Amazon India always wins in positioning itself ahead of the competitors by making both buyers and sellers feel special. Continuing with this strategy, Amazon has rolled out an India-first packaging innovation to humanize the buyer-seller connect in the digital world by launching ‘Amazon StoryBoxes‘.

The aim

With Storyboxes, Amazon wants to share the stories of Indian sellers who are responsible for making unique products, which often reflect their own personal journeys. Amazon aims to acknowledge its sellers and help them build a stronger connection with customers. Also, the Storyboxes help customers understand that the product received has been through a journey of its own before being delivered to their doorstep.

Increasing engagement with a microsite

To increase the engagement factor, Amazon launched StoryBoxes with a first-of-its-kind interactive feature that enables customers to scan the seller face illustrations (created from QR code elements) on the box. The scan directs customers to a microsite at www.amazon.in/storyboxes that has more such similar stories.

Featuring seller stories in video ad

As a part of this campaign, Amazon has launched a video that features sellers telling their stories through delivery boxes that customers ordered. The video shows how every seller has its own story and how Amazon has transformed their lives.

The six seller stories featured on Storyboxes are of Rani Ravindran (Ravindran Silk Cotton), Biswajit Swain (Haastika), Vijaya Rajan (Sirimiri), Ibanshara Shullai (Zizira), Abdul Gafoor Khatri (Traditional Roganart), and Ashwin Sokke (Wow Skin Science).

Like the packaging idea, this video is also an innovation in advertising as Amazon has used an engaging and interesting concept by showcasing how customers felt while knowing these stories through the delivery boxes. You can watch the video below:

Offline engagement

Amazon always aims to engage with customers both online & offline. To give customers the best experience and amplify this campaign, Amazon placed on-ground installations showing sellers. Take this for example where Amazon installed a portrait on Banglore airport of famous artist Abdul Gafur Khatri who revived Rogan art in India. The most interesting part of all is that- this painting is made out of close to 300 Amazon boxes and allowing customers to literally see the face behind the boxes. It is a refreshing and innovative outdoor marketing idea to grab the attention of people.

Talking about the agencies behind this successful campaign, the idea has been developed by Leo Burnett Orchards, Amazon’s creative agency and Schbang was the digital partner of this campaign. They helped Amazon’s message to reach millions of users with exciting initiatives across all media platforms.

What experts say

Talking about the campaign, Mr. Gopal Pillai, Vice President, Seller Services, Amazon India, said,

“Sellers are a key part of the Amazon flywheel. We have over 5 lakh small businesses, artisans, women entrepreneurs, and emerging brands selling on our marketplace and every Amazon seller has a unique story behind their success. With StoryBoxes, we wanted to bring these stories to life. We have showcased 6 seller stories on our boxes till now, and we will soon be scaling this initiative up to bring many more such stories to you. We hope that this initiative will help customers get a glimpse of how they are an integral part of the transformation journeys of lakhs of sellers on Amazon.in.”

With this campaign, Amazon India has once again shown us that making the associated people feel special is still an impactful marketing strategy. What are your views on this? Share your thoughts in the comments section.