Amazon’s Drone Video Is The Perfect Devious Holiday Ad Campaign

Amazon showed off a brand new Amazon Prime Air video yesterday. While it’s interesting to see that the project is still alive and moving forward, you can’t help but think that Amazon is trying to boost its holiday sales and public image with Prime Air.

This isn’t the first time Amazon has talked about its Prime Air project. The company released the first video announcing the project on December 1, 2013.

It was the Sunday after Thanksgiving, in other words, a slow news day. Everyone covered the new Amazon drone. 60 Minutes interviewed Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos and showcased the device.

And yet, Amazon had no reason to talk about its drone at the time as it was still a work in progress — you don’t want to give hints to your competitors. But it was a genius PR move. Millions of people were about to buy Christmas gifts, and suddenly your favorite newspapers, TV shows and social networks were all talking about Amazon.

Guess what, Amazon did the exact same thing this year. Yesterday was also the Sunday after Thanksgiving. It was also a slow news day.

Coincidence? I think not. Amazon is already one of the leading Black Friday retailers. But the company wants to capture the mindshare in December as well.

And the message is clear — ordering on Amazon is like magic. You press a button and a tiny drone will fly to your doorstep in less than an hour.

We’re not there yet, but you can get a somewhat similar experience today already. Ordering on Amazon is effortless. You can stay in your living room, grab a tablet and shop for all your relatives.

There’s also something new this year. Former Top Gear host Jeremy Clarkson presented the drone demo. As a reminder, the original trio behind popular U.K. TV show Top Gear are now working on a new show for Amazon.

In case you didn’t know that Jeremy Clarkson will be back on Amazon, now you know. Every article presenting Amazon’s new video mentioned the reason why Clarkson was in an Amazon Prime Air video.

This is a clever promotion move. Amazon is cross-promoting its products, improving its brand image by showing that it isn’t just an e-commerce company and doing all of this without buying TV spots.

Don’t get me wrong — I believe Amazon should work on drone delivery as it is bound to happen and others are probably working on it. The company could also greatly improve its margins by skipping UPS, DHL and all these logistics companies. And drone delivery would greatly improve the user experience as well. It’s a win-win-win.

I can’t wait to see Amazon’s improvements on its long quest to build a drone delivery system. The company will certainly share more details next year, around Thanksgiving next year for example.