Amazon Enters Influencer Marketing with the Celebrity Store

Have you ever purchased something based upon the fact that your favorite celebrity enduring it? Better yet, have you purchased a product produced and sold under a celebrity brand? Amazon is banking that you have, with the launch of their ‘The Celebrity Store’ which features self-branded produced sold by the retail giant by a selected group of top actors, athletes and influencers.

Celebrities cashing in on their personal brand isn’t anything new. In fact celebrities sometimes leverage their personal brands to keep themselves relevant. And often these celebrities turn to management companies to help them realize their full potential in sales (Olenski, 2018).

The Celebrity Store, which pushes celebrity endorsed products, most of which were co-created by the celebrities themselves.  With current counts tracking at 18 celebrities across 10 brands, The Celebrity Store provides consumers celebrity endorsed merchandise, each curated with their virtual store (Smith, 2018).  

Given Amazon’s position as one of the biggest four technology companies, do they really feel that there is much to gain with this new influencer tactic?

The answer is yes, celebrity sells. With today’s ever expanding market of choice, consumers can feel overwhelmed when determining what product to choose. Often decisions are left to emotion and a celebrity connection may make the difference on making that decision (Creswell, 2008).

So does Amazon really need to improve their marketing?

Amazon sure thinks so. Amazon has saturated the market with their Prime membership offering.  The company understands that they can’t keep adding millions of new memberships every year, so they are re-evaluating their current marketing approach, expanding far beyond the traditional tactics focused on sales promotions like ‘Prime Day’ to influencer tactics that are celebrity driven (Soper, 2019).  

To further expand Amazon’s reach, the company collaborated with Snapchat as part of their affiliate program, allowing influencers the ability to collect commissions based upon amazon promoted and linked products.

Since Amazon developed their Marketplace, which allows for others to sell their wares, sales resulted in huge profits for the business, tapping into revenues once generated by eBay. This really illustrated the future earing potential of Amazon by leveraging new sales channels, and expanding their marketing integration approach, supporting the notion of trying something new.

The result?  It’s working. 

Amazon’s revenue remains on the rise with steady increases since 2015.  Leveraging influencer-marketing tactics through The Celebrity Store and expanding their online integration with social media platforms, are just another way for Amazon to dominate online sales, keeping them in prime position against the competition.  

Resources:

Creswell, J. (2008, June 22). Nothing Sells Like Celebrity. The New York Times. Retrieved from: https://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/22/business/media/22celeb.html

Olenski, S. (2018), April 2). Brands, Branding and Celebrities. Forbes. Retrieved from: https://www.forbes.com/sites/steveolenski/2018/04/02/brands-branding-and-celebrities/#2fad53854db9

Smith, J. (2018, October 8). Amazon Launches “The Celebrity Store” to Spur Influencer Marketing.  TJI Research.  Retrieved from:  https://this.just.in/amazon-launches-the-celebrity-store-to-spur-influencer-marketing/

Soper, S. (2019, July, 15). Amazon Taps Kobe Bryant and Other Celebs to Generate Prime Day Buzz. Bloomberg. Retrieved from: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-07-15/amazon-taps-kobe-bryant-and-other-celebs-to-generate-prime-day-buzz

Zetlin, M (2017, June 29). Here’s How Amazon Gets You to Buy More Stuff. Inc. Retrieved from: https://www.inc.com/minda-zetlin/heres-how-amazon-gets-you-to-buy-more-stuff.html