Amassing 146 million views, Amazon’s recent social media advertisements triggered nostalgia reminiscent of vintage commercials. For the duration of these ads, audiences briefly forget the multi-billion dollar company’s true intentions. With a hint of absurdism and robocats, the corporation’s ad was met with mixed reception.
In an effort to incite nostalgia in its viewers, this grainy commercial is part of a series that looked as if it was recorded in the 1990s, back when Amazon was nothing more than a bookstore.
In an empty recording studio, sweet, homely carolers dressed in winter gear sing about the great Black Friday deals that the trillion dollar company has to offer.
Singing back and forth about Black Friday and Cyber Monday, there is an intangible feeling that something is off. It felt ingenuine. The singers all seemed forced and unenthused, as if the sole purpose of their work was to receive a small check. Such subtleties undermine the ad’s attempt to be warm and festive.
The ad is so close to normal that it almost passes as okay, but is just a little off enough to fall into the uncanny valley.
Amazon seems to be behind on the trends. Having a bizarre sequence of cat videos that they call “robocats,” Amazon made an ad that might have been funny back in 2009. The entire ad is stale, and the jokes aren’t that funny anymore either.
The characters seem devoid of emotion, giving the impression that they are more props than actors. The people singing don’t actually carry a feeling of warmth or personality, but rather seem like a resource that is being utilized. This ideology seems to fit well into Amazon’s overall business practice.
Amazon has been under fire for its treatment of warehouse workers.Amazon has often been cited for its poor working conditions, with a standard rule that each employee must process 1800 packages an hour, regardless of external circumstances.
Rina Cummings is an employee at Amazon with disability accommodations who spoke to The Guardian.“They care more about the robots than they care about the employees,” Cummings claimed. A warehouse job at Amazon means being on your feet the entire time and very little breaks, often resulting in a physical toll on employees.
One TikTok user commented on the ad, “Robocat has made me forget how horribly treated Amazon employees are treated all of a sudden.” The attempt to act genuine is extremely difficult when a company as overbearing as Amazon is trying to relate to ordinary audiences — and they definitely do not come across as genuine.
Senior Nikhil Ramaraju has also seen the ad and thought it seemed irregular. “It seems to me that Amazon is trying to hide their overall tone of the company,” Ramaraju stated. “Amazon holds this certain persona that everybody feels and this ad seems to be trying to avoid that, creating a fun, lighthearted commercial, even though it isn’t exactly what people usually think of when they think of Amazon,” Ramaraju concluded.
As Amazon rolled out this series of “heartwarming” ads, many couldn’t help but see through their artificial authenticity. Amazon desperately attempts to cling back to their roots as a small, humble company, but they have failed.
