Ad Of The Month

Amazon’s latest ad in Brazil, “Xuxa – ABC da Amazon”, is a showcase for how to use a celebrity well in a commercial. The campaign promotes both Amazon’s enormous product range and their voice-activated ordering, and in picking a face for it the brand has gone big. Xuxa is a Brazilian icon, with a four-decade career in music and entertainment – in the 1980s and 90s she was known as the “Queen Of Children” for her smash hit kids’ TV show and pop albums, and it’s that era which Amazon looks to remind its customers of.

One of Xuxa’s hits back in the 80s was “Abecedario da Xuxa”, an extremely catchy alphabet song for kids. For Amazon, Xuxa has recorded a new version, replacing the original items in the A to Z with products from Amazon – and in the video, she orders them all, leading to a comical pile-up of boxes and deliveries (and a baffled courier!).

It’s a nostalgic masterstroke – every 30something in Brazil will know the song and can hum along, and the amusing juxtapositions of products make the ad more than a one-view-wonder. The ad has already had well over a million YouTube views in Brazil, but how does it score on the Test Your Ad platform?

“ABC da Amazon” is a 4.7-Star ad – an excellent result showing strong potential for long-term brand growth. We see an immediate spike in Happiness when Xuxa starts singing her familiar song, which never really flags across the rest of the ad. Amazon should also be delighted by the Exceptional short-term Spike score, predicting a large direct sales boost from the ad.

So Amazon made the most of a famous face and got great results. But most brands can’t afford a star on Xuxa’s level. What can they learn from this ad?

The reason the ad works isn’t just the choice of star, it’s what Amazon do with her. When we’ve looked at which celebrity ads do well on the Test Your Ad platform, the best ones are usually the ads which go beyond a simple product endorsement. Successful celebrity ads take advantage of what a star is famous for to make the ad entertaining in its own right. Often the best strategy is to be a little tongue in cheek, so the audience feels they are in on a joke rather than simply being told to do something.

That’s exactly what Amazon do, by having Xuxa perform a pastiche of her own famous song and do it in the style of an enthusiastic TV presenter. It’s not just nostalgic, it’s fun and a little bit tongue in cheek.