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Part One: Amazon Prime Video
Streaming services are big international business — and as any business expert will tell you, big international business requires a thorough approach to localization. With streaming entertainment entering into a pivotal era as companies explore pathways toward growth, each major player is taking a careful, calculated approach toward articulating its vision. And it will require qualified language professionals to, in turn, articulate that vision for their potential new customers.
Uniquely positioned as an ecommerce juggernaut that uses its streaming entertainment wing for synergistic benefits, Prime Video boasts both expensive tentpole productions like The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power and fan favorites like The Boys. Amazon Prime Video International Chief Kelly Day spoke with Varietyabout their plans to roll out their streaming offerings in new markets.
“When we think about launching in a new country, we really want to make sure that we bring a truly local feel to it. So, we’re trying to be very thoughtful when we enter a new region to make sure that we’re not only bringing all of these amazing global series and tentpoles, but that we really do it right, locally,” she said at the APOS conference in Singapore in 2022.
And a big part of doing it right is hiring qualified professionals to oversee subtitling and dubbing localization work. Studies consistently show that carelessly localized and culturalized entertainment is a major factor in regional residents choosing whether or not to continue watching a TV show or movie. For instance, a 2021 study of consumers in France, Italy, Germany, and Spain found that only 13% of respondents experienced zero issues with international entertainment localization quality. What’s more, the majority experienced location issues so severe, they quit watching, with 7% saying this happened once a week, 20% once a month, 37% once a year, and 36% never quitting due to poor localization.
Considering those numbers, Prime Video would do well to find qualified language partners as their Asian expansion plans unfold over the coming decades. Those plans began in earnest in 2022, when Prime Video launched in Thailand, Indonesia, Singapore, and the Philippines following strong efforts in India, where the service debuted 40 titles in Hindi, Tamil, and Telugu. The expansion efforts bolstered Amazon’s well-established APAC operations in Japan and Australia.
Amazon executives see Prime Video as one of its most effective tools to drive up Amazon Prime subscriptions, with the exclusive entertainment designed to muddy the dollars-and-cents arithmetic of other Prime benefits like free two-day shipping, according to Axios.
“The purpose of the [content] is to keep and gain the Prime customers,” Sunil Gupta, a Harvard Business School business administration professor, told Harvard Business Review. “Two-day free shipping is fine, but if you ask me to pay $99 or $119 for two-day free shipping, I might start doing the math in my head.”
That cost-benefit analysis gets muddier once you introduce more subjectively valuable propositions like entertainment into the mix. Curious to find out whether Amazon got its $500 million worth of value from the first season of The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power? It might be just enough to make you hit the sign-up button if you were unsure about the value of free shipping — which further incentivizes using Amazon over other retail outlets.
“In India, Amazon Video or Prime Video is the tip of the spear,” Akshay Sahi, head of Amazon Prime in India, told Axios.
It’s an effective — if not foolproof — strategy, one the company has attempted to finetune for the APAC region more recently. Those 40 Hindi, Tamil, and Telugu titles Amazon prepped for its Indian operations, for instance? Variety reports that this year, Amazon pivoted from original content creation to a licensing-oriented strategy, cutting jobs from its Indian team in the process.
“Our industry continues to evolve quickly, and it’s important that we prioritize our investments for the long-term success of our business, while relentlessly focusing on what we know matters most to our customers,” Mike Hopkins, senior VP of Prime Video and Amazon MGM Studio, told staffers in internal communications, according to Variety. “Throughout the past year, we’ve looked at nearly every aspect of our business with an eye towards improving our ability to deliver even more breakthrough movies, TV shows, and live sports in a personalized, easy-to-use entertainment experience for our global customers. As a result, we’ve identified opportunities to reduce or discontinue investments in certain areas while increasing our investment and focus on content and product initiatives that deliver the most impact.”
One area where Amazon should avoid cutting investment? Their localization and language services. No matter what the shape of the ecommerce and entertainment giant’s Asian expansion plans take, they’ll need qualified language professionals to ensure their efforts receive a warm reception from their potential customers.
By Cameron Rasmussen
