Amy Hyland, head of fashion, fitness and luxury advertising at Amazon Ads, sat down with Amanda Smith, chief executive officer of Fairchild Media Group, to discuss how Amazon has helped brands create highly curated content for intentional audiences, in a conversation presented by Amazon Ads.
While Hyland is a newcomer to fashion, she noted the similarities to the entertainment industry — she spent nearly three decades at Paramount. In her recently appointed role this year at Amazon Ads, Hyland has been working with fashion brands to bring the industry closer to the wider cultural zeitgeist.
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Taking a look at where consumer dollars are being spent to move the needle, market research company Emarketer found that 84 percent of consumers’ digital time is spent watching videos, amounting to a total of seven hours a day — many of which are passive videos.
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“Fashion advertisers are thinking more than ever before about relevant messaging in relevant content at the right, relevant time,” said Hyland.
Through Amazon’s investment in media and entertainment, the company has a robust roster of media in its arsenal including Prime Video, MGM Studios, Twitch, Amazon Music, its deals with NFL and NBA and more.
Moreover, Hyland explained how Amazon is using fashion as a merging of “art and commerce” to make a major impact. The most recent example of the tech giant’s reach is in its Victoria’s Secret fashion show livestreamed across multiple digital platforms of Prime Video, YouTube and TikTok.
“This was a very unique, unique moment where we were able to Amazon Prime livestream the Victoria’s Secret runway show. We have Amazon Live, which is our version of QVC on Amazon.com — it’s hosted by creators where they build content and amplify it through social media,” said Hyland.
With its high engagement and skyrocketing stream numbers, the company strategically used this opportunity to do its first omnichannel marketing event; it was immediately available to shop products by consumers. Hyland dubbed the event the pinnacle of “retail-tainment for the digital world.”
Notably, Hyland said Amazon Ads is helping sellers who both use and don’t use the e-commerce platform. Tapestry’s Coach has also gotten into the digital video game; the brand has sponsored the first two seasons of Prime Video’s hit TV show, “The Summer I Turned Pretty” and actress Lola Tung has starred in multiple Coach campaigns.
Amazon commissioned a study and worked with GWI’s consumer insights platform to develop a “path to purchase for fashion.” The study found that there are seven touchpoints required by consumers to complete a purchase — four of them are video and online searching/scrolling. And through partnering with Amazon Ads to reduce friction and optimization, brands like Coach have shortened it to just four.
“More than ever, these digital strategies are being up-leveled. They’re being up-leveled because we now have connected TV as part of the full funnel digital strategy which we never had before. Prime Video has unleashed this huge video scalable audience that can be curated in a very intentional way,” Hyland concluded.