Amazon are coming for Christmas

So here's the thing - Amazon is not just an unbelievably powerful and effective on-demand retail mechanism - it has one other very big, and almost unattainably brilliant, dimension to the business that competitors will find impossible to breach.

Amazon have a really, really, really strong brand.

See the utility of the Amazon offering only takes this business so far; what drives it into the very heart of customers is its brand.

They are the world's most customer-centric company (and while their competitors scramble to try even understand what that actually means) they are working their way deep into the minds of their soon-to-be new customers.

You will appreciate the philosophy that when Amazon enter a market - they're not there to capture 'some marketshare' for a season; or to sell a few products to people and clear their stock.

Amazon enter a territory with the sole intention of taking good customers (not the shitty ones) away from the incumbents...and never, ever giving them back.

And when, as a competitor, you have lost all of your good customers to Amazon...you've lost.

The funny thing is - that not many local competitors are even aware that this threat exists; they're still just thinking things like 'oh but Amazon's launch will be muted, because they need to make use of the same inefficient local value chain that everyone else does'.

If that's the narrative you are holding onto - you're obsessing over the wrong threat; and a nasty surprise is coming your way.

Amazon (we'll remind you) is the world's third biggest brand - right behind Apple and Google. Where's your brand at?

BTW - above is their 2023 Christmas ad - it's bloody brilliant...and that's just 60 seconds of their immense strength.

Give me more: