Case Study: Kick Back & Chill

There’s nothing quite like the excitement of getting a box of fun stuff in the mail... and that’s exactly what the Kick Back and Chill MerchBox provided! The MerchBox program is a quarterly offering for the promotional product industry that gives distributors and their clients hands-on experience with top trending promo products.

Available exclusively to the 2,200 members of the AIM Smarter distributor community, each edition of the MerchBox is centered around a unique theme related to the upcoming season. These boxes provide inspiration for promotions and help drive sales. The products and box labels have corresponding designs, creating a fun and exciting promo experience for recipients.

Designing the Box

I was in charge of the design for the second MerchBox of 2021, with the theme, Kick Back & Chill. Focused on summertime fun, I created a few potential designs for this box before we landed on an outdoorsy, campfire vibe.

The team ultimately decided on the concept above, featuring icons and a repeating image motifs to create a pattern across the box labels. The design highlighted summer activities like biking, grilling, camping, surfing, kayaking, and hiking.

Product Design

This MerchBox contained items to help brands create relevant summertime promotions that help end-users relax and have fun, both indoors and out. The items included practical items for the outdoors like a pair of a sunglasses, sunscreen and insect repellent, as well as fun items like a volleyball themed stressball and an ice cream coozie.

Marketing Collateral

In addition to the product and label designs, I also designed the postcard inserted in each box with a description of the included product and handled design for the emails and social posts advertising the box.

Each MerchBox also includes a free digital marketing kit with collateral to help distributors advertise the products in the box. In conjunction with the copywriter, we created the marketing kit’s social posts, promotional emails, and a promotional blog post.

The Results

The Kick Back and Chill MerchBox became the most successful box yet! We sold out 500 boxes in 5 days. The first 112 boxes sold within 2 hours of the first announcement email.

Customers and their clients loved the theme and products of this edition of the MerchBox. The outdoorsy theme offered a fresh take on summer vibes that appealed universally to our audience, which includes members and their clients from across the US, many of whom may not have related as strongly to a traditional summer beach theme. The variety of summer activities featured in the design was a perfect fit. ☀️

Via the community Facebook group, AIM members provided feedback that they loved the design of the Kick Back and Chill MerchBox. One member shared how much his clients appreciated the idea box and that he received many product orders and “thank yous” as a result. 👍