Category: Technology
Case Study: Amazon Echo
Problem
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Your key competitor is launching during the Super Bowl, but you’re stuck on the sidelines.
When Amazon’s Echo launched, it quickly became the category leader in voice-activated AI assistants. But Google Home came in soon after as a fierce competitor, with a huge launch planned during the first half of Super Bowl LI. Amazon had intended to sit the game out, but quickly decided they needed to do something to reinforce their dominance and dampen Google’s impending thunder.
Human Insight
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During the big game, “Ads” just won’t cut it.
With nearly 100 million people watching, there is nothing as big as the Super Bowl. And most aren’t even watching for the game. They watch for the commercials. Fans don’t want to be advertised to — they want to be entertained. So if you don’t bring big laughs, big cultural-curdling messages, big stars or big news, you’re burning money to the tune of $10 million per minute.
With three and a half weeks till kickoff, Amazon Echo had none of the above.
Solution
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Create something unique to the game-watching experience.
What Echo did have was an ever-growing list of commands that made it the category leader. We called them “Alexa-powered moments.” Things you couldn’t dream of doing before, but now couldn’t imagine living without. So rather than try to out-funny, out-entertain or out-bling other advertisers, we focused on Alexa-powered moments uniquely relevant to watching the Super Bowl. Like drone delivery when your guests devour all the Nacho Cheese Doritos. Or voice-activated ordering from Pizza Hut when your dog crashes your stadium-shaped snack bowl and eats three levels of seating. Plus most of the players.
And while it usually takes months to produce a Super Bowl ad, we worked with Amazon’s creative teams to go from start to finish in an unheard of 3½ weeks. Despite the fact that our ad units were a mere 10 seconds each, our campaign finished near the top of USA Today’s Super Bowl Ad Meter, while Google Home finished near the very bottom.
Victory wasn’t just sweet, it was nacho-flavored.
