Sustainability. It’s a concept that has served as the foundation for our company. And as we grow, we continue to attract brands that share in the idea of sustainability as a core business model. Earlier this month we teamed up with innovative agency Action Marketing, of Boulder, to help Ford launch their “Go Further” Tour – utilizing our signature modified shipping containers.

The tour is scheduled to reach 19 cities including New York, Los Angeles and Chicago. We’re on the road with Ford utilizing two custom units that are working both halves of the nation simultaneously. The multi-city activation tour is an effort to promote Ford’s all new 2012 Focus Electric.

“You can’t just exclusively commit to mediums like TV anymore,” says David Campbell, Boxman Studios’ founder and CEO, “and Ford realizes that. It’s important for brands to really get out there and interact with their audience, and we can help them do that in an environmentally friendly way.”

Action Marketing’s Ford Account Manager Brett Rent explained, “Boxman Studios was a great match for the Ford Focus Electric tour. From the bamboo floors, to the LED lights, to the fact that the venue itself is recyclable, Boxman Studios helps to embody the eco-friendly message that Ford wants to communicate.”

Action Marketing populated each container with multiple 32 inch Ford touchscreens and a charging station powered by entirely by solar panel technology that is attached to the roof of the container.

Click here for the full Flickr photo set. And as always, if you’re out there in the world and you see our units in action, be sure to Tweet a picture and include our handle @boxmanstudios!

Photos by Max Esposito.

Pop-up retail may not be a new idea but it does seem to be a trend that is gaining momentum. In the past, major retailers and other B-to-C companies have traditionally spent significant resources on in-depth research and economic forecasting to determine where they should consider opening new brick-and-mortar store locations. Lately, however, more and more well-known brands are realizing that they can take their shopping environments directly to their prospective customers.

The game is changing thanks to pop-up retail.  Now brands can literally perform a live test within any market using a pop-up retail model that allows them to by interacting with their potential customer base and community using temporary storefronts that are erected an dismantled in a matter of hours or days with a very low cost to entry. This ‘portable store‘ approach allows them perform a real-life test within a community to see how well received and supported their presence might be in a given market. This is a level of market research and interaction that wasn’t even available until recently.

Thanks to pop-up solutions, retailers can now take full advantage of the portability option at a fraction of the cost of a brick-and-mortar shop. For example, a company that sells flip-flops on Fire Island can close up shop during winter months without enduring the overhead costs of maintaining a traditional storefront during a slow sales period.  Or, if they are a little more ambitious, they can easily convert to a ski shop and head to the mountains for the winter.

The possibilities are unlimited when you take your company to your customers.

Whether you are an established brand looking to find your next market, or you’re a small flip-flop shop in need of migration, give us a call and let us help customize your next venture. Don’t get up, we’ll come to you.

Given the current price of oil and the massive quantity of fuel it takes to criss-cross the United States, not to mention the expenses associated with sending staff across the country, brands are using more intimate, local displays to engage consumers.

Multi-city launches are commonplace for brands to reach consumers in several geographic locations concurrently.  This tactic enables brands to reach as many people at once in real time while also allowing for more customer ‘touches’ with its brand.

These days everyone is connected. For proof just check your nearest Facebook or Twitter feed. You can bet that someone at your event in San Francisco just tweeted to their cousin in Orlando about it. But imagine if you were in San Francisco, Orlando, Houston, Atlanta, and New York all at once? The results could be mind-boggling. The idea is simple – when you can cast your line into more productive fishing holes all at once, you stand to strike more often than if you spent time driving all over a lake looking for the right spot.

Multiple city launches for your brand takes your single city event, and turns it into a national affair. And don’t worry about logistics, at Boxman Studios we create, transport, set up, and break down your custom environment across America. In fact, last summer we did just this for Hewlett-Packard (click here to learn more about that activation.)

If you are interested in taking your brand on tour, or if you just want to learn more about Boxman Studios, drop us a line.

Made from five modified 40-foot shipping containers, our 3,000 square foot structure for Google at TED included viewing areas, a cafe, games and more.

Boxman Studios, the recognized leader in immersive branding via modified shipping containers, working with interactive agency Sub Rosa, unveiled the Google Garage this week at TED Long Beach.

The highly anticipated project has been kept under wraps until today. The Google Garage offers TED attendees a place to escape the hectic pace of the conference.

“This project reached a new peak of versatility for us,” said David Campbell, Boxman Studios’ founder and CEO. “With less than two weeks to build, transport, and piece together five containers and their amenities, The Garage showcases our ability to adapt to any situation or need.”

The Garage boasts two viewing areas that show TED speeches on 60-inch monitors, a coffee bar with snacks and cold beverages, a basketball court, a charging station for mobile devices, multiple interactive YouTube screens and even a claw machine. A claw machine!

When your business model is repurposing discarded shipping containers – everything’s a custom job. Back in 2009 when we launched our company, there was no blueprint on how to turn 20′ metal containers into hip, green hospitality suites. For example, shipping containers don’t usually have hinged side walls. But over the past year or so we’ve expanded beyond our standard hospitality suites into a whole new realm of modification. From creating a double-decker unit for Sprint at Comic-Con to a building a mobile convenience store (complete with refrigeration) for Red Bull to an amazing custom (and top-secret) build we’re currently involved with for TED Long Beach at the end of February – we are taking customization to a new level.

And we love it. As far as we’re concerned the possibilities of our boxes are limitless, and we are willing to put that theory to the test. Let us know what challenge we can help you solve with modified shipping containers.

In the past, Event Marketing was all about how far big brands would be willing to go to have the most impact and touch the most people. But 2012 will be the beginning of an era when brands seek to be more nimble with multiple touch-points. Instead of one massive display or one major sponsorship, brands today are looking to do smaller attractions and spread them around venues and events as well as doing smaller monetary sponsorships but in higher frequency around a region or demographic that they are targeting.

Getting a consumer to actually engage a product with their senses is far easier in an intimate setting as compared with the gargantuan branded behemoths of the past. Event displays that actually do more to intimidate, than engage. Brands today are learning that when they encourage the consumer or partner to feel at home, to feel more comfortable and welcome within an environment, they are more likely to interact with the product.

Touching your demographic, and having the most impact with them no longer means building the biggest mouse trap.  It means thinking differently with smaller, more mobile pieces that mesh with the flow of an event.

For more information on how Boxman Studios can help you make the most of your next event, contact Josh Wells the Director of our Events Division.

Our top secret custom build is top secret no more. Last fall we were tasked by Red Bull to create a mobile convenience store that they could move around the country to serve their biggest clients. The result was the modified shipping container you see here, which represents a convenience store for Circle K. Red Bull rolled out this mobile convenience store at their annual New Year’s Eve bash, which took place this year in San Diego. The container was a total custom build complete with refrigeration. The event was Red Bull: New Year. No Limits.

With a product as versatile as shipping containers, we say No Limits indeed. Click here to view the whole photo set on Flickr.

In case you haven’t seen it yet, Starbucks has created a drive-up/walk-up store in Tukwila, WA, made entirely of shipping containers. Brilliant. We caught wind of this a couple of weeks ago and have had lots of people ask us whether we were involved. We were not. But this innovative use of shipping containers for retail is exactly the kind of thing we’ve been talking about for a couple of years now. And yes, we’re perfectly capable of modifying shipping containers this way. In fact, if you’re considering doing something similar, give us a shout. It doesn’t matter whether it’s for a coffee shop, a micro-mall or any other form of retail – using repurposed shipping containers instead of new raw materials is a great way to create an eco-friendly retail solution. And of course since we are experts in mobile immersion – if you didn’t want a permanent location (like this Starbuck store), we could build a custom solution that moves from location to location. And we could handle all the logistics.

Photos: Starbucks

With the recent success and conclusion of the 2012 Consumer Electronics Show held annually in Las Vegas, the trade show season is officially upon us.This year, rather than settle for the latest trend in display art, consider immersing your audience in your brand. Boxman Studios has a portfolio of unique and eco-friendly exhibition solutions that will help you get noticed and stand out in the crowd.