ALEXA LOSES HER VOICE

Objectives

Amazon needed to bring the magic of Alexa’s everyday relevance to life in a way that would help drive purchase intent.
The Amazon Echo family had launched several new devices and faced increased competition during the Christmas 2017 season. This was a key time for Echo, as Amazon looked to maintain category leadership through innovation and familiarity, whilst having to evolve targeting away from early adopters to a harder-to-convince “Early Mass” audience..

Strategy & solution

A week before the big game, Alexa users who asked ‘Alexa, who will win the Super Bowl?’ heard her cough and splutter in her reply. The sense that Alexa was losing her voice was reinforced by an online teaser starring Jeff Bezos. Users started tweeting and asking, what’s wrong with Alexa? Is she ok?
Shortly after, famous celebrities began posting videos showing themselves unboxing Alexa branded headsets. The social chatter continued, as users discovered the famous replacements and over 60 on device Easter eggs.
On the day of the big game itself, Alexa’s replacements were revealed. The real Alexa remained silent throughout the airing of the ad – until the end , when she came back to resume her duties as the nation’s favorite voice assistant.
In the end, we proved, that no matter the completion, there is only one Alexa.

Results

The spot was viewed over 40M times and was the most talked about campaign on twitter the same week, with 720K mentions.

The ‘Alexa loses her voice’ was the most talked about campaign the week leading up to the Super Bowl.