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Score 72 - Account in Jeopardy: Boxed names first president, former VP of Amazon

Amazon, has hired its first president, Prentis Wilson, effective July; Wilson last served as Amazon's VP of business. Therefore, we can conclude Boxed will likely make similar business decisions to that of Amazon. Wilson will lead operations, fulfillment and marketing. While competing with Amazon, it also hopes to compete against big name retailers, such as Walmart and Costco. Boxed was most recently valued at $600 million, per PitchBook.

Most of its competitors have interests in eventually acquiring Boxed, including Amazon, Target and Costco--any of which could increase Boxed's marketing budget. Boxed has already secured several high-level funding rounds, per CNBC, so either way, there should be plenty of spending dollars for you, sellers.

Amazon traditionally utilizes all channels and spent close to $1 billion dollars last year on marketing, per Kantar. It will likely take some time for Boxed to compete on the same level of these larger companies - or hold the number of highly-sought after brands, such as Amazon Echo - but they will likely use similar channels: Amazon utilized broadcast, digital, digital-search, radio, OOH and print in that order for 2018.

Boxed has significantly decreased it spending on digital display as of late, per Adbeat. In the last 180 days, it has spent $2.7k; in the 180 days prior to that, it spent $30.3k. Under Wilson's hire, we can conclude spending will likely continue to decrease until the company gains more ground; Boxed has also been decreasing spend in this channel for the past two years. In the last 6 months, Boxed has placed 63% of ads site direct onto sites such as topsecretrecipes.com, behindthename.com, consumersearch.com, ahaparenting.com and bigoven.com. 

To put it in perspective, Amazon has spent $121.4 million on digital display in the past 180 days.

According to iSpot, Boxed has spent YTD $2.7 million on national TV efforts and $1.1 million since July, when Wilson came on board. This channel was completely dropped last year with $0 spent in 2018. Boxed has been decreasing its national TV spend since 2016, when it spent a whopping $7.1 million to bring awareness to the brand. Wilson will likely continue to spend at this steady rate of around $1 million per quarter. See the chart for top show targeting.

According to Kantar, more spending dollars were allocated toward print in Q1 2019 than in the entire year for 2018. The company also increased the amount spent on its OHH initiatives.

Sellers -- The top intended demographic is millennials, but according to StatSocial, Boxed reaches just as many, if not more, Gen X shoppers. Reach out to Boxed to offer digital space, including TV and digital display, as well as print and OOH space. 

Agency readers -- To the best of our knowledge, LaunchSquad handles PR. Start reaching out to offer social media management services, since this company is focused on millennials, and keep an eye out for possible reviews.