For our FireTV campaign for Amazon, media context and partner content was everything.

While many people understand how FireTV works, most don’t realise that it has Amazon’s voice assistant, Alexa, built in. Our objective was to demonstrate the power of FireTV and Alexa, and get people to say ‘I wish my TV could do that’.

We worked with two key media partners to build a reverse product placement campaign – using content from their key programming in our advertising, in order to demonstrate the power of using Alexa while watching TV.

Amazon’s Fire TV is more than just a streaming platform. Sure, it has all the films and TV your heart could ever desire, but it also has a secret weapon; it has Alexa built in. The challenge Amazon had to overcome was that the Alexa was a secret weapon.

TV has been the focal point of British front rooms for decades. It’s what all of our furniture points at, and it forms the social currency that drives conversations across the nation. Over the last decade, second screening has amplified that social currency beyond our immediate circle of friends, and shows like Gogglebox have effectively created a mirror to life.

For advertisers, the opportunity is obvious, and while very few can compete with the social currency of television, those few that do can become part of the cultural fabric of the UK. So we set ourselves a challenge; how could we show that Fire TV was different, at a time when everyone was focused on TV, and start a conversation about Fire TV that extended beyond the front room.

It was a tough challenge.

One of the biggest benefits of having Alexa baked in to Amazon’s Fire TV is the ability to ask her questions that pop up while you’re watching TV. We’ve all had moments when we’ve been watching TV and seen a product we’ve wanted to immediately order, or remembered that thing we should’ve booked yesterday…

Alexa makes that easy, all you have to do is ask!

So our solution was to demonstrate the power of Alexa and Fire TV, using key moments in British television to bring it to life, and get the nation to sit back and say “I wish my TV could do that!”

We worked in partnership with ITV and Channel 4 to licence content from some of the nation’s favourite shows, and recreate clips of the shows shown through Fire TV. Amazon’s D1 creative team helped them create six ads where we showed a little content, then paused the show, and asked Alexa a question. We then deployed this content to sit perfectly alongside the shows and matched the content in the shows to the respective Fire TV ad.

The impact was a perfect contextual demonstration of what Fire TV is capable of. Viewers of The Handmaids Tale, First Dates, and Ninja Warrior were shown what a difference Fire TV could make to their viewing experience (as well as making life a little easier).

We ran 129 contextual TV spots, and the effect was an 18% point increase in perceptions of innovation, a 10% point increase in perceptions of ease of use, and most importantly, a 29% point increase in people learning something new about Fire TV. At the same time, Amazon’s econometrics showed that the Can Your TV Do That? Campaign was more efficient than similar campaigns running across the same period. The client said, “This campaign demonstrated how entertaining consumers with contextually relevant creative product demonstrations drive positive business results”.