Amazon have once again shown their astute marketing
awareness, ability to drive the market and have announced Kindle Freetime
Unlimited. FreeTime delivers what it says on the can and serves up unlimited
access to thousands of preselected books, games, apps, movies and does so by a
monthly subscription. The target audience is in not adults, or the teens, but young
children aged between 3 and 8. The service recognises who owns the purse in
this area and offers full parental control. The service itself is tied to the
new Kindle Fire and what is fast becoming a pivotal tool and marketing
differentiator and jewel in the crown, Amazon Prime.
So parents can now by a single subscription give their
children access to thousands of digital materials. No more having to buy
individual books, films, games, just one monthly subscription gives the
children hours of entertainment. No ,more do parents have to be worried what
their children can see or how they spend their time as parents are given full
control. As an appetiser Kindle Free Time now comes for one free month with
every new US Kindle Fire and FireHD.
So Amazon have not only created the service, locked it to
Prime but also are to make the service available to all to be sampled by every
parent who buys a Fire. If the children and parents like what they see, they
can simply convert to the full service in ‘one click’.
The service is not exclusive to Amazon Prime users, but they
benefit by a substantial subscription discount. The service is $4.99 a month for
one child without Prime and $2.99 with Prime. Up to 6 children can have access
for $9.99 a month, but again enjoy a discount with Prime with the subscription dropping
to $6.99. So FreeTime starts to become a 'no brainer' for Prime parents and could
add that extra value to convert parents to Prime and for them to enjoy the
benefits of the overall Prime service. This use of a ‘blanket service’ offer
that ties added value benefits across many of the Amazon services is a very
clever and effectively starts to further lock in customers to Amazon and
becomes an added value attraction to attract more consumers to Prime.
FreeTime will serve up only hand picked content and media
which itself assures parent that material is controlled. Freetime is itself
attractive to content providers who don’t want to miss out on this audience. No
other book publisher or retailer can easily match the overall offer. So it
becomes a double lock in.
Amazon has built in
parent controls that enable them to set limits on categories such as video and
games, appealing to parents sensitivities and enabling them to give their
children more time to read. Parents can also build individual child profiles
which can control what each child can access and the time that they are on the individual
service elements. Gone are the dry industry based categories and book shelves, the content is design to engage children with
colour, graphics and child orientated navigation. Amazon is making the digital
book work and not simply creating wizardry.
By starting with young children Amazon have also played another
clever card. It starts to enrich its
appeal to parents, adds even more value to Prime and importantly creates a
model which can be easily reproduced to appeal to older or specialist groups,
or even grow with the young user, appeal to the educational market and become a
‘must do’ for content providers.
In the words of the Jesuits, ‘ Give me a child until the age
of seven and I will give you a man’. In the
words of Amazon, ‘Give me a child until the age of eight and I will give you a family
of Amazon customers for life.’
1 comment:
Let me be the first to suggest that perhaps these young children should be doing something other than watching Amazon stuff on a tablet.
Run, play, bike, climb trees, play games with other kids not machines, and all the rest. Don't sit on a couch and grow fat and flabby. Kids need to learn to entertain themselves.
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