Last night, I walked into Times Square station and saw everything wrapped in yellow posters of Hunters – Amazon’s latest series.
I thought – this will make a good Instagram story.
Then today at 6:59 am, I received this message from my lovely friend Darcy.
And I thought – this will make a good article.
Amazon is betting big on Hunters. Like Netflix, they produce a lot of shows, but only for Hunters – they’ve invested a ton in physical advertising.
It’s literally all over New York City.
Backstory
In the enormous Amazon world, Prime Video is just a perk for Amazon Prime subscribers.
The goal was never to make Prime Video a standalone service and compete with the likes of Netflix. Amazon’s only goal is to make Prime subscription an irresistible deal. With Prime, you can not only get your Tide Pods shipped for free but also exclusive access to movies, music and books. Who doesn’t want that!
The previous head of Amazon Studios leaned more towards art films – the one that caters to a niche audience. But Bezos was quick to realize that – niche films don’t appeal to majority of the Prime subscribers. So producing such content defeats the purpose of why Prime Video was created in the first place.
Bezos wanted big hits.
In 2018, when the e-commerce giant was looking for the new head of Amazon Studios, they wanted someone with experience in producing mass-market content.
And Jennifer Salke, NBC’s entertainment president and ex-20th Century Fox, had exactly that experience overseeing hits like Modern Family and Prison Break.
Since Bezos wasn’t happy with the niche films his studio was producing, getting Jennifer on board was a big win.
Hunters is the first scripted series under the new leadership with this new strategy – and Bezos & Co. will be praying for it be as popular as GoT.
Thus, the yellow posters at Times Square.
Prashant Bagga 