Should you ask a creator to film an unboxing?

The box is packed. Inside it is a desk lamp that clamps to the edge of a desk and ships flat in three parts. The label is printed. The brief is a document somebody will open later in the week.

For most of what goes in that brief, later is fine. For one line, later is already too late.

What is an unboxing?

The first time the thing comes out of its box, with a camera running.

That's the whole of it, and first is doing all the work. An unboxing isn't a video where the product turns up in its packaging. It's the one where the packaging comes off for the first time, on camera.

That single word decides two separate things: when you have to decide, and what you can get.

Why does this one have to be decided first?

Because there's only one first time.

Everything else in a brief can still be changed after the box has gone. You can add the sentence you want landed, take a line out, tighten what the video has to show. Reopening any of those costs you a conversation. This one can't be reopened at all: once the box is open, the thing you wanted filmed has already happened, off camera, on somebody's kitchen counter.

Nobody tells you when that moment arrives. So the line goes in while the box is still on your desk, because that's the last point you can be sure of. The guide to sending a creator free product puts a different pair of decisions in that same slot and says both are "cheaper to decide now" than they will be later. Those two are cheaper decided early. This one can only be decided early.

For the lamp: the box ships Tuesday. The line asking for the camera to be running belongs in the brief on Monday, because by Wednesday you're guessing.

What can the video hold?

The video can hold what the thing looks like when it arrives.

That covers more than it sounds like. The box and what's in it. How many pieces there are, whether the parts look like they belong to the same product, and what the finish is like before anything has happened to it. For the lamp it covers whether all three parts are in there, the clamp among them, whether the box says which way they go together, and what the thing looks like new.

It can't hold anything that depends on the product having been used. Not because that would make a worse video — because nobody has used it.

Our guide to asking a creator for a testimonial has already drawn this distinction, from the other side. It's sorting posts that already exist, to work out whether anybody has something to report, and it rules one out: "an unboxing on the day it arrived is somebody opening it", while a video from well after it arrived is "somebody living with it", and "Only the second one is an input, and it still isn't the answer." That guide uses the distinction to judge a post that already exists. Here it decides what to commission.

What does your one sentence need?

Before any of this there's one sentence. The guide to choosing creators starts its procedure there: "One sentence: the thing a viewer should walk away understanding". It holds each profile against that sentence. The guide to choosing a content format writes the same sentence to work out what has to be shown rather than told. The same sentence does this job too.

Read yours and ask one question. Is everything it needs visible before anybody has used the thing?

For the lamp: the answer turns entirely on which sentence the campaign is built on.

Everything you need is in the box, and the clamp is a thumbscrew rather than a drill job. Every word of that is visible before anybody has used it. The parts are in there or they aren't, and a thumbscrew is a thing you can see before anybody turns it. An unboxing is the cheapest place to show that sentence.

It's the light you can work under all evening without your eyes going. None of that is visible before anybody has used it. An unboxing would show a lamp coming out of a box. That isn't the sentence.

What does the ask cost?

Two things, and asking is what commits them.

The one chance. The box comes open with or without a camera there. Asking is what decides whether a camera is there, and you get to decide that once.

The line. A line in the brief that settles nothing still costs you something, and the brief guide says where the cost comes from: "The creator reads every line as a requirement and builds around all of them." An unboxing written in because it seemed nice to have is a requirement to that reader, and it gets built around. The shoot starts at the box whether or not anything you're selling is in there.

For the lamp: if the campaign is standing on the evening-light sentence, that line buys nothing and the shoot still opens on cardboard.

What you still haven't decided

How it gets shot.

Choosing the unboxing settles what's in front of the camera, not how the camera treats it. The format guide separates those two layers: "Tutorial, review, and comparison describe the job. Talking head video, B-roll with text overlay, and carousel describe the presentation." An unboxing belongs on the job side of that split. The presentation call is still open, and that guide makes it.

For the lamp: you've settled that a camera is running when the box comes open. Whether anybody is on screen while it does is the next call, and it isn't this one.

Frequently asked questions

The box already went out. Have we lost it?

Assume so. You have no way of knowing when it came open, and the one you needed was the first time.

The unboxing itself isn't gone, though, if that's what you needed. Anybody else on the campaign whose box hasn't gone out yet can still film it.

Can we ask for this and a video after they have used it?

Those are two deliverables, and only one of them expires.

The unboxing carries the shipping date with it. The second one only needs time to pass, which is a different constraint and a later conversation. Write both into one brief if you like. Schedule them apart, though — the one with the shipping date on it can't wait for the other.

See what this looks like for your brand