Episode 140 - Amazon Prime FR Dubbing Factory Ad Reviewed by Standard Chartered, Purplebricks and Sharrock Media Group
In France, dubbing English-language shows is big business. So Amazon Prime Video thought about making it more inclusive by opening it up to a TikTok challenge.
This week’s Advertisers Watching Ads is about Amazon’s #DubbingFactory ad chosen by Contagious. It’s certainly a big-impact move to engage with TikTok influencers and a huge audience, but is this marketing strategy going to bear fruit for the streaming service?
Watch the ad and hear from our guests Duarte Garrido (Global Head of Social Omnichannel Activation at Standard Chartered), Philip Lloyd (Chief Marketing Officer at Purplebricks), and Lequita Sharrock (CEO of Sharrock Media Group) to see what they had to say.
Episode 140 - Amazon Prime FR Dubbing Factory Ad Reviewed by Standard Chartered, Purplebricks and Sharrock Media Group
Transcript is automatically generated, so not perfect, but you get the idea!
Tom Ollerton 0:00
Hello and welcome to Advertisers Watching Ads. This is a weekly show where brands watch other brands' ads.
Tom Ollerton 0:28
My name is Tom Ollerton. I'm the founder of Automated Creative. And we're brought to you as ever by our partners, Contagious, who helped us choose the ad this week. But before we see this week's creative, let's meet this week's guests.
Duarte Garrido 0:40
My name is Duarte Garrido, and I'm the Global Head of Social Omnichannel Activation for Standard Chartered.
Philip Lloyd 0:46
I'm Phil. I'm the Chief Marketing Officer of Purplebricks.
Lequita Sharrock 0:49
I'm Lequita Sharrock. I am the CEO of Sharrock Media Group. I'm also the non-profit organization founder for Beyond the Booth, Inc.
Tom Ollerton 0:58
What a fantastic panel! Let's see this week's ad.
Tom Ollerton 3:02
Can you give this ad a vote out of five? One, two, three... A three, a three, and a four. What's going on outside of this campaign? Help us understand the context within which this is being shown.
Philip Lloyd 3:16
So I think, I think what's interesting is what's going on in non-English speaking countries is the sort of the big shows that Netflix and Amazon and HBO are creating are generally in English. And clearly, the local markets need to do something with those, with those shows, with those content. So I think this is quite a neat idea by an agency in France. And I think clearly Prime are trying to somehow beat Netflix at the game here by making sort of a localized version of that sort of English language content and copy, making that relevant and interesting in, in France.
Duarte Garrido 3:56
I'm from Portugal, right? In Portugal, we actually watch everything with subtitles in the original language, but we are probably the only country in Southern Europe who does that. Spain, Germany, France, Italy, they all dub their movies and their TV shows, they've done that for ages. They still do. It's kind of frowned upon now. It was very common when I was younger, and now it's kind of like, you know, "Guys keep up with the times. Make it in English, put in subtitles." But it's still something that it is kind of part of their cultural essence. Amazon is playing to that. So without betting on original content, on regional content, they've, they're speaking to the culture of these countries. So it's actually pretty smart.
Lequita Sharrock 4:42
One of the first things that I was like, "Wow! They did that!" They, like, swooped in and grabbed it before Netflix or any of the other streaming services did. With the foreign films, it's not as big in the US. It's not as big, especially in like in France. It's huge, right? And the dubbing and all the foreign titles and like I know with the streaming services when you're watching foreign films, they're so right. You have a different kind of people. You have those who are like keeping all the... You know, and trying to read it. And then you got some who would switch it up to the original. I'm one of those that like to challenge myself, you see what I'm saying? And I like to get in it and think that I'm all in it. So I'm like, I mean, is all off, off point, it might be misread and all this and all that, but you're feeling it. So I love the fact that they capitalize on that. And with TikTok, like TikTok, come on, young generation. It's quick. You've got to hurry up and get their attention span. And I'm like one of the newcomers on TikTok trying to get in the game, you know, and it is so amazing how you can... The, the, the thing is dubbing. You dub over... original people but to have the opportunity to become a voice actor, and dub a foreign film? Baby, put me in, coach. They did that.
Tom Ollerton 6:15
Is it interesting enough to the people who aren't already subscribed to the shows that they're talking about?
Duarte Garrido 6:20
No, but I do think there is some merit in this. What Amazon did was they took what is actually a weakness and turned it into an opportunity. If you look at Netflix, they actually put some money behind producing original content in France, in Spain, in Portugal. Amazon didn't do that. Most of Amazon's shows are English shows. So they went hyperlocal to go global, which is the right way of doing things.
Philip Lloyd 6:53
So it felt a little bit like, we at Amazon want to go out and get people to engage in our campaign and do a fun thing. And then we're going to kind of film that and put that into a sort of a, a way of proving to people what content we've got or how great the brand is, etc. But we're going to do an act first. We're going to do something. And that act in itself says things about our brand to people that either take part or see that campaign and that act itself. For me, it almost felt a little bit old school in some way. Ten years ago, this would have been done on Facebook. When PR agencies try and preview the reach of a campaign, I'm always a little bit worried about things like 300 million people saw the hashtag, like what does that actually mean? I don't doubt the truth of this. I'm more just saying how much was paid for, what was truly sort of organic and earned? And does it... Is this a better way of doing it than doing other types of marketing and advertising?
Tom Ollerton 7:44
What would be your builds on this?
Lequita Sharrock 7:45
So what I would have done differently was putting more of the experience in there. I think life is all about the experience. So to hype it up a little bit more and at the end of the day, it's about the numbers. Is the subscriptions going to go up? Are we getting new subscribers? What is this? What is the end result? I would hope that the subscription numbers would go up because I didn't necessarily hear about it so much on TikTok, but when you got paid influencers and you got their followers coming in, it can be a little bit different.
Duarte Garrido 8:18
I think the ad itself, the creative, isn't actually that regional, although they've put in the narrator with a sort of French accent but speaking English, which I think is not really not the right approach, but it still looks like a standard US, UK ad. It doesn't feel French, it doesn't sound French. There's no Frenchness to it, right? I think that I would really rethink the creative with my hyperlocal hat on so that the creative of not just the campaign is relevant for the target audience, which is in this case, French people.
Tom Ollerton 8:54
Would you sign off this campaign in its current form? Yes or no? One, two, three... There we have it. Duarte, Lequita, Phil, thank you so much.
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