Amazon’s Brown Boxes Get Advertising Facelift

Amazon is taking a leap into non-Amazon branding, delivering goods in boxes that, for the first time, do not display the company’s ubiquitous eponymous ads. Those ads have promoted everything from Amazon Prime to streaming music and video.

This time around, it’s movie characters – and Amazon and Universal Pictures and Illumination Entertainment. Geekwire reported Wednesday (June 3) that Amazon has struck its first packaging-centered ad deal, with Minion characters from the movie of the same name slated for a July 10 release, and a spinoff from the Despicable Me franchise. The cartoonish yellow creatures have been appearing on Amazon boxes (also yellow) – three different box sizes for three different characters.

The boxes also sport a link to a Minions page that is featured on the Amazon site, Time reported. Once shoppers tap into that site they are brought into a world that according to TechCrunch is a shopping site “dedicated to all things Minion”.

The deliveries started last week and the physical boxes themselves follow a social media campaign that came by way of tweets and Facebook, with boxes having started to ship beginning on May 25 and slated to end on July 10, according to TechCrunch.

The move represents the latest non-Amazon-themed ad revenue stream, and though terms have not been reported, could be potentially lucrative to the e-commerce behemoth. Amazon, noted Geekwire, also sells ad space on its physical Amazon Lockers delivery locations. And for the Minions themselves, this is the latest foray into touting the movie franchise, as the characters have been featured on toys, Monopoly games and even foodstuff.

As to what may lie ahead: TechCrunch noted that Amazon declined to say whether this points to a new wave of custom-branded boxes, or just how many customers may find themselves with the Minion-themed packaging during the promotional period. 

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