Amazon: Delivering a consistent voice at scale

How do you make sure Amazon always sounds like Amazon, when a project involves hundreds of stakeholders across the globe?

Amazon's extensive catalogue of private label products is crafted by a vast network of manufacturers — many of which are small businesses — located all over the world.

But with dozens of new collections launching every week, and because many of these manufacturers either have limited marketing resources, a language barrier, or both, ensuring every listing is consistent with the Amazon brand is often a challenge. 

For the past four years, Rocksalt's team of creative copywriters has been assisting these manufacturers, ensuring the language on every one of their listings is clear, compelling, and reflects the Amazon brand. 

The brief

Ensure the language on every Amazon private label product listing is consistent and on brand, and make it as easy as possible for Amazon customers to understand whether a product is right for them by clearly explaining what it does, its unique selling points, and key features. 

Our approach

Because this project involves a large volume of listings spanning products from a vast range of industries — from household essentials to lifestyle products, clothing, electronics, and beyond — it's all hands on deck. 

Every member of Rocksalt's copy team works on the project. To ensure continuity, we also have a project lead who acts as the single point of contact for Amazon's private label manufacturers and performs quality control. 

We also have regular catchups to make sure everyone is up to date on the status of the project and aware of any tweaks to Amazon's brand and tone of voice documentation. 

Aside from implementing Amazon's brand guidelines, user intent is fundamental to our approach. 

When a customer runs a search on Amazon, they typically want to find out two things: whether the product meets their requirements and is of good quality. 

We keep these needs front and centre, constantly asking ourselves whether the listing answers these questions in a satisfying way as we write the copy. 

The takeaway

Amazon's mission is to be the most customer-centric company in the world. This means providing superior customer service. But, just as important, it means making it as easy as possible for consumers to find what they're looking for on Amazon and figure out whether it's right for them. 

Needless to say, the way listings are written is key to the overall experience. When a customer can quickly find the information they need and this is written in a way that makes it easy to grasp, it reinforces the relationship of trust that keeps them coming back. 

Amazon's Brand Protection Services: Empowering sellers to reach new heights

How do you present a complex, multi-faceted product in a way that's simple and relatable?

As the world's leading e-commerce platform, Amazon goes to great lengths to equip sellers with the tools they need to grow their reach, build trust, and provide customers with a standout experience. 

Their suite of business services includes the Amazon Brand Protection Programme, a market-leading toolkit designed to help brands create a stronger Amazon presence, connect with more customers, and prevent counterfeiters and other bad actors from abusing the system and profiting off their hard work. 

But because the typical Amazon seller is a small operation where a handful of staff spin countless plates, it can be challenging for them to get to grips with the nuances of these brand-building and brand-protection tools, and understand why they should invest in them. 

Enter Rocksalt's team of creative copywriters, who helped Amazon's sales and marketing teams in the US, Europe, and beyond spell out the benefits of their Brand Protection Programme in a compelling and memorable way. 

The brief

Encourage more sellers to sign up to Amazon's Brand Protection Programme by showcasing how it can help them build stronger brands, deepen customer relationships, and protect against trademark and copyright infringement. 

Deliverables included:

• A brand protection ebook that explains each tool in Amazon's Brand Protection Programme in detail, including eligibility requirements, key benefits, and a rundown of how they work

• A series of case studies that shine a spotlight on businesses that have used Amazon's brand protection tools to grow their Amazon presence and build highly successful brands

How we did it

Any successful piece of copy is grounded in research, and this project was no different. 

Because Amazon are long-standing Rocksalt clients, our copy team was already familiar with Amazon's suite of business-to-business products and services. 

Nonetheless, we made sure we understood Amazon's brand protection tools inside out before we got stuck in. This involved thoroughly reviewing the available brand protection literature and discussing any points we weren't clear about with Amazon's subject-matter experts. 

For the case studies, we worked with Amazon to develop a questionnaire that would put interviewees at ease and bring out the story behind each brand: how the business came to be, why they chose to sell on Amazon, and how Amazon's brand protection tools have helped them overcome challenges and take their brands to the next level. 

As the brands chosen for our case studies were spread across the globe — from Seattle to Tokyo — local Amazon staff conducted the interviews. 

The outcome

While the brand protection ebook and case studies were technically two parts of the same project, we felt they required different approaches. 

Brand protection ebook

The purpose of the brand protection ebook is to help sellers grasp how each tool in Amazon's Brand Protection Programme works and whether it would be right for them and their brand. 

With this in mind, we put clarity and simplicity front and centre, leading with the benefits, breaking up the copy with lots of lists, and using similar subheadings for each section of the ebook. This approach makes it as easy as possible for readers to scan the information and home in on what they need to know. 

We also created a general overview of the Brand Protection Programme and how each tool fits into it. This way, readers can pinpoint the best place to get started on their brand protection journey even if they knew nothing about Amazon's brand protection programme beforehand.  

Brand protection case studies

Where the brand protection ebook was about educating sellers, the aim of the case studies was to showcase the effectiveness of Amazon's brand protection tools in the real world. 

For this reason, we treated each case study as a human-interest story to make it more relatable.

A classic three-act structure painted a compelling picture of how each business built their brand from the ground up. Using the business-owners' points of view and their own words, we then demonstrated, how Amazon's brand protection programmes helped them overcome challenges and get in front of an even bigger audience of loyal customers. 

The takeaway

It doesn't matter how impressive and useful a product or service is. Unless the customer understands exactly what they stand to gain from it, they're unlikely to be interested. 

By making key information easy to access, and showing readers how similar brands have been able to stand out, make more sales, and solve serious issues like intellectual property infringement, we created a persuasive business case for Amazon's Brand Protection Programme.