Indie bookstores’ nationwide anti-Amazon campaign has Brooklyn roots
With many independent bookstore owners facing the most dire financial crisis in their lifetimes, the American Booksellers Association has teamed with an award-winning Brooklyn-based advertising agency known for “culture hacking” to dramatize the threats of the pandemic and the growing dominance of Amazon.com.
On Tuesday, the trade group launched the “Boxed Out” campaign, for which a handful of bookstores around the country will have windows boarded up and boxes piled up out front that resemble Amazon delivery containers, with one label reading “Don’t Accept Amazon’s Brave New World.” The beginning of what the booksellers association hopes will be a conversation in stores and online, “Boxed Out” was designed by DCX Growth Accelerator, a firm which attracted national attention in 2018 when it set up a fake “Palessi” luxury shoe store and stocked it with items from the Payless discount chain.
“Boxed Out” coincides with Amazon Prime Day, when the online giant offers special deals to its members.