That’s a Wrap: Crushing Goals with Outside the Box Thinking

This past September, we were facing a demanding fourth quarter yet wanted to finish the year strong. Websites to build. Videos to create. Logos and brands to design. And all while keeping up with social media posts, digital ads, blogs, and everything else our client partners rely on every day. It was a lot, but let’s be honest: that’s how we like it.

Here’s the thing about running a successful marketing agency: staying organized and meeting deadlines isn’t just a goal, it’s essential. We have high expectations and tight timelines, and many moving parts to juggle to deliver our highest quality, most creative work on time.

We’ve got fancy tools to help —Asana for projects, Slack for team chatter, whiteboards, spreadsheets, sticky notes, and color-coding. But last quarter, we introduced something extra to keep us motivated and focused. Something hands-on.

A Box for Every Project

Every major Q4 project got its own small, cardboard box. On the outside, we wrote the project name. Then, because we’re colorful people and we like to have fun, we drew something creative on the outside of the box that captured the project’s vibe. A website for a military aviation client was represented by a sketch of a helicopter. “We The Grillaz” grilling gloves was presented by flames. Lots of flames. And a gorilla, because when we say “grilla” it sounds like gah-rilla. A homebuilder client? A drawing of a house. You get the idea.

We stacked these boxes in a central spot in the office, right where everyone had to pass by on the way to grab coffee or head into the conference room. You couldn’t miss them, and that was the point. These boxes weren’t just visual reminders, they were in-your-face motivators. Every time you walked by, they whispered (or shouted), “Hey, this is important! Let’s make it happen!”

Some of us even kept a box or two in our offices as a daily reminder of what needed to get done. And it worked!

There’s something about having a physical representation of your work staring you down that makes procrastination a little harder.

Wrapping It Up

But here’s where it got really fun. Once we finished a project, we took its box, wrapped it up like a Christmas present, and slid it under the Active8 Christmas tree. The box went from being part of the “to-do” pile to the “done” pile.

Each wrapped box was a win: a gift to our clients who trusted us, and a gift to ourselves for seeing it through. Watching the stack of unfinished boxes shrink and the tree fill up with beautifully wrapped “gifts” was the ultimate visual of progress and success.

By the time Christmas rolled around, we weren’t just looking at a tree full of presents. We were looking at a quarter full of accomplishments. Every box represented a deadline met, a client happy, and a team that crushed it. For us, the boxes were a reminder that when we stay focused, have a little fun, and work together, we can do amazing things.

We wrapped up 2024 (literally and figuratively) and stepped into an exciting new year with new clients, new team members, and new challenges. We’re ready to take on even more projects, stack up even more wins, and maybe draw a few more helicopters and gorillas along the way.