Situational Context: The third year of the Amazon Business mass awareness campaign. We used learnings from years 1 and 2 to focus on creative consistency and to position AB not just as a reliable supplier, but as a strategic partner for organizations.

Role: Creative Director

Team:

Goal: Same as previous years, the 2024 Amazon Business campaign aims to elevate unaided brand awareness of Amazon and Amazon Business as primary sources for business supplies. The campaign focuses on positioning Amazon Business as a strategic partner for procurement professionals, highlighting its technology-driven capabilities like responsible purchasing and policy compliance. Building on past learnings, we will emphasize cohesive creative assets, simplified messaging, and key channels—video, display, and social—to establish “Smart Business Buying” as the defining category.

Process: This year, we had two years of learnings to draw from and a clear direction for our evolution. This experience, along with a new Senior Campaign Manager, proved to be immensely helpful. While we appreciated Joint London’s video work, the ongoing Amazon rebranding efforts presented an opportunity to shift the creative digital and out-of-home (OOH) work to Koto, ensuring alignment with the rest of Amazon's brands. As a result, our creative and OOH materials highlight the new Amazon and Amazon Business colors of white, orange, and squid ink. We incorporated this color scheme into our video, creating a consistent thread across both mediums. While last year we began to emphasize our smart business buying and strategic capabilities, this year we leaned into it even further across all assets.

Solution: Last year, we learned the importance of consistency in our creative and messaging. We emphasized smart business buying in all campaign materials. Due to an unexpected rebrand at Amazon, our creative direction for digital and outdoor advertising changed significantly. While we aimed to retain some lifestyle imagery, we focused more on a B2B approach and collaborated with Amazon’s new rebranding agency, Koto. They presented various creative options within the new guidelines, and we chose one featuring humorous B2B images. We also worked with photographer Romain Laurent, who had the modern and unique style we sought for our custom shoot and cinemagraphs.

For video, we knew that Rome in a Day was the higher performer from 2023 so this year we pursued two similar concepts featuring a pirate ship and Leonardo DaVinci. Both build on the historical concept of a business, featuring incredible world building and depth. We solidified out tenets and story structure into a repeatable format with consistent beats on when phone screens and delivery moments would take place. We shot both of these in Bulgaria at the Nu Boyana Studios with the incredible director collective - Traktor. They were some of the most collaborative directors, and brought the best energy to set I’ve ever experienced. Not an easy feat on 10 straight on-set days!

Last year we captured custom social assets for the campaign, but our audiences didn’t successfully link them with the video elements of the campaign. This year we used direct cutdowns of the main videos, featuring alternate scenes and text-overlaid on top - these performed much higher.

One key learning has been to always bring a BTS photographer and videographer, the cost for these additional measures is negligible (>$15k) and the outcome is a video that is used widely internally and on other channels. It may be more insider baseball, for those who love craft - but it is beneficial for awards submissions. See bottom of page for the videos!

Videos

Run a Tighter Ship - 45 seconds

40 second - Leo’s Inventions

Performance

The creative strategy for our out-of-home (OOH) and digital campaigns yielded mixed results across different platforms. Anecdotal evidence suggests that the most straightforward and direct copywriting consistently outperformed the more complex alternatives paired with lifestyle photography. While the photography used in these campaigns possessed a certain stopping power—defined by criteria set out by our analytics—the visuals oftentimes led to confusion among the audience. Moreover, the intended humor in our messaging was frequently overlooked during quick glances, and our newly introduced brand system inadvertently prompted viewers to associate it with other, more recognizable B2B brands such as Staples. As we move into 2025, our plan is to further refine our approach by eliminating lifestyle imagery entirely, shifting our focus instead to essential elements that are closely aligned with the video content, such as user interfaces and color palettes.

With regard to video production, our insights indicated a clear need for incorporating tangible boxes and additional interface moments. Given that our audience primarily consists of very literal B2B procurement professionals, we are planning to include more anachronistic box elements in the campaigns for future years, as this demographic seemed to resonate with the older, more classic box designs. Some feedback we received indicated that the advertisements may have been too aesthetically pleasing, to the point where some viewers were disappointed, expressing a wish that the ads represented a new television show rather than marketing content.

More results incoming post-campaign!

Awards and Recognition

Press Coverage

Bonus Content - Making of the videos

Run a Tighter Ship - Behind the Scenes

Leo’s Inventions - Behind the Scenes

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