#imnotabox backstory

overview

The #ImNotaBox concept was first developed during a company-wide competition called zPrize where employees were tasked with forming random teams of 5-10 people during a company meeting. Over the next 2 weeks, a sprint of mysterious challenges were given on a daily basis (and monetarily incentivized) to tackle various brand problems. All of which led to the final challenge for a grand prize of $50,000: to create a short film in 4 days that represented the company’s new focus on customer loyalty.

Little did we know that the scrappy video would not only win the competition, but it would both air in Times Square (NYC) when the ball dropped on New Year’s Eve of 2014 and nationwide as a television commercial on New Year’s Day 2015.

Yet, it didn’t stop there. The success of the video-turned-commercial opened up an opportunity for our team to leave our former roles and to forge a new path into brand strategy for Zappos. We built a team of brand strategists and creatives, called THINK, that eventually became part of a greater movement (and department) to explore the experimental side of marketing that would parallel the efforts of our traditional marketers. Our focus was clear: to amplify the brand through inventive, disruptive, and story-worthy tactics. From there, we ideated and executed a number of creative projects and evolved the original video into a multi-platform marketing campaign. To see that work, check out the other portfolio projects.