Mumbai, 16th October 2020: In 2018, it was the Amazon Home that set the ball rolling for the Amazon Great Indian Festival. In 2019, the Amazon Yatra with a fully furnished home set up on truck took the country by storm and created a PR blitzkrieg for Amazon’s Great Indian Festival. And now, in 2020, due to the challenges posed by COVID-19, Amazon’s annual festive event has gone virtual.
Wizcraft curated the first-of-a-kind interactive virtual press conference to announce the dates of Amazon Great Indian Festival 2020 followed by a weeklong exclusive engagement with customers, employees and Amazon’s ecosystem partners. The main press conference offered media stakeholders an immersive visual experience that was aimed at highlighting what customers can expect from Amazon India this festive season. Close to 200 members of the media and influencers across the country attended the event.
Sabbas Joseph, Co-Founder, and Director of Wizcraft International, said, “Wizcraft has always pushed boundaries and set new benchmarks. The virtual media meet for Amazon GIF has had an unprecedented impact and perhaps changed the course of media events in the country. It is being hailed as the future of press conferences. Our clients across the globe have logged into our virtual platform to understand how they could incorporate the thinking and experience into their efforts.”
Wizcraft took forward “Khushiyon ka Darwaza”, the campaign for Amazon’s Great Indian Festival and seamlessly stitched it throughout the event, from the invite to the virtual venue. The press conference was held at a specially designed virtual venue that bore a festive look. Three doors, inspired by the ‘Khushiyon ka Darwaaza’, were integrated in the event venue, each leading to a unique experience. The Run-up room included a word game, a thematic photo-op, and recent announcements made by Amazon for the festive season. The Ballroom hosted a fireside chat between Manish Tiwary, Vice President, Amazon India, and the host, Samir Kochhar. The chat covered Amazon’s journey in India and its focus on enabling SMBs across the country. The third door led to the Great Indian Bazaar. It was designed and curated as an immersive experience zone that brought to life the unique selection from sellers across the 28 states and 8 union territories of India. The bazaar showcased the best of India in 5 experience zones – North India, East India, Central India, West India and South India. The fireside chat was followed by an engaging live media Q&A session, where Manish addressed questions about the month-long Great Indian Festival.
Avneesh Gadgil, DGM, Wizcraft commented, “This is the 3rd year of being associated with the Amazon Great Indian Festival. Each year poses a new challenge and this time, we just had 2 weeks to plan and execute the campaign virtually. It was a tough ask but we loved every minute of putting it together. All the sleepless nights, meetings and discussions done remotely and an incredible amount of hard work put in by the team finally had the desired outcome. It was truly a collaborative effort.”
Speaking on the Occasion Minari Shah, Director – Public Relations, Amazon India added, “We had two key points in mind – one, we were constrained by our circumstances and had to only do something virtually. And two, we were nonetheless determined to create and follow up last year’s Amazon Festive Yatra with another unique experience for our stakeholders. We also decided to convert the challenge into an opportunity to scale up our outreach with customers, employees, sellers, and other ecosystem partners this year. It helped that we have worked with Wizcraft the last couple of years for our festive campaigns as they had a good understanding of what we need as we began to look for a virtual yet immersive experience this year. Our virtual press conference and a special Great Indian Bazaar emerged as great engagement platforms for more than 20,000 Amazon stakeholders across several cities & towns. The experiences were personal, immersive, and allowed us to engage at scale.”
During the weeklong engagement, the Great Indian Bazaar and the virtual experience created a massive buzz on social media. It was among the top trends on Twitter and saw tens of thousands of customer visits over a single weekend.
