Pitch CMO Summit 2018: Amazon Wants To Be The Most Customer-Centric Company: Ravi Desai

At the recently held Pitch CMO Summit, the flagship property of the e4m Group, Amazon's Ravi Desai spelt out its goal to be the most customer-centric company in all the markets it operates in. “Amazon currently wants to be India’s most customer-centric company, globally as well. That’s what gets us

by pitchteam
Published - March 19, 2018
3 minutes To Read
Pitch CMO Summit 2018: Amazon Wants To Be The Most Customer-Centric Company: Ravi Desai

At the recently held Pitch CMO Summit, the flagship property of the e4m Group, Amazon's Ravi Desai spelt out its goal to be the most customer-centric company in all the markets it operates in. “Amazon currently wants to be India’s most customer-centric company, globally as well. That’s what gets us to work every single day,” said Desai, ?Director, Mass and Brand Marketing - ?Amazon India while delivering his address: ‘Why Sell if you can get Consumers to Buy?' Desai also took home the award for Best Experiential Marketing. Amazon’s reliance on the ‘Flywheel Effect’ covering three pillars of selection, pricing and convenience, will help it achieve the goal, stated Desai. “If you get these three factors right you can actually get traffic. The more traffic you get, the lower your prices become and more people get attracted to you both on the seller and customer side. This creates a flywheel effect which helps you expand the base of customers,” he shared. Desai reiterated Amazon’s belief of ‘It’s always Day One’ instilled by CEO Jeff Bezos last April to convey that the company will never stop being a start-up. The ‘Aur Dikhao’ campaign that was launched in 2015 (pressing on the pillar of selection) was necessitated from Amazon’s need to go out and ‘speak about’ their reasonably large (and growing) selection which they offered to customers. Desai offered that currently the e-commerce major’s Apni Dukaan’ has access to 160 million products, with 200 thousand products added every day and 25 million products eligible for its Prime members. Similarly the company crafted marketing campaigns highlighting its other pillar of pricing (with the tagline ‘Tyohaar Bade Dilwala’ in November 2016). In pursuit of this mission, Amazon India makes sure it does not overlook the other stakeholders- the seller base. It recently crossed the milestone of two lakh sellers in the market and even launched Amazon Saheli, in collaboration with its partner organizations SEWA last November, to offer women entrepreneurs across the country access to customers on Amazon India marketplace. There was even a campaign to back it. Desai said, “We are also about empowering local sellers, entrepreneurs and small shopkeepers to be able to come on to the platform. There are around thousands of them who are now beginning to export products on the basis of Amazon Global-selling platform across the western world, North America and Asian markets.” From empowerment Desai moved on to aspiration pointing out how India is a nation of dreamers. He said, “There’s a huge revolution happening in the country which fundamentally embodies this belief that if you have the talent and the right idea nothing can stop you.” Picking up this insight for 2016 IPL, the company crafted the Chonkpur Cheetahs campaign, which was received positively. “The idea was to launch not just a campaign but a team called Chonkpur Cheetahs which embodies the entire idea about Indians and their aspirations, irrespective of whether they are from metros or small towns.” Desai added that a music video was created to launch this campaign which generated 75K conversations. He concluded his session with another vital point that one doesn’t ‘really need to sell it.’ “It takes a brave brand to be able to take a stand like that and once in a while not have a product window. You need to get the right type of customer connect to be able to sell without selling,”he said. Amazon India’s #DeliverTheLove campaign, in August 2017, was created on this thought process and received ‘huge customer love and acceptance’ with mentions on Twitter by well-known personalities like Anand Mahindra and Raveena Tandon. But Desai maintains that they are just getting started. “It’s still day one,” he said. Watch the full address here

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