Brand Love Letters: ‘Dear Amazon,’

“The most important single thing is to focus obsessively on the customer. Our goal is to be earth’s most customer-centric company.” – Jeff Bezos

That’s a strong statement— it’s one thing to be among the best, but it’s another thing to be the best on earth at anything—there’s only room for one. And, yet time and time again, you walk the walk. As a brand, you’re the one that listens to consumers, and then you do your best to help people to make the best decisions for themselves. My letter could not do justice to all the ways you’ve brought this value into your practice but allow me to at least share some highlights of my admiration.

First, you appear to understand that a core psychological motivation is uncertainty reduction. This is a topic near and dear to my academic life, and I can testify firsthand to the powerful and motivating force of uncertainty. Whether it’s leveraging the power of other consumers’ review, recommendations toward similar products, or evaluating consumers’ own prior purchases, you have mechanisms to help reduce consumers’ uncertainty. And that is a key component of great marketing—understand the consumers’ needs and be responsive—this approach allows both brands and consumers to win. Indeed, a strong consumer-brand relationship isn’t parasitic but mutualistic. I have lectured on uncertainty reduction, and Amazon definitely has solid practices in place.

Second, while service and loyalty programs have a long history within marketing, you created something unprecedented with Amazon Prime. The numbers speak for themselves. You have over 200 million people who see sufficient value to become Amazon Prime members—no surprise, as you know, I am one of them. By some accounts, Amazon membership services generate over 25 billion dollars. Prime Day alone is associated with over 11 billion dollars in sales. However, it’s not just the numbers, it’s that you created a service and offer what the consumers wanted.

Third, by committing to being, “earth’s most customer-centric company,” you’ve been able to expand your product offerings. You moved from books to offering a vast variety of retail goods. However, you didn’t stop there, you saw the potential to be responsive to your values through online streaming, cloud data, and even an online workforce via Mechanical Turk. Indeed, it’s a powerful lesson of marketing; if you know what you truly stand for then the products and services you offer do not need to be narrowly defined by what was originally sold.

My regard for your brand goes beyond your commitment to the consumer. Even though you’ve only been around since 1994, you carry yourself like you’ve been in the business of branding for a lot longer. Every year, as part of our activities here at Kellogg, we gather to watch and evaluate the pool of Super Bowl ads. You’ve used the venue to both communicate your products but also to bring to life your brand.

For example, in your 2020 spot, you asked us what life was like before Alexa. In your 2021 spot, you personified Alexa through the humorous use of Michael B. Jordan. And, in 2022 you continued to showcase Alexa’s features in creative work that featured Scarlett Johansson and Colin Jost. What’s impressive is that you’ve used the ads to both communicate functional benefits of the product while also building an emotional connection with the consumer. Building a brand personality is often a long and difficult road, but Amazon, you’ve done it in style.

Let me close on one final point. The digital age of advertising arose around the ability to collect massive amounts of data on the consumer. Laws and regulations will likely continue to change with respect to what information we can track and acquire about consumers. I anticipate consumers will have more say in how their data will be used. I also anticipate that brands that listen and understand the psychology of the consumer in terms of their needs and desires will earn their trust; the result of this trust is a mutualistic relationship between consumers and brands. I predict your strong affinity with the consumer has given you a leading edge on this, and I look forward to seeing how you continue to navigate these development.

I’d love to hear more about what you’re working on. You know my address! Of course, I realize you have a busy holiday season, so I can wait!

Derek