Have you ever lost hours of your day watching unboxing videos?
Having gained serious momentum on YouTube, the no-frills productions (often featuring just a presenter, table and a carboard box) make for surprisingly therapeutic viewing.
This somewhat mundane format has become an effective way for viewers to envisage what it might be like receive and own the product.
Companies have even started uploading their own unboxings, such as the Batman x Samsung Galaxy unboxing which gained over 9 million views.
But what comes before the unboxing? The box. And what comes before the box? The act of giving.
As part of its Christmas campaign, USPS launched a new YouTube campaign named the ‘Boxing Before Unboxing’.
Disrupting the unboxing genre, the aim of the campaign was to promote the USPS Priority Mail boxes for the holiday season.
The simple 15-second video shows all the actions of opening a parcel reversed until the very beginning. And what happens at the very beginning, the box arrives within a USPS Priority Mailbox.
Illustrating the reliability of their postal services and boosting brand love, the video reminds viewers that they can count on USPS for giving and receiving in the holidays.
Strategically targeted, the “Boxing Before Unboxing” will be played at the start of existing unboxing videos. The creative placement allows USPS to piggyback on the existing cultural phenomenon of the unboxing trend, which is known to reach large audiences.
It ties into the brand’s broader holiday campaign which launched earlier this year, which focuses on the different ways USPS goes the extra mile to ensure all holiday parcels meet their recipients on time.
This is not the first time we have seen brands jumping on social media trends to deliver highly effective campaigns.
Previously Airbnb partnered with Insta-famous pets and Pringles battle couch campaign tapped into the world of gaming influencers.