Amazon

SCOPE OF WORK:
Event Concept + Strategy
Event Execution
PR Strategy
Campaign Concept
Campaign Photo + Video

Brief

Amazon approached Very Polite to create a multi-day event that would create awareness for the brand’s Small Business offering. The locally minded arm of Amazon wanted to offer a site-specific activation that would drive consumers and interested sellers to the Small Business offering and ultimately, soften the big business brand perception in an especially discerning market: Vancouver.

Approach

Very Polite suggested the best way to soften brand perception was to humanise the brand. The shopping experience on Amazon certainly is efficient but searching for an item in the marketplace can reduce a small business down to its products and lose its story.

For this activation, Very Polite wanted to go beyond a physical retail experience and create a photo and video campaign that would bring the sellers and their stories into the spotlight. The campaign centered around The Workshop: a built set where sellers could bring in their products and tools specific to their craft. We shot colourful portraits and active work-in-progress images with each of the sellers and conducted short interviews to be used as digital assets. We shot everything in our own studio and recreated The Workshop set in the window of the pop-up.

The 3-day event was located on South Granville, a busy shopping street that includes everyone from locals, holiday shoppers and tourists alike. The pop-up took over an entire storefront and included the curated product assortments of nine local sellers. The large-format portraits from the in-studio shoot were hung around the space and a screen at the front of the shop showcased the video campaign.

For programming, VP wanted to offer experiences that would create buzz, drive traffic and generate interest in Amazon’s small business offering for consumers and interested sellers.

The shop was staffed throughout the day and included experiences to create interest with locals like holiday pet portraits and the opportunity to shop and meet local makers.

For those looking to learn more about the process of opening an Amazon store, the event hosted a panel with Amazon sellers and offered bookable 1:1 appointments with Amazon store experts. We also organised a press event and dinner for press to interview the sellers and learn more about their work.

Outcome

For the local sellers featured in The Workshop, they were not only given the opportunity to create unique content for their own channels and introduce themselves to new customers IRL — they were also featured on the Amazon Canada Instagram account. This provided them the chance to reach 72.2K followers they didn’t previously have access to and provided content for the Amazon Canada account that focused on local brands.