For the 2022 college year, Amazon created its first ever campaign for the Amazon Off to College event. The brief? GET incoming college students TO believe that Amazon offers great value BY showing how Amazon’s one-stop destination helps them become more of who they want to be in college.

Our primary objective was to drive customer engagement with Amazon, with increased customer purchase frequency (primary), and to strengthen the value perception (secondary / as a support, specifically the perception that “Amazon offers great value for money”).

There’s a million home reality shows, but none of them talk about college. So when we launched our first ever college retail campaign, we created the home show the world was missing: Dorm Roomz. Trading 10,000 sq ft mansions and celebrities for dorms and students, each of the five episodes featured a college-going influencer — including gold medalist Suni Lee (Auburn) and actor Storm Reid (USC) — giving an unscripted tour of their comically-modest dorm rooms.

The campaign showcased the Off to Collection by naturally integrating products found on Amazon including — snacks, gaming chairs, even an unauthorized air fryer — into each episode. Influencers were given free rein to shop Amazon’s collection of college items and curate their own dorm to fit their style and personality. Customers could even “shop the episode” as part of a curated collection on the Off to College event site.

Our audience was college students (A17-24), financially Semi-Independent individuals that — despite some help from their parents — play a large part in their purchase decisions. These students are part of a generation that has been globally connected since they were born. Social media plays a substantial role in the way they interact with the world, from friends to brands to the influencers/content creators they love to follow. Rather than a traditional retail campaign, our approach was to create authentic branded content that fit naturally into college students’ feeds — with influencers (who were going through the college experience themselves) and Amazon Off to College products at the center of it all.

The Off to College 2022 campaign was live from 7/14/2022 – 8/14/2022 across POLV (Premium Online Video), Digital, and Social channels. Creative assets included: :15s (OLV | POLV and Digital), :06s (OLV | Digital), and :15s for (Audio | Digital).

Full-length episodes were posted organically by each influencer (as well as Amazon handles) on Youtube, Instagram, TikTok, and Snapchat.

Dorm Roomz was a hit, resulting in over 680M digital impressions, 600M social impressions, 330M video views and 4.37M clicks. The campaign also garnered attention from Essence, OK Magazine, Entertainment Tonight Online, E! Online, Apartment Therapy, Variety, and TMZ. The campaign was also picked up by other business verticals including Prime Student and Home.