photos from the 50’s, 60’s, 70’s, 80’s and 90’s. —All while learning about the fashions available at their nearest mall.
Total number of visitors: 27 million+
Avg time spent on site: 10 minutes, 38 seconds
YearbookYourself earned unpaid coverage on more than 45,000 media channels, including USA Today, Tech Crunch, ESPN, VH1’s Best Week Ever, and Late Night with Jimmy Fallon.
As celebs like Lance Armstrong, Scarlett Johansson and Twitter founder Evan Williams (who used his YearbookYourself’ed pic as his profile for months) discovered and embraced it, the site went viral.
YearbookYourself was awarded three Webby Awards (in 2009 and 2010) as well as the 2010 Adweek Buzz Award in the online category.
It was eventually sold to yearbook producer Jostens and is no longer active. See how it worked in the video below.
FUN FACT: I “borrowed” the yearbooks out of the library from the high school where my husband was a teacher, then spent hours and hours scanning the most iconic hairstyles. And that means, instead of needing a bajillion-dollar photoshoot, we spent nada.