Amazon - An Innovation Powerhouse!

An annoying interstitial ad forced me to post it on my facebook page as a sign of protest. It is funny how social network makes you feel as if you are actually powerful. I will save a detailed note on this psychological e-phenomenon for future, but I must say that the ad did what it was supposed to do. Discounting the fact that I didn’t end up buying the colourful bagpacks, the ad did manage to attract my attention. It also made me promote it (unwittingly!) to my 500+ internet buddies on facebook.

 

The brand that was advertising vociferously on my daily news website was Amazon. Huh.

Amazon is everywhere these days. It has slowly and steadily, and with a lot of patience and innovation, built a strong-fundamental based business model in India. Many were wondering for the first few months after Amazon made its way into India about Amazon's quiet game plan. The firework that one would expect from the big daddy of online retail was far from visible.

All this while, Amazon was investing in the foundation stone of this to-be e-tailing giant of India. This has helped Amazon India to build for itself an environment and capability to roll out mind-boggling innovative ideas that has kept its customers delighted and rivals on toes so far.

Amazon demonstrated aptly the approach to build a business in a new market by challenging set rivals and even beat them on their own turf. The long experience in its home country and deep pockets though adds to its advantage, none should be taken away from Amazon for being super agile and incessantly innovative.

I wrote some time back on Amazon’s bipolar approach on improving its delivery performance to enhance customer delight. At one end, Amazon had started experimenting parcel deliveries through drones while on other hand, in India it sealed an alliance with India Post to help it deliver parcels in far-flung areas.

Very recently, Amazon introduced a fresh gust of innovative ideas that varies from category expansion to new services and from vendor empanelment to channel expansion.

Back in US, Amazon turned heads last week by inking a $ 300mn-three years deal with HBO to let Amazon Prime members watch old HBO shows. Within no time after giving its customer the HBO delight, it announced launch of the prima-pantry service for its prime members. The service allowed the prime members to shop from more than 2,000 products to fill a four-cubic foot box with up to 45 pounds of goods. The package can then be shipped at very nominal cost to the customers.

These simple innovations have not only added to the product lines it can sell but have also created benchmark for serviceability and customer responsiveness in this rapidly growing industry.

Here in India, Amazon has opened up a bottle of innovations which, with the gush these innovations are ejecting, seems to have been there ‘under-construction’ for some time now.

After collaborating with India post to deliver its parcels in 19,000 pin-codes across country through its Colosseum -like network of 140,000 Post-offices, Amazon has put into action its plan to make it easy for sellers.

Amazon, this week launched two initiatives for sellers to facilitate an accelerated and hassle-free experience. The US-based firm launched the Self Service Registration (SSR) and Amazon Easy Ship for sellers. Amazon SSR enables sellers irrespective of their size, location and size of catalogue, to self-register on the Amazon marketplace and start selling within a day without any third party intervention, making the process quick, easy and transparent.

With Amazon Easy Ship, the seller has to pack the shipment and confirm to Amazon that they are ready to ship. Amazon Logistics collects the shipment and ensures that the product is delivered to customers in 2-4 days.

Jeff Bezos is known to be the driving force of Amazon's
customer first culture and a true admirer of innovation at work

These two services have taken the e-commerce game to a different level in India. A response from the bigger rivals(so far!) Flipkart and Snapdeal is soon expected as the e-commerce industry matures in terms of technology and operational set-up.

The big question is, how Amazon has been able to pop-out one innovation after other, even faster than the TV soaps’ episode run?

The answer is fairly simple – Getting the basic rights and employing Long-term thinking in a new market.

Amazon didn’t rush to lure customers as soon as it entered in Indian market. Instead, it took its time in getting the fundamentals right. It built the logistics network, warehouses and built up a large selection of products that is now bringing in customers for them.

In a recent interview, Amit Deshpande GM of Amazon India said that its strong back-end infrastructure is helping it scale up fast. He further added on that when they decide on areas of focus, they always work backwards from the customer. Selection, delivery experience, logistics, payments and website experience are areas they are super-focused on.

Amazon has been scintillating in terms of its growth, and more importantly in its systematic business approach in terms of all modules of a business organization – Strategy, Marketing, Supply chain, Human Resource development and above all, Innovation.

Truely, Amazon is an innovation powerhouse!

Public Service Announcements - Effective or just good to watch?

A PSA generally is a message to inform the public on issues that are considered to be in the general best interests of the community at large. These are aimed at altering public attitudes by raising consciousness about particular issues and are usually created with collaboration between private and public entities. These may be created to reflect a social message or humanitarian notion.

An interesting PSA or Public service announcement/advertisement/campaign as many call it, got my attention last week. This campaign in particular tries to address the much talked about issue in the current times, women safety. The recent unfortunate events shook the confidence of citizen in a number of agencies. Law enforcement agency has always been at the receiving end for being perceived to be callous and even inefficient at times. In order to make an attempt to restore the confidence of people into its functioning and to assure them of their help and support, Mumbai police, along with Ogilvy Mumbai came up with a PSA.

The campaign used real police men and women to convey a sincere message to its audience which translates to – “we will teach Mumbai how to respect its women.”It is a five-film campaign, each film focus on one issue related to harassment and abuse of women. All the ad-films encourage women to report any incident, big or small to police without the fear of being harassed at police stations. The campaign has been conceived and executed by Ogilvy Mumbai with the help of Mumbai police.

You can watch a couple of films from the campaign here.

Mumbai Police and Ogilvy Mumbai 1

Mumbai Police and Ogilvy Mumbai 2

The trend for public service advertisements and campaign is not new in India. Some of the most famous PSA campaigns India has ever seen are Pulse Polio mission, HIV AIDS Awareness campaigns and Balbir Pasha. These were created to raise awareness for social and health issues like AIDS and Polio.

Balbir Pasha Teaser Ad

Balbir Pasha Ad-Film 1

A recent trend that has emerged in this front is surge of businesses trying to link their brand or brand image to a social cause and hence putting their eggs in PSA basket not just as a measure of business communication but to reiterate their support to address certain social or humanitarian causes.

Tata Tea’s “Jago re” campaign, Times of India’s Teach India campaign” and Aircel’s “Save our Tiger” campaign are such examples which have tried to address issues related to governance, corruption, education and declining tiger population in the country.

However, the biggest question which everyone is asking is – How effective are these campaigns?

The answer isn’t as simple as it may appear.

On the face of it, the PSAs are definitely catchy due to their creative prowess. However, the problem lies in the fact that these ads are usually made to win awards for agencies (the ones which are on social issues without a business house backing) and unfortunately that’s the only logical consummation their creators are looking for with these creative ads. Very rarely we would see a ground work and follow-up activities being done to make these campaigns effective and be sincere to the cause. Quite the same applies to the PSAs created for businesses, as seldom are business houses serious about the efficacy and change that these campaigns can bring about. All these ads are supposed to do is to grab eye-balls and create a recall with the associated brand.  

CSR is another major reason why we find many businesses jumping on the PSA band-wagon. Corporates are required to show a small percentage of their income being spent on good for society and this seems to be an interesting avenue to show the concern and seriousness of the organization for a particular cause, achieve a certain degree of brand recall and respect in the eyes of audience and also manage the regulations and policy requirements.

How these ads can be more effective in achieving ground results, it is yet to be seen but unless there is a change in how ad agencies, government, NGOs and business houses look at PSAs as the vehicle of social messages, PSAs may continue to be marred by “what a beautiful ad!” syndrome without actually doing what it must do.

Cheers,