Why is this work relevant for Brand Experience & Activation?

Amazon's "Alexa gets Aussies" was an immersive, product-based brand experience for an Australian audience. We worked directly with the Amazon Alexa product team to enhance the voice assistants' language muscle by teaching Alexa 100s of the most frequently used Australian slang, idioms, and Aussie-isms. We then linked these catch-phrases and terms to a vast array of routines, skills, and actions to use on existing and new Amazon Alexa products - all to be experienced by consumers.

Background

In the world of voice assistants, Amazon Alexa is a firm category leader around the world. In 2018, it was introduced to the Australian market where smart speaker adoption was rapidly increasing. While Australia has since surpassed the US in smart speaker adoption, the problem was Australians had adopted the competition. Aussies didn’t seem to get what Amazon Alexa offered. So, we needed to show that Alexa really understood Australians, and raise awareness of how Alexa’s thousands of features and skills could fit right into our unique way of life. We were briefed to come up with a creative concept that would: - Provide an integrated and immersive campaign that included a product experience - Talk to heartland Australia - Drive brand awareness and brand recall - Demonstrate Alexa's existing capabilities and routines

Describe the creative idea (20% of vote)

Our uniquely Australian take on the English language isn't just slang – our conversational idiosyncrasies are a crucial part of how Australians connect with each other. The problem is, it's also harder to understand for those outside the Aussie bubble; even for the world's most skilled voice assistant. To solve this, we worked directly with the Amazon Alexa product team to enhance the voice assistants' language muscle by teaching Alexa 100s of the most frequently used Australian slang, idioms, and Aussie-isms. We then linked these catch-phrases and terms to a vast array of routines, skills, and actions. Following Alexa’s Aussie language update, we recruited some of the nation's most iconic and relevant Aussies to show how Alexa could now understand "Aussie" in its day-to-day use. With more Aussie phrases being learned every day, Alexa isn't just sounding local, she's fitting right into our unique way of life.

Describe the strategy (20% of vote)

In Australia, Amazon Alexa was late to the voice assistant market where Google Home was first to market and had lead in establishing the category. At the time, people buying into the category were early tech adopters. The challenge for Amazon Alexa was how it could take on the competition by engaging and enticing mainstream audiences to the fun and utility of Alexa the digital assistant. Through research, we identified two key barriers to overcome for mainstream audiences when it came to purchasing a voice assistant. 1) A lack of awareness for, and affinity towards, Amazon Alexa 2) People didn’t understand the benefits of owning an Alexa device Our strategy in a nutshell: Make people feel like they want to invite Alexa into their home by making her feel relatable, human, and most importantly, Aussie!

Describe the execution (30% of vote)

We didn’t just promote Alexa with an Aussie wrapper, we worked on the service and experience to make all touchpoints – product, content, PR, influencer, customer experience – feel more Aussie. Alongside the Alexa product team, we taught Alexa how to respond to and understand the meaning of over 100 traditional and modern phrases to demonstrate Alexa understands the quirks and slang of our language. These utterances were available, and continue to be available, to all Alexa-owners to experience. To launch, high-profile TV presenter Sophie Monk and TikTok comedians The Inspired Unemployed brought to life Alexa's latest Aussie capabilities in a 6 part content series that showed them in funny, relatable situations with Alexa. To further amplify, twelve leading influencers created content highlighting Alexa's Aussie personality and capabilities. Through these various touchpoints, Australian consumers were able to immerse themselves in the campaign and enjoy the Aussie-isms for themselves.

List the results (30% of vote)

BRAND Speaking to heartland Australia: - On Facebook the 25-34 age group delivered 28% of total impressions (6.4MM) and 35-44 age group delivered 21% (1.2MM) of total thruplays. - Males outperformed females, delivering 56% of total impressions and 53% of total thruplays. Brand Lift Study YouTube - Overall Ad Recall: relative lift of 38.6%, resulting in 490,624 lifted users - Overall Awareness: a lift of 3.5%, resulting in 86,144 lifted users Facebook - Ad recall lift of +6.8pts (vs. 5% APAC average) - A message association lift of +3.7pts (vs. 1% APAC average) TOMA: - Closed TOMA gap +600bps YoY (Q4 v Q4 metrics) vs competitors DRIVING AWARENESS - 82mil impressions - 38.6% ad-recall - 14.9 mil video completes - 131k clicks PR/ INFLUENCER - 59 pieces of national, broadcast and lifestyle coverage - 70 pieces of influencer content - 6.14% ER (Industry benchmark: 2%) - 942,252 organic influencer video

Please tell us about the cultural insight that inspired the work

When Alexa enters a new market, it's given an accent to make it feel more accessible and local. But simply giving Alexa an Australian accent isn't making Alexa a true voice assistant. In Australia, it's not just how we speak; it's what we say. Our slang serves as a proud cultural identifier, and we like that those colloquialisms separate and define us. Sure, we can speak to a voice assistant, but we can't speak naturally. We can't use the cultural colloquialisms that make us truly Australian. So we went beyond simply giving Alexa an Aussie accent and taught it the phrases and words that allowed Aussies to overcome smart speaker hesitancy making Alexa feel “like a mate”. Ultimately, we wanted Aussies to get Alexa, because they now know that Alexa gets Aussies.