Amazon Prime Day goes all guns blazing to expand its TG

When Amazon Prime Day launched in India in July 2016, it started off as a tier I and metro kind of a brand to attract a particular set of customers. But today, the brand’s TG extends to every region of India.

In a sector that involves improving consumer relationship, satisfying consumer demands and fetching new buyers, the e-commerce site has improvised its offerings this year—extending the sale time to 48 hours for Prime customers on July 15 and 16.

The brand has also strategised and improvised its marketing style to cater to a larger audience through its campaigns.

Ravi Desai

“The aim of campaigns on ‘Prime Day’ is to show the exclusivity we have for our consumers as well as awareness about the offerings to our non-prime consumers,” said Ravi Desai, Director, Mass and Brand Marketing, Amazon India.

According to Desai, picking up the right touchpoint for the right customer is the foremost marketing strategy of the brand, which adopted a 360-degree marketing approach for this year’s ‘Prime Days’.

The media buying and planning for the campaigns were handled by Inter Public Group, an American publicly traded advertising company.

“Our media spends vary from city to city and area to area. The main motto of our campaigns is to reach our growing TG, depending on all mediums and media formats,” Desai said.

This year’s Prime Day campaign, #DiscoverTheJoyOfMore, gives a sneak peak of its three pillars — great deals, blockbuster entertainment and new launches — to its members and targeted consumers.

Speaking on the idea behind the #DiscoverTheJoyOfMore campaign, Desai said, “The idea was to bring together all key benefits a Prime membership offers from its three pillars — the shopping site, OTT platform and the music streaming platform. When you look at the TVC or other touchpoints, the prime thing alive is the world of Boxtropolis. A member who considers joining it but is not fully convinced does a bit of travel in the Boxtropolis and explores the offers Prime Day has for him or her and comes back fully convinced to become a Prime member.”

“Internally we call it a world of Boxtropolis, a word inspired by the Amazon box – where we want to personify the Prime brand and its prime offerings,” he explained.

The creative side of the campaign has been jointly done by Ogilvy and the brand’s in-house creative team.

Amazon has on board 1,000 new product launches from top brands against 200 last year. Names such as OnePlus, Samsung, Whirlpool, Sennheiser, Intel and Mothercare are exclusively available in India for Amazon Prime members. Apart from its shopping front, the brand is promoting Prime Day celebrations on Amazon Prime video and Amazon Prime Music.

“We had a whole host of content launches lined up in this period building up to Prime Day. We have done playlists curated with inputs from celebrities from the music side to keep people engaged with music content on Prime Day. We are working with a host of brands. We are launching products only for Prime members on Prime Day. All of these culminate on July 15 and 16, where we offer our Prime customers exclusive deals and products to buy,” he said.

Prime Day celebrations started two weeks early on Prime video with 14 new Prime video titles over 14 days in English, Hindi and seven other regional languages from July 1.

The Amazon Prime Music Playlists was curated by celebrities such as Shreya Ghoshal, Sonu Nigam, Armaan Malik, Raftaar, Neha Kakkar and The Jonas Brothers.

According to Desai, although every medium caters to different segments of consumers, for the brand digital is advantageous because it’s the only medium where audiences spend time in engaging with the brand.

“The engagement on this particular medium is heavy; we are able to read what the audience’s interests are and cater to them based on the message that will work for them the most. We use television but again selectively look at impact properties on the medium. We used the World Cup and looked at a certain kind of channel mix to reach out to our targeted group effectively. We have done on-ground activations and installations; in a few cities we have taken the message to OOH. We have also tried to create a bit of a viral loop using WhatsApp and a messaging platform,” he said.

In 2018, the brand had launched #KeepThatSmileOn around ‘Prime Day’. Speaking on that campaign, Desai said, “Last year’s campaign was a celebration by the brand for Prime members, where they got various benefits the brand offered.”

“Over the last two-and-a-half years, we have seen Prime penetrating deeper into the country. In terms of geography, Prime is getting deeper into India and from the personality length, the multiple benefits don’t classify people into any particular bracket. Be it a content, audio or shopping lovers, Prime has it all. Our TG cuts across on the benefits we provide under our Prime membership,” he said.

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