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Amazon Embraces the Long Tail With Secret Branding

You may be buying Amazon's own stealth brands without even knowing it, because Amazon knows it can ultimately win with small transactions, not splashy products.

August 16, 2017
longtail

The late 1990s were a Web 1.0 whirlwind; crazy notions abounded and money flowed freely. The "new" economy often made zero sense, but it seemed like a good idea at the time.

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This was the era of crazy buzz phrases and inventive wordage such as "click and mortar," a nonsense term referring to online stores. I've argued that that this particular term got so ingrained in our minds that the popular TV cartoon series Rick and Morty leverages it in a subconscious manner.

One somewhat forgotten term is the idea of "the long tail." This was coined and extrapolated by Chris Andersen, then editor of Wired. He wrote the book on it, literally. It postulates that real money is made in small increments, away from the bluster of the "hit" products, many of which are flashes in the pan.

As Quartz reports, Amazon practices this by "owning" a slew of "secret" off-brands that it sells though its massive distribution system, all in competition with its client sellers. Amazon can pull this off as it becomes the only distro mechanism that works for everyone. From what I can tell, it is not marketing these products aggressively—yet.

When you do a search on any of the categories of the Amazon house brands, they do not appear ahead of other brands, although they do usually appear on the first page of results. My guess is it doesn't want to run afoul of any antitrust regulators.

While it is not unusual for large retailers to have all sorts of house brands—Costco's Kirkland brand comes to mind—these retailers do not enjoy a monopoly position. Plus, every Costco customer knows that Kirkland is a house brand.

The Amazon brands are slipstreamed in to the mix in a classic long-tail way, unnoticed. Mike Murphy, who wrote the Quartz piece, could only find one brand (besides Amazon Basics) that was clearly an Amazon house brand for linens, Pinzon by Amazon, which curiously competes with Pike Street, another Amazon linen brand. Yet, neither show up prominently on a search for cotton sheets.

This double offer, I believe, is a test to see if the Amazon name attached to Pinzon makes a difference. Amazon's store is one giant market test in many ways.

The other brands were expertly crafted to sound familiar, as if they were just another competitor out there, available anywhere. Here are a few: shoes made by Franklin & Freeman, kids' clothing by Scout + Ro, baby products from Mama Bear, tools by Denali, cosmetics by Beauty Bar, furniture by Strathwood. It goes on. Each sounds familiar enough to be something you may have heard of. Murphy found several trademarks Amazon has not yet implemented such as RV Me for motor homes.

While Amazon does have hot products to go along with its long-tail strategy, namely the Kindle and Echo, it's easy to imagine the company dominating certain categories with familiar-sounding off-brands.

Even with its hits, though, Amazon has never leveraged its branding within those categories except to make similar products. For example, the Kindle brand is only on reading devices and nothing else. Amazon could have made the Kindle Echo, but no.

Branding experts should be coming out of the woodwork to discuss this. Murphy's research uncovered 19 "brands" currently in play with another 10 waiting in the wings. Many of these brands give themselves away by being exclusively for Prime members. But he claims he may not have identified all the brands that Amazon is currently employing.

So years after the dotcom collapse, we see Amazon executing the long-tail idea to perfection. It took this long for someone to notice. Perhaps it is time to revisit 1999 and see what other lost ideas are ripe for re-introduction and exploitation.

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About John C. Dvorak

Columnist, PCMag.com

John C. Dvorak is a columnist for PCMag.com and the co-host of the twice weekly podcast, the No Agenda Show. His work is licensed around the world. Previously a columnist for Forbes, PC/Computing, Computer Shopper, MacUser, Barrons, the DEC Professional as well as other newspapers and magazines. Former editor and consulting editor for InfoWorld, he also appeared in the New York Times, LA Times, Philadelphia Enquirer, SF Examiner, and the Vancouver Sun. He was on the start-up team for C/Net as well as ZDTV. At ZDTV (and TechTV) he hosted Silicon Spin for four years doing 1000 live and live-to-tape TV shows. His Internet show Cranky Geeks was considered a classic. John was on public radio for 8 years and has written over 5000 articles and columns as well as authoring or co-authoring 14 books. He's the 2004 Award winner of the American Business Editors Association's national gold award for best online column of 2003. That was followed up by an unprecedented second national gold award from the ABEA in 2005, again for the best online column (for 2004). He also won the Silver National Award for best magazine column in 2006 as well as other awards. Follow him on Twitter @therealdvorak.

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