Prime Highlights
- Amazon Business has launched its first large-scale advertising campaign in Japan, created with Wieden+Kennedy Tokyo, to promote digital procurement as a growth driver.
- The campaign uses a creative Edo-period story, showing how Amazon Business transforms chaos into efficiency and innovation.
Key Facts
- Japanese businesses have long relied on paper orders, fax machines, and complex supplier systems, which Amazon Business aims to modernize.
- The campaign slogan is “Business Purchasing That Shapes the Future”, highlighting procurement as a strategic business function.
Background
Amazon Business is launching its first large-scale advertising campaign in Japan, created through Wieden+Kennedy Tokyo, to sell the concept of digital procurement as a faster and more efficient way for businesses to operate.
For years, Japanese businesses have depended on paper orders, fax machines, and complex supplier arrangements. Amazon Business is stepping in to modernize this process, offering bulk purchasing, approval workflows, and real-time spending insights. The company aims to show procurement not just as a back-office function but as a key driver of business growth.
The slogan of the campaign is Business Purchasing That Shapes the Future. It has an imaginative film about the Edo period. Poor coordination and inefficiency of a castle construction site bring havoc to the site in the story. In frustration, the shogun becomes an online shopper and places an order with Amazon Business on his smartphone with the assistance of his pet cat. Amazon boxes are brought by couriers, laborers come together and the castle is made quickly with catish playful details.
The final scene shows the shogun imagining a greater future for his kingdom, representing how companies can transform everyday purchasing into a source of innovation and progress.
“In the Edo era, between the mayhem, we snatched a shogun and put modern procurement in his pocket, which he never had, by the way, said Max Pilwat, Creative Director at W + K Tokyo.
Other Creative Director at W+K Tokyo, Andrew Miller, elaborated that the castle project became a metaphor: a huge, chaotic project that everyone was running around in circles until it landed the correct system.
Through this campaign, Amazon Business positions itself as a partner for Japanese companies, turning procurement into a tool for efficiency, cost savings, and long-term growth.
