Selling a Cardboard Box

Illustration by Silas Nelson

Marketing begins with the imagination to see through things.

I was on my morning walk the other day when I saw a large, appliance-sized cardboard box sitting on the corner of my neighbor’s lot. As I approached, I saw that the flaps on the top had been trimmed off, and the box stood open to the sky like a giant water gauge. 

On the box were taped two, 8.5x11 pieces of paper that read, “FREE PLAYGROUND.” 

I know the neighbor who set this box by the street. I know that he is not in marketing. But he should be.

Nearly every day, we encounter something – a product spec sheet, a budget spreadsheet – that requires a certain kind of seeing in order to see it fully. To see it as something brimming with meaning and movement. And when we see things this way, when we see through the face-value of a thing – or a person – our world starts to hum with possibility.

We all have our proverbial empty cardboard boxes. But not all of us have a free playground. The difference is one of imagination. Of seeing.

Your customers are waiting for you to trim the flaps off the box. What’s stopping you from getting out the box cutters?