While Prime Day is by far the most well-known and most successful sale event, Amazon is constantly creating and trialling new ones.

Each new event has to have its own distinct identity, and part of my role was to help craft them.

For the "Hidden Gems Sale" and the "Big Smile Sale," both events needed a full brand identity built from the ground up.

This was a finely tuned process involving multiple stages and close collaboration between all the creatives on the XCM team.

The first step in any new branding exercise was exploration, collaborating with the copy team, and testing different names and lock-ups to best communicate the purpose of the event.

Using the Amazon "Ember" font as a base, this involved trialling various font weights, accents, and stacking combinations.

Colour testing was also important, ensuring that the palette was distinct enough from existing events while providing the versatility to create colour combinations for a variety of placements.

Once the event name had been finalised, the master lockup wss created and adapted for different formats where needed.

At this stage, the master lockups were also transcreated for all local markets where the campaign would be running, taking into consideration any region-specific needs.

After selecting a colour palette, the master lockups were colourised and matched with backing colours to create approved colour combinations for optimum legibility and contrast.

An in-depth style and brand guide is an essential part of any brand creation process.

While the EU brand and marketing team was responsible for creating and designing master brand assets, the full roll-out of any event involved the creation of hundreds of assets across multiple channels. This work was usually carried out by various separate teams, and as such, it was vital that everyone involved fully understood how to properly implement the brand.

The brand book contained all the information necessary on how to use the brand, how to style assets and products, and how and where to use the logo and colours correctly.

Final approval of all assets was still the responsibility of the brand team, but a thorough brand book greatly reduced the chance of any rogue assets being created in the first place.