All-new Kindle Brand Strategy
With all kinds of new e-readers in the market, how can Kindle stay ahead of the market?
Note: This is not a real pitch for Amazon Kindle’s new branding strategy. This is a branding strategy discussion essay that I did for a branding summer course at the University of Amsterdam.
After popularising ebooks over the last decade, the US-based technology company, Amazon, released its first consumer device, the Amazon Kindle, in 2007. Kindle is a mobile electronic reader device (or e-reader) made specifically for books or any kind of literature such as magazines and journals. It was crafted based on Jeff Bezos’s vision “to create the best e-reader in the world that is accessible for everyone” (Newton, 2014). The first launch of Kindle was a massive success as early adapters bought their first revolutionary e-reader within five and a half hours. With continuous innovation and ambition on making the best e-reader, Amazon Kindle has turned itself to be the market leader of e-readers, and Kindle became synonymous with the word & concept of ‘e-reader’ (Newton, n.d. & Rubin, 2017). Soon after the launch of Amazon Kindle, Barnes & Noble, one of the leading US booksellers and other independent companies, introduced their product line of e-readers (Rich, 2009). With a growing market and increasing competition, Amazon Kindle has to review its current branding strategy as it is lagging behind some of its competitors despite being the market leader in the e-reader market. Kindle has to revamp its branding strategy to keep the brand and its product relevant in the market and maintain its position as the market leader of the e-reader category.
Current Kindle Brand Strategy
Since the beginning, Amazon has been highlighting the functional benefits of Kindle. It is a reasonable branding strategy for Amazon to do this as it is their role as the market leader to educate the market about e-readers and what is the standard of a good e-reader: anti-glare screen, waterproof, thin, light, no notifications interruption, and the lists are endless. Over a decade later, they are still using the same branding strategy on highlighting mostly on Kindle’s functional benefit. This is a reasonably different approach when compared to the worlds’ most valuable brands like Nike and Coca Cola where they differentiate their brands through emotional benefits of the brand, not their products' functional benefit (Interbrand, 2016). Emotional benefit has been one of the key elements on what makes brands strive and stand out in the market, as well as one of the non-functional brand elements that impact 80% of customer purchasing decisions (Chernatony, 2010, as cited in West, Clifford & Atkinson, 2018). This does not suggest Kindle to stop mentioning about functional benefits of its products. Arguably, functional benefits can be copied swiftly by competitors, but it works a little differently for non-functional benefits as they are trickier for others to imitate (Chernatony, 2010, as cited in West et al., 2018).
In recent years, there have been some developments on how Kindle brand themselves not only in the US market, but in Italy, India, and China, with their advertising, campaigns offline and online. Each market adopts different way to portray different aspects of Kindle’s functional benefits, for example, in one of the advertising campaigns for the US and Italy market, they highlight Kindle’s functional benefit of being visible under the sunlight (differentiating it from typical tablets) and when it’s dark (differentiating it from books).
In a Kindle US commercial, it features people enjoying their Kindle in very serene and calming scenes while the commercial mentions the functional benefits of the new Kindle. The video commercial ended with Kindle’s brand essence, ‘Find Your Story.’ However, this seems to differ from one market to the other.
Despite the endless mentions of functional benefits, Kindle India took a different approach as they highlight more of the story behind the person who’s reading the Kindle. Amazon Kindle India also creates different campaigns around the idea of ‘Joy of Reading,’ ‘Reading Should Never Shop’ & ‘We Are All Readers.’ With these campaigns, Kindle India successfully merges both functional and non-functional benefits from the story element into the commercial, which reflects Kindle’s overall brand image. With all of the creative elements in the commercial, Kindle India should pick a focus on what kind of non-functional benefits that they want to depict and this focus should be spearheaded by a new branding strategy which will bring focus and consistency for Kindle markets from the US and all over the world.
What can they do better?
Before going more in-depth on how to improve Kindle’s branding strategy, it is essential to find out consumer’s behavior towards high-high-technology products, especially about their purchasing decision. As a social being, we are born to look for validation to specific groups to find the group that we belong to, and apparently, it influences people’s decision making when they purchase high-tech products. People purchase and adopt consumer high-technology products in order to belong & to seek social acceptance in a particular social group that they want to belong to, according to a study by Danilo, Robert & Maktoba in 2007 on branding strategy and consumer high-technology product. The study also found that people are increasingly seeking products that are displayed in the broadcast media such as television, magazine, and newspaper. The authors argue that the findings support the theory of social belonging assuming people use the image of people represented on broadcast media as their reference point of purchase rather than buying what they need.
‘Belonging’ and ‘representation on broadcast media’ are two crucial consumer insights that will be used to revamp Kindle’s branding strategy. When we look at the current performance of Kindle’s branding, Kindle has not accentuated much about their non-functional benefits, and representation in the broadcast media is minuscule. By focusing on the feeling of belongingness and representation on broadcast media will propel Kindle’s brand image, set its stance as the real deal in the e-reader’s market, and reach more target markets.
- Increasing Visibility
Using the ‘Brand Promise Venn Model,’ Amazon Kindle is winning in both be & do circles as its success is based on its promise on making the best e-reader & executing it. However, when we look for any publications, advertising campaigns and its activity in social media, Amazon Kindle seems to have very little presence in the broadcast media & social media. Therefore, Kindle has to step up and increase its presence in the media world to increase its visibility, thus, increase the chance its target market to discover Amazon Kindle in the first place before meeting its competitors.
2. Emotional & Self-expressive Benefits
Amazon Kindle needs a content concept to publish in the broadcast media and advertising campaign, and here, Kindle will use a different approach than its previous content strategy. Rather than featuring Kindle’s functional benefits, the new branding strategy will focus on introducing and representing Kindle’s emotional & self-expressive benefits.
As a product targeted for ebook and book readers, these people have similar commonalities such as that they read to get inspired, they enjoy reading, they are curious, focused, and knowledgable. These are the benefits that Kindle is able to communicate with the world that owning and reading a Kindle makes you feel this way. On top of that, as a consumer high-technology product, it still has to differentiate from reading from a book or a tablet, and this is by portraying Kindle users are smart & accomplished — this can be shown through the lifestyle of the people that will be represented in Kindle broadcast media content. People will be driven and persuaded to have a Kindle because of the associations that Kindle has on being knowledgable, curious, focused, smart & accomplished as these are some qualities that people tend to look for social acceptance in the society, especially when purchasing a consumer high-technology products. By stressing at the non-functional benefits, Kindle will have a new identity that no one can easily imitate as it stays true to Kindle’s core branding strategy.
3. All-new Brand Essence
Amazon Kindle has different types of e-readers, crafted based on different functional benefits. Thus, each comes with a different price tag. However, each e-reader still conveys the same emotional and self-expressive benefits as these are the parts where people will expect to feel like when they use a Kindle. On top of all the reasons why people read, being inspired is the real essence of reading as when we read, we tend to be moved emotionally or intellectually stimulated. With the functional benefits of Kindle itself, we can combine both benefits and create a brand essence: “Be inspired, anytime, anywhere.”
People As Kindle’s Focus
Throughout Kindle’s website and video commercial, you can hear and read ‘the best e-reader’ phrase in most of the contents. It is not wrong to say you are the best when you are the market leader, but in reality, people do not care much about ‘the best’ title for high-tech consumer products. In the study of Danilo et al., 2007, quality does not have a direct impact on high technology product adaptation among consumers, and consumers have lower interest in searching for the information of the products as they are more influenced by products that are presented on broadcast media. Therefore, it is fair to say that people are not engaged with functional benefits, but personas on broadcast media emotionally evoke them, and this is easily implemented through stories.
Stories are compelling because they engage people on an emotional and even self-expressive level. Amazon Kindle India has been doing this in some of its video commercials since Kindle was introduced in India five years ago, and the reactions have been positive (Iyer, 2014). Amazon Kindle can use the same techniques of using stories as its main style to deliver its message to the world. It should not be any stories, but it has to be about “how Kindle makes someone’s life better,” and if applicable, also the impact on others’ life. This way, people have a special connection with the story and wonder if he/she can have what the person on the TV commercial is experiencing by just having a Kindle. This will be transformational for Kindle’s growth.
The New Branding Strategy Approach
As Kindle comes in a group family, the new branding strategy approach is not to guide each product of the group family for their product campaigns but more to enhance the branding of the whole Kindle family and Kindle brand image. The strategy is tailor-made for Kindle to package the general image better and customers to understand Kindle easily & differentiate itself from its competitors. This approach is also based on the recommendation of Danilo, Robert & Maktoba's study (2007) and also their findings that people are drawn to the associations that they see on broadcast media about a particular brand.
References:
All-new Kindle Paperwhite Video Commercial. (n.d.) Retrieved from https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07CXG6C9W?ref=ods_ucc_eink_pprwhite_nrc_ucc
Amazon Kindle Paperwhite Campaign. (2015). Retrieved from http://www.graphis.com/entry/3bcc970d-77af-4952-9116-cd1230ab857c/
Danilo, H., Robert, W. Jr., & Maktoba, O. (2007). Branding strategy and consumer high-technology product. Journal of Product & Brand Management. 16. 98–111. 10.1108/10610420710739973. Retrieved from https://www.researchgate.net/publication/235311213_Branding_strategy_and_consumer_high-technology_product
Iyer, Byravee. (2014). Amazon captures joy of reading for Kindle launch in India. Retrieved from https://www.campaignasia.com/video/amazon-captures-joy-of-reading-for-kindle-launch-in-india/392110
Newton, C. (n.d.) THE EVERYTHING BOOK: READING IN THE AGE OF AMAZON. Retrieved from https://www.theverge.com/2014/12/17/7396525/amazon-kindle-design-lab-audible-hachette
West, A., Clifford, J., & Atkinson, D. (2018). “Alexa, build me a brand”: An Investigation into the impact of Artificial Intelligence on Branding. The Business and Management Review, 9 (3), pg. 321–330. Retrieved from http://www.abrmr.com/myfile/best_track/conference_89787.pdf
Rich, M. (2009). Barnes & Noble to Introduce Its Own Electronic Reader. Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/20/technology/20reader.html
Rubin, B, F. (2017). 2 big innovations that made Amazon’s Kindle a success. Retrieved from https://www.cnet.com/news/2-big-innovations-that-made-amazon-kindle-ereader-a-success-10th-anniversary/
