Amazon have had a tough time of it recently. They **only** made a profit of $3.2bn in the third quarter of 2021, whilst they've been attracting a barrage of negative headlines for their treatment of workers. Here's a sample of them:
- Their delivery drivers are forced to pee in bottles
- Their warehouse workers walk an average of 11 miles per shift
- They brutally crush any workers attempts to form a trade union.
There is some good news, at least, because Jeff Bezos is one step closer to becoming a spaceman. Every cloud and all that.
But still, it seems Amazon aren’t too keen on these negative headlines. They’ve pursued a pretty aggressive advertising campaign promoting the perfect working conditions of their warehouses, even offering tours of their fulfillment centres. More interestingly for us (as writers), they’ve also adapted their messaging to try and restore their shaken image.
Here’s a snippet from their ‘Who We Are’ page in April 2021.
And here’s how it looks now.
Amazon made a few subtle changes here, but obviously most interesting is their newfound mission to be:
Earth’s best employer
And:
Earth’s safest place to work
I wonder what brought that on?
It’s an interesting example of how a company adapts its messaging to change people’s perceptions of it.
But, to be honest, far more important than that is the way in which one of the biggest companies in the world treats its staff.
Hopefully Amazon do end up being the Earth’s safest place to work. At the moment, they are most definitely not.
And no amount of changes to their tone of voice, messaging or copy is going to change that. These things are all empty, meaningless noise unless you back them up with action. So when it comes to defining your own company mission, messaging and tone of voice, you've got to practice what you preach.
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