BUSINESS TIPS

Amazon Press Release

How to smartly create a different kind of business plan and increase your chances of success for your product idea

Stealing with pride. Are you familiar with this terminology? It means “it’s okay to take ideas from others“. This is not what happens in this article. It is more about intellectual recycling. :) Although I am familiar with the concept of press releases at Amazon, I decided to partially copy some of the concepts, learnings, and words (which can be publicly found online) others wrote. In full transparency, I am giving credit to the authors when needed. Now enjoy!

Dear reader,

With this article about how to write a press release the same way Amazonians do, I am sharing some techniques and personal recommendations that could help you build a better business plan. I hope you enjoy it.

Note. The ideal complement to this article is: how to write a professional business document called white paper (the Amazon way).

INTRO

I am very much familiar with the concept of the press release and the way Amazon does it internally. It’s a rigorous process to stimulate good thoughts with a structured approach. I created a couple of them in the past and it took me a lot of time; several weeks or even months actually, as the amount of time you need to dedicate to research is high, and trying to explain your idea like you would to real customers requires a lot of effort and dedication.

But it pays off. Big time.

With a press release — the Amazon way — you get extreme clarity on what you are doing, why you are doing it, and more importantly, why your idea is supposed to be so good for the customer. Enjoy this reading and experiment yourself to see how powerful this tool can be.

“We work backwards from the customer,

rather than starting with an idea for a product

and trying to bolt customers onto it”

WHY?

Amazon puts the customer at the center of everything. Amazon works backward from the customer, rather than starting with an idea for a product. The press release is a good way to force employees to explain to the organization what their ideas are about and how their solutions are going to solve a customer problem. By writing a press release, we put ourselves in the customer’s shoes so that even the most…