OUGD504 - SB2 - Design for Screen - Prime Ad

Problem - Many people just see Amazon Prime as a one-day delivery service. Other aspects, such as Amazon Video, Music and Drive need to be clearly promoted and explained as being part of the Prime service.

Deliverable - A short advert that clearly promotes the features and price of Amazon Prime. This should work on mobile and desktop devices and should be implemented on the Amazon site and social media pages.

To keep continued consistency with the re-designed platform, the custom typeface and colour scheme were used when making the ad. As a starting point, the Prime platform was analysed in terms of its features. The 5 main areas of Prime identified are as follows:

1-Click - Unlimited One-Day Delivery
Drive - Unlimited Photo Storage
Music - 2 Million Ad-Free Songs
Video - Thousands Of Videos
Many More - Kindle First, Twitch Prime, Student Benefits (Lesser features of Prime that are integrated into the marketplace)

As the majority of the re-branded Amazon site compromises of a blue background and contrasting white text, the same approach was used when approaching the advert to instantly make viewers identify with the new Amazon platform. As it was clear from the crit, a lot of people consider Prime as being just a one-day delivery service. To ensure that this problem was resolved, a simple, straight-to-the-point ad needed to be made.

In terms of the ad orientation, horizontal was the most suitable. Whilst the majority of Amazon users are on mobile devices, the ad is aiming to appeal to those that don't particularly use the site. Furthermore, adverts are typically displayed in a horizontal form - TV ads, Facebook ads, Youtube and other formats are all horizontal.

As learnt from some COP research, social media is a crucial part to ways in which brands market themselves. Today, ads are mainly viewed on platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and Youtube. They are also viewed in TV ad breaks too. Whilst the opportunities on social media are great, there are certain limitations that needed to be understood and considered before making the ad. Locowise, a social performance agency, highlight specific statistics for various social media videos. The stats seen below are particularly for Facebook. It highlights that:

◦ People only watched a third of a video on average.

◦ 78.2% of all video views are autoplayed, whilst only 21.8% of all views are clicked-to-play sound.

◦ 53.2% of all views are “30 seconds views. Videos shorter than 30 seconds are viewed for longer. Further, they also get a larger number of people clicking on them to turn on the sound compared to the average video.

Opposed to the walkthrough video, this ad needs to grab people's attention immediately, without relying on the use of sound. As only 21.8% of people click to hear ad audio, it is evident that the ad must be visually direct, engaging and straight to the point. In terms of the ad length, it is clear that it should be under 30 seconds, with engaging content in the first 10 seconds to draw viewers in. The clearest and most direct way to explain Prime, without a narrative track, was to use short text transitions. As the purpose of the ad is to highlight all of Prime's features, and the cost of the service, a mind map was made including all the essential information. This was used to put together the video:

To tie the new ad in with existing advertising, the Amazon Prime animation (seen at the end of the video below) was developed with the new rebrand style. 


To make the ad have a strong overall visual impact, the transitions of Prime's features were inverted, in terms of colour, one after another. This contrast between the blue and white is very high to immediately catch people's attention within the first 10 seconds. The stills made can be seen below. These were all created with the custom typeface used for the rebranded site and colour scheme set.

To break up certain areas of the ad, a few transitions were made. These were kept as simple and clean as possible, to keep the focus on the text content. Rather than overcomplicating the design process, the stills were simply cut together to a constant BPM. This allowed it very easy to match the video to a song. Whilst the ad needs to work without sound on social media, it does actually need an audio element too, as other areas of distribution, such as TV ads and Youtube videos, all auto-play audio. The 20-second video made can be seen below.



In terms of song choice, it seemed appropriate to pick an upbeat song, that is positive, current and popular. By browsing on Prime Music's 'Popular' section I came across Mura Masa's 'Lovesick' track, which has an instrumental section that works much better than other heavy-vocal tracks, which would take away the focus from the type. This song was imported into After Effects and synced with the set BPM with ease.

The final video is under 30 seconds long. It successfully highlights the price and features of Prime, without the need of audio, and ties into the site rebrand perfectly. The final ad can be seen in the following blog post.