How Advertising’s Familiar Feeling of Envy Inspired This New Amazon Ads Campaign
Fresh off the back of its first ever Amazon Upfront event, this new Amazon Ads campaign leaves a marketer ‘zinging’ with envy.
Envy is a universal truth in advertising that can mark the perfect inspiration for your next big idea. In fact, it’s a question we at LBB enjoy asking creative leaders: what’s an idea that filled you with so much envy that you wish you’d created it?
Created by Anomaly, the campaign positions Amazon Ads as a solution for the phenomenon of envy in advertising with its offering of premium placements and scaled reach, across channels like Prime Video and Twitch. Amazon Ads says that it can help marketers and media buyers go from experiencing envy, to inspiring it.
Entitled ‘Media Envy’, the central film follows a marketer who is haunted by a competitor’s infuriatingly catchy, and incredibly well-placed, media campaign using Amazon Ads. The spot opens with the marketer about to launch their own campaign for a brand called ‘Zang’, when their colleagues start to gather around a trade article for the launch of a different brand, ‘ZING!’, with the foreboding headline: ‘Campaign of the year?’. ‘ZING!’ Then proceeds to show up everywhere – during the marketer’s favourite Prime Video shows, on branded Prime deliveries at home, at work, at the gym, and seemingly everywhere they go across the interconnected world of Amazon Ads’ media channels, sending them into a spiralling state of ‘media envy’. It was directed by Sam Pilling via Magna Studios.
Carly Zipp is the global director of brand marketing at Amazon Ads, and worked hand-in-hand with the team at Anomaly on the launch of Media Envy. To find out more about the inspiration behind leaning into the feeling of jealousy, comedy in advertising, and why B2B marketing isn’t all that different from B2C, Carly speaks with LBB’s Addison Capper.
LBB> What are the key points of Amazon Ads' marketing strategy right now? What are you focusing on and why?
Carly> I think everyone in the room was a little starstruck at our Amazon Upfront last week seeing Reese Witherspoon, Will Ferrell, Roger Federer, Alicia Keys, Keke Palmer, and so many other beloved cultural icons on one stage. That presentation really highlighted the breadth and depth of what we offer to customers. We have so much incredible content that viewers love (I know I’m not the only one excited for Elle). Whether it’s a new series or live sports on Prime Video or streaming on Twitch to name a few, no one else has the scale and reach that we can offer to connect our content to customers, with Amazon Ads at the centre of it all. That is a major focus for us as we continue to support the growth of the Ads business here at Amazon.
LBB> How does this campaign fit into those wider aims?
Carly> This is exactly what’s so exciting about the work we do. How do we marry the ambition and creativity of advertisers with the goals of brands? This campaign shows exactly how we do that for our customers. It really captures the feeling of seeing a campaign that does it all. We want to create envy in the best way – showing how Amazon Ads can make that feeling possible and inspire others.
LBB> From where did the insight to lean into envy for this campaign initially come from?
Carly> As marketers, envy is something we’ve all felt before. You see a great campaign and it drives you to do great work of your own. We understand this universal truth about our customers: Their passion for marketing makes them hyper aware of advertising. And when they see those innovative uses of media it motivates them creatively. We want to spark that creativity within our customers, brands, and ourselves.
LBB> Do you have any anecdotes or experiences that support that? Have you looked at LinkedIn lately?
Carly> Oh, just about every single day, multiple times, if I’m honest. It’s what we do in our industry. Our work is highly visible by design, so campaigns are always being shared and analysed and celebrated. We all know that feeling of seeing great work being shared by our peers and wishing we had done it. After seeing Nike’s ‘Never Stop Winning’ campaign, I said to myself, if I can evoke that same level of emotion (whatever it may be) and inspiration through a campaign, I am going to do it. The power of creating a campaign that sparks such a universal emotion is rare. And that’s what we set out to do with Media Envy.
LBB> What was the creative process like once you'd locked in the idea?
Carly> Thankfully, we all knew so well that feeling of envy and knew it was the perfect way to describe the unspoken yet relatable feeling of advertisers. We had a fantastic creative partner in Anomaly. From there, the process flowed easily, through a robust casting search to find our perfect marketer, and creating our wonderful fictitious brand, Zing. Honestly, I think Zing looks so good we should turn it into a real brand. I’d buy it from how it was marketed in the campaign, wouldn’t you?
LBB> How do you find the challenge of leading marketing for a B2B powerhouse like Amazon Ads? How does it impact your creative and marketing opportunities versus work within the B2C realm?
Carly> I’ve had the opportunity to work with some of the biggest brands in the world in both the B2B and B2C space. There’s an assumption that they have to be drastically different – one buttoned-up and one fun. Here’s the big secret though: business leaders like to have fun too. When I joined the team almost two years ago, I set out for my team to operate like a B2C brand, bringing together the two worlds of B2C and B2B – with Ads at the epicentre. There is absolutely no reason why we can’t have fun as we showcase what our brand has to offer to customers. The second B in B2B doesn’t have to stand for boring, and we’re proving that every day.
LBB> The campaign leans heavily into comedy - what are your thoughts on the power of comedy when it comes to B2B advertising like this? It feels like it really manages to 'tap' into a niche industry like adland in a nice way.
Carly> This is part of my philosophy that B2B doesn’t have to be boring. What are some of the ads you remember the best? I bet a lot of those are funny or they resonated with you as an individual. Why shouldn’t that be the case in B2B? Since we launched ‘Ads that work as hard as you do’, we really wanted to capture the experience of being a marketer and being relatable. Part of that is finding the humour in it all too. That’s how we connect with our audience through that shared experience.
LBB> It's an ad about advertising, which is enjoyably meta. How does it feel to create an ad that really offers a bit of commentary on our industry like this?
Carly> ‘Don’t speak to yourself’ is the first rule in advertising, and we’re getting a kick out of breaking that rule. Exploring the industry in this way has really helped us connect with our customers and show that we truly understand them, because we are them.
