In June, online retailer and shoe extraordinaire, Zappos, launched a campaign that it calls #ImNotABox. Each pair of shoes ordered would be shipped in a box full of fun activities. With a pair of scissors, Zappos customers are encouraged to cut out the various activities included inside the box to account for hours of family-friendly fun.

Screenshot from Target Marketing's #ImNotABox video.

packagePRINTING reached out to Joanna Hass from Zappos' PR team to find out where the idea for this campaign came from and how it came to life. Hass explained that Zappos set forth to design something that would allow them to engage with customers in a fun and creative way after the shoe order had been placed and it arrived on the customer's doorstep.

"[That goal] led us to this design where we are able to provide customers with a number of both fun and practical ways to re-purpose our once-ordinary cardboard box … something that we all have lying around in today's online shopping world," Hass writes in an email. 

Hass says that the idea started as a company-wide competition to brainstorm ideas that would help Zappos move forward. She says that was when Zappos started "seeing our customers from the eyes of our Zappos box."

Although Zappos does not have an in-house printing arm, it does have an in-house experiential campaign team, THINK, which was responsible for the box design. The company's Art Director and Senior Designer Derrin Hawkins designed the box with the THINK team, drawing inspiration from the Zappos #ImNotABox campaign motto:

Inspiring people to see not just the Zappos box, but also themselves and the world with a new perspective.

Hass says that the campaign will continue indefinitely.

"We feel that this idea shouldn't stop with our Zappos brand." she says. "We instead hope that it inspires and empowers everyone in both the business and human-to-human world."  

One thing is for certain, Zappos has managed to take "just" a box and turn it into something more; something people can interact with and bond over.

packagePRINTING's sister brand Target Marketing also covered this campaign from a marketing standpoint.

For more info, visit the #ImNotABox website, or take a break and watch this heartwarming video from Zappos.