Amazon Ads – Building Meaningful Brands

Leveraging our decades-long expertise in tracking consumer Social Values, we collaborated with Amazon Ads to better understand the context within which consumers develop expectations, behaviors, and brand preferences.

About The Project

Amazon Ads, in partnership with Environics Research, conducted a global, qualitative, and quantitative research study, leveraging our decades-long expertise in tracking consumer Social Values to better understand the context within which consumers develop expectations, behaviors, and brand preferences. The goal was to facilitate deeper connections between brands and their consumers.

The Higher Impact Report is an annual study focused on exploring the evolving values and issues of importance for consumers around the world. The report itself has evolved over the years to cover more regions and topics, but the core goal remained the same, to showcase the importance of brands leading with their values. Amazon Ads set out to help advertisers better understand their key audiences, offer new ways to engage with them, and shared best practices for showing up authentically. For the report’s campaign, the main goals were to drive increased awareness, consideration, and brand equity.

Amazon Ads Social Values
Building Meaningful Brands

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Our Approach

The ‘Higher Impact: Social Values’ study focused on measuring Social Values that impact consumer behaviors and brand choices, and ultimately, uncovered global consumer themes to guide impactful brand marketing through values-driven stories. Our goal was to develop macro-level insights to help brand marketers and brands better understand the values context within which consumers develop the motivations and perspectives that dictate marketplace behaviors. Environics Research & Amazon Ads surveyed 2,840 consumers across the United States, United Kingdom, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Canada, and Mexico.

The Solution

The Higher Impact study allowed us to develop a deeper understanding of consumers’ experiences when it comes to their needs and expectations – and how and why they interact with products, brands, or advertisements. Our study uncovered three core values-driven themes that are shaping the global consumer landscape and impacting consumer actions.

Meeting the moment

Why recent shifts in consumer behavior determine how, when, and where brands find their audiences

Prioritizing community and impact

How values-driven brands are helping to fulfill consumers’ high expectations.

Leading with authenticity

The need for transparency to build trust and loyalty.

Application Of Insights

The ‘Higher Impact: Social Values’ study uncovered that ultimately brand marketers will need to focus on redefining & generating brand value by cultivating meaningful connections with consumers through shared values, represented in what the brand stands for and how it acts.

Overall, the insights and findings from Higher Impact informed 30+ marketing and thought-leadership assets including paid-post content in partnership with the New York Times, T Brand Studio and Adweek, a three-part nurture email series, key-note speaker series content at UnBoxed and IAB, a multitude of Amazon hosted blog posts, and paid and organic social media promotion content. The study has enabled Amazon Ads to leverage their understanding of social values to differentiate themselves as thought-leaders by leaning into consumer-first narratives and data-driven insights.

The New York Times paid post in partnership with T Brand Studio edition of Higher Impact, titled ‘The Power of Brands to Drive Social Change’ exceeded scroll depth benchmarks by 60%, and results from the brand lift study found that 9 in 10 readers successfully recalled the paid post, highlighting the content’s strong memorability and branding. Moreover, the paid post further encouraged readers to visit the Amazon Ads website and strengthened agreement for ‘provides captivating storytelling.’

Associated articles and marketing material produced as a result of the Higher Impact Social Values study.

Global consumers surveyed in the United States and Europe (United Kingdom, Italy, France, Germany and Spain).

2023 Higher Impact Study
The power of purpose-driven brands

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About The Client

Amazon Ads helps brands design ad experiences that delight customers and deliver meaningful business results. With Amazon’s first-party insights based on shopping, streaming and browsing signals, brands can craft relevant campaigns that enhance the customer experience. Additionally, Amazon Ads offers solutions across Amazon properties, including Twitch, IMDb TV, Amazon Music, and third-party publishers and exchanges, helping brands reach the right audiences in the right places―no matter where they are on their customer journey.