Watch and learn: How Amazon is dismantling retail and brands

Get yourself a coffee and sit down in front of your device. Be in the moment, with headphones on and invest 24 minutes of your life in calm clarity on what Amazon will do when it arrives in Australia.

Two years ago I wrote a short introduction on SmartCompany to a very fast paced YouTube video delivered by a little known University Professor at New York University, Stern, called Scott Galloway. The video had been viewed around 200,000 times when SmartCompany published my article. By the end of the week it had hit 750,000 views and went on to be viewed, and used by over 1 million, retailers and brand marketers worldwide. It’s still the most widely published and re-published piece I’ve ever written.

Scott Galloway and his team at L2 Research, in my honest opinion, are the best placed pickers of future trends within the retail and manufacturer brand space. Listening to his presentation, taking notes (I have five pages of notes from the 24 minutes of video) and applying those notes as actions to the business you work in, and the investments you make in both your business and personal life, will put you at the head of the curve in 2017. And into the next decade. It’s a big statement but it’s true.

This video is only 10 days old, so you watching it today puts you at the head of the curve too. 

A few quotes to whet your appetite … 

“Amazon is a technology shift, not a retailer.” 

“Fifty-two percent of households in the USA pay for Amazon Prime. Fifty-five percent of households earn over US$50,000 per year. They’re the same households.”

“Amazon has replaced profit with vision and growth.” 

When referencing Amazon Studio’s US$4.5 billion investment in new broadcast content, a sidebar to their main business of online retail, Galloway says: “You can play in traffic when you have access to cheap capital”.

“Amazon has conspired with 1 billion consumers and technology to destroy brand price premium. They have sucked margin away from major brands and given it to the shopper as lower priced with their own branded products.”      

“Alexa gives shoppers a frictionless, brandless means of ordering ANYTHING with just your voice. You don’t need any other retailer than Amazon.”

And for those of you who call on “difficult” retail buying offices, “You haven’t seen difficult until an algorithm trades you and your brand off against a cheaper one.” 

The statistics, scale and speed around this company are truly mind numbing. Watch and learn. 

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