For brands to get the most value from brand experiences, those experiences must be truly extraordinary. Meaning, they must offer something that is memorable and outside of the range of normal. They must shatter consumer complacency and demand to be noticed. Otherwise, they’re not experiences at all; they’re more like advertising. The “Boxed Out” activation was designed so shoppers and media could feel the consequences of Amazon on independent booksellers, on local jobs and on local communities. It was an experience, yes. But it was also a local protest that enabled consumers to voice their opinion with each book purchased.

The American Booksellers Association, a national not-for-profit organization, asked us to help save their 1,800 dying independent bookstores. While Covid was expediting their demise, Amazon had long been stealing sales through predatory pricing, government lobbying and anti-competitive practices, priming indies for disaster. With the holiday season looming, the ABA was desperate to drive traffic and sales. By October, 1 out of every 4 independent bookstores was in danger of closing before years end. The ABA only had a budget of $33 per store, but asked us to help bring attention to the issue. Oh, and sell some books. How could we urge consumers to shop local? How could we convince people to turn away from convenience even if it meant paying more? How could we educate people on the importance of local bookstores to community jobs and taxes? Could we save these stores before it was too late?

Instead of creating a simple holiday ad campaign, we decided to hijack Amazon’s biggest shopping day, Prime Day. At the center of the idea was a symbol to capture the depth of the problem: the Amazon box with its insidious smile that had become ubiquitous on porches and lobbies but was “boxing out” bookstores and other small businesses across the country. We wanted to make it so that anytime anyone saw an Amazon box, they’d think of a bookstore in trouble. So we covered indie storefront windows, awnings and sidewalks with what looked like Amazon boxes featuring anti-Amazon headlines, like “Buy Books From People Who Want To Sell Books, Not Colonize the Moon.” The headlines dramatized the tension and advanced the indie ideology of taste and experience over convenience. We also used book displays to dial up the subcultural ‘bookworm’ voice: smart, funny, knowledgeable with the occasional dose of sarcasm.

We believed there was an opportunity for independent booksellers to generate mass awareness through organic social sharing and earned media by presenting an ideological challenge to Amazon. We wanted to cast bookstores into a David vs Goliath drama, against one of the biggest villains of our time. We framed our strategy to respond to people’s collective desires for a counterpoint to the business and politics of billionaire Jeff Bezos (while never calling him out by name). The creative brief positioned indie bookstore’s benefits - community, curation and experience - as more than just tactical advantages but as a powerful way for the local communities to voice their resistance against America being taken over by Big Tech Predatory Profiteers. In this way, bookstores could deliver extraordinary social and cultural value: customers indulged in both literature and idealism. And by dramatizing the tension of “technocracy”, the media had something to write about.

We literally covered independent bookstore front windows, awnings, displays and sidewalks with what looked like Amazon boxes during Amazon Prime Days October 13 and 14. The boxes were printed with anti-Amazon headlines. To create scale on a limited budget, we chose six stores in key media locations - NYC, DC, LA - for the full immersive experience. We shipped posters and DIY kits to hundreds of other stores to participate in a coordinated activation nationwide. The campaign started on Twitter. We crafted a series of tweets that we sent from the bookstores’ accounts announcing the “protest” organized with the hashtag #BoxedOut. On the days of the activation, we geo-targeted our tweets to readers within 10 miles of each bookstore, encouraging them to visit and buy. We captured the activations in real-time and seeded assets to the press, specifically targeting local outlets, journalists and authors we believed sympathetic to the cause.

We set out to generate awareness, drive traffic and get people to buy local. Awareness: we generated 4.5B media impressions, most of those earned. Searches for “bookstore near me” spiked 115% during the campaign and average search volume has sustained at 50% increase since. Traffic: ABA bookstores consolidate all e-commerce at bookshop.org. Average site visits prior to #BoxedOut were 2M/month. We doubled that. And not just the days around the activation. Six months after and site traffic continues at 4M visits per month. Sales: Before our campaign, the ABA projected that 1 in 4 bookstores were in danger of closing before year's end. That didn’t happen. In fact, only 1% of stores were actually forced to close. And stores such as McNally Jackson, Greenlight, and Raven reported their biggest sales day ever. We actually stopped paid social earlier than scheduled because demand outweighed supply at some stores.

The ABA’s and its independent bookstores’ competitor is a company with a market capitalization bigger than the nine biggest U.S. retailers put together. Amazon recently launched a campaign, we can only presume with a straight face, featuring the tagline “Helping Those in Need.” This might be true as long as those in need aren’t independent businesses vital to their local communities. Because Amazon, a company despite making $386B paid $0 in taxes in 2017 or 2018, uses scorched-earth tactics to pressure publishers to offer their books for sale, undercutting local prices. Independent bookstores across the country are the heartbeats of their communities. They are known for their in-person author events, school book fairs, personal touches, idiosyncratic tastes, “third place” hospitality and strong progressive activism. Amazon employees are forced to pee in bottles.