Amazon has scrapped its much-criticized digital marketing strategy based on paying workers to share positive posts on social media. He confirms it Financial Times This Wednesday, January 26.
The objective was to improve the image of the company before potential new employees, at a time when, especially in the United States, it is very difficult for companies to obtain labor.
The strategy of “ambassadors” of the logistics centers began in 2018 with the idea of defending the company against complaints related to safety and working conditions in its storage centers.
According to the Financial Times, Amazon “quietly” canceled the influencer campaign and removed all traces of the networks, deleting the publications.
Why Amazon canceled the digital marketing plan
One of the reasons is that Amazon’s top executives were not satisfied with the poor scope of the very particular digital marketing strategy.
The campaign also failed because fake accounts surfaced, giving the impression that some Amazon workers had rebelled.
Amazon has added more than 700,000 workers worldwide since the start of the covid pandemic and is already the second largest employer in the United States, behind only Walmart.
One problem is the high cost of attracting new employees and labor-related productivity loss, which added $2 billion to its operating expenses.
According to data published by The Intercept in 2021, the “brand ambassadors” of the logistics centers received training on how to leave “no lie unchallenged”.
They were trained to give responses like, “No, that’s not right. I worked at an Amazon for over four years and I’ve never seen anyone pee in a bottle.”
According to that journalistic investigation, a group of carefully selected workers were asked to respond “frankly and courteously” to what the company considered to be lies published by politicians and labor rights activists. They were told not to interact with journalists.
A standard tweet read: “I am proud to work for Amazon, they took such good care of me. Much better than some of my previous employers.”