Challenge
Amazon has spent years building a presence in the grocery industry with both online offerings and physical grocery stores. With the acquisition of Whole Foods Market, the build out of its own Amazon Fresh offering, the launch of pioneering Amazon Go convenience stores and a long legacy of selling non-perishables on Amazon.com, the company had become a major player in the market.
However, after a year of negative news cycles including a pause on new Amazon Fresh store openings and removal of Just Walk Out technology from stores, Amazon needed to reset the grocery business narrative with the media.
With a raft of new omnichannel and cross banner fulfillment pilots rolling out in the second half of 2024, the company saw an opportunity to share its vision for bringing together the best of Whole Foods Market, Amazon Fresh, and Amazon.com to offer customers more selection and savings—especially for Prime members. These efforts included:
● the debut of a micro-fulfillment center at a Whole Foods Market store so customers can supplement what’s in-store with popular essentials from Amazon.com and favorites from Amazon Fresh.
Industry
Retail
Services
Media Relations
Social Media
Owned Content
Event Planning
Key Result
43 unique & 394 total stories
50% increase in LinkedIn engagement
● integration of perishable grocery items into a Same-Day Delivery fulfillment center allowing customers to place a single order for groceries alongside other household goods.
● the addition of Whole Foods Market and Amazon.com items to several Amazon Fresh fulfillment centers around the world to enable cross-banner shopping in a single check-out experience.
The grocery comms team planned to announce these efforts at the company’s Delivering the Future event, a global media event that showcases forward-looking innovations from across the company.
Approach
Rob McMurtrie helped the company execute a multi-pronged effort to communicate its story. Inclusive of both media briefings as well as owned and social media content, Rob worked with the internal PR team to articulate the vision, highlight these innovative new fulfillment and delivery models and tell the story through earned, owned and social media channels.
“Amazon said it is testing an offering in Phoenix that will allow customers to shop for groceries and Amazon’s online consumer goods simultaneously, and have items ordered from different stores delivered as part of the same shipment.”
– The Washington Post
Rob developed the media strategy and identified key reporters attending the Delivering the Future event to brief about these changes. He also drafted and drove approvals of an About Amazon blog post from Tony Hoggett, SVP of Worldwide Grocery Stores at Amazon announcing the company’s vision and highlighting these new initiatives as well as two LinkedIn posts. Finally, he crafted a fact sheet to provide background on the company’s success in the grocery industry to date.
Results
To date, 394 total pieces have been written about the news (43 unique online stories, 351 syndications) including pieces in CNBC, Axios, Reuters, The Washington Post, Yahoo! Finance, MSN, TechCrunch, The Information, Chain Store Age, Progressive Grocer, Supermarket News and Retail Dive. Coverage was neutral-to-positive in tone, even from reporters who have taken a more skeptical view of grocery in the past. Many outlets highlighted several of the announcements as part of Amazon’s ongoing efforts to address consumer pain points, enhance its grocery offerings and, ultimately, optimize the online shopping and delivery experience for customers.
In addition to the traditional media coverage, the grocery vision post on About Amazon saw 3,629 views from 2,932 unique visitors in the first two weeks, outperforming other recent grocery-focused posts. In addition to driving traffic to the About Amazon story, the two LinkedIn posts by Tony Hoggett on Delivering the Future garnered 50% more engagements than average, and drove a quarter of the traffic to the About Amazon post.
About Amazon
For more than 20 years, Amazon has been on an ambitious journey to redefine grocery shopping, combining the best of online convenience and physical store experiences. Amazon’s goal is to be the most convenient destination for high-quality groceries across a wide selection of products and brands at consistently low prices, no matter how customers want to shop. Today, Amazon offers customers hundreds of thousands of groceries and everyday essentials across Amazon.com, Whole Foods Market, Amazon Fresh, Amazon Go, and third-party grocery and specialty retailers.