B2B advertising has long been a victim of outdated thinking, thanks to the pervasiveness of rational, feature-led communication that overlooks the fact that business people are human after all. Recent research from the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute has uprooted this view. The ‘95:5 rule’ reinforces the importance of mental availability, and driving fame amongst a majority, ‘out-of-market’ business audience. We believe that this work from Amazon Business stands apart as a textbook demonstration of this theory in action, showing how exceptional brand storytelling can deliver both short- and long-term business effects in a B2B context.

With discussion about AI monopolizing the zeitgeist, it’s all too easy to assume that corporate America is in the grip of technological revolution. But the reality in most US businesses could not be more different. Far less than half of American companies have taken full advantage of the power of technology to automate their operations and transform their prospects. Procurement, an unassuming yet essential function of any enterprise, is particularly overlooked.

So for a brand like Amazon Business - alone in the business supplies market amongst brands like Office Depot and Staples, with their roots in traditional, bricks-and-mortar retail - times like these offer unparalleled opportunity. The following work was developed to demonstrate how Amazon could bring its technological and logistical know-how to bear on an outdated and underappreciated business function, transforming procurement into an engine for growth in difficult times.

Amazon Business was launched in the US in 2015 to provide a more comprehensive solution to the procurement needs of all business’s. Beyond the benefits expected of an Amazon service, such as wide-ranging choice, good value and speedy delivery, Amazon Business offers procurement professionals a smarter way to buy, enabled by data-driven features like spend-management and buying analytics. Despite these advantages however, only 3% of buying professionals had any idea it existed by the start of 2023. And those who did had trouble differentiating its value proposition from Amazon. We were briefed to make Amazon Business famous in its own right amongst the business community, boosting awareness and explaining what set the brand apart.

Buy Smarter. Dream Bigger is a simple promise to ambitious business leaders that gets right to the heart of what makes them tick: growth. It heralds the arrival of a more streamlined future for business procurement, free from the endless tedium of every executive's pet hate - office admin. It helps to set the brand apart from the category, visualizing the transformational power of Amazon Business across a range of different fictional business scenarios, and elevating its role beyond ‘reliable supplier’ to that of a ‘strategic partner for business’. And it does this in a way that allows for considerable flexibility and longevity in executional approach, inspiring creative that’s tailored to the varying needs of different audience segments over time.

Our target audience was the ‘business decision-makers’ - CEOs, CPOs & entrepreneurs - with the power to make the call on which supplier their business should use. Extensive interviews with this audience offered up a clearer picture of their needs and priorities. Under pressure from management and shareholders alike to deliver success in a challenging economic environment, their remit was to ensure not a single second or cent was wasted in pursuit of growth. Yet the business reality they faced was very different. Research from a leading productivity provider had shown us that their workers were spending, on average, 3 weeks a year on menial tasks that distracted from more pressing business challenges.

Bloom, the TV ad at the heart of this campaign, is a complex, choreographed stage show performance featuring a single 30” long take. To achieve this, we partnered up with legendary directing duo Dom & Nick, alongside the ARRI Virtual Production team and their 360 volume stage. Rarely used in film, let alone advertising, ARRI technology was instrumental in realizing the true visual splendor of the idea. Central to the film’s success was ensuring the human element of the performance was perfectly in sync with the technical, as we watch our florist’s business grow, and her shop and surroundings transform exponentially in line with her fortunes, in one linear camera movement.

The centerpiece of an integrated campaign across TV, OOH and digital, supported by a suite of bespoke social content.

Buy Smarter. Dream Bigger marked a step-change in Amazon Business’s approach to brand advertising. It’s impact, over both the short- and long-term, is illustrated by significant shifts across a range of key metrics:

-Traffic to Amazon Business’s website increased to 240k monthly visitors, an 8.6% increase compared to before the campaign.

-Amazon Business’s association with being a ‘strategic partner for business’ climbed 1800bps.

-Unaided awareness climbed by 552bps and 516bps respectively across medium and large enterprise audience segments. Consideration also improved, with 4 in 5 procurement pros surveyed now saying they’d think about choosing it as a supplier. Intent to buy from Amazon Business over a 3 month horizon climbed by 772bps.

For confidentiality reasons, Amazon won't share sensitive commercial & financial data, but the campaign’s ROI outstripped Amazon’s own, stringent, internal performance benchmarks by 100%.