All products featured on WIRED are independently selected by our editors. However, we may receive compensation from retailers and/or from purchases of products through these links.
Three 30-somethings lip-sync their hearts out. Then we cut to them in a studio joking playfully with each other. A voiceover informs us that we're about to see outfits everyone will be rocking this spring. Another cut. Now we’re in a dressing room with Orange Is the New Black celebrity Laura Prepon, who lowers her voice and confides into the camera: "This season is so good. Spoiler alert!" Pop music blares in the background as the cameras finally go live against a photo backdrop of the Empire State Building lit up at night.
Sounds like a cheesy show on the Home Shopping Network, right? Nope: this is Amazon.
The fashion-focused *Style Code Live, *which premiered last week, streams every weeknight at 9pm ET sharp on Amazon’s website (there's no mobile version yet). That's how I found myself hunched over my laptop, learning about a shirt that can be worn 24 different ways. Oh, and that shade of red lipstick that goes best with my skin undertone. All the while, Style Code Live’s energetic hosts prodded me to check out the carousel of products right beneath the live video that I could, you know, just click and buy! Who could resist?
But I snark too much. Amazon may not yet be a brand synonymous with high fashion. But the half-hour-long Style Code Live actually takes many of the power moves Amazon has made over the first two decades of its existence and channels them into perky, cheesy video fluff.
In a recent survey of online shoppers, 44 percent of respondents said they went directly to Amazon when they wanted to buy something on the Internet; 34 percent used search engines like Google and Bing; and 21 percent browsed a specific retailer’s site. So we know Amazon owns online shopping.
And we know Amazon is incredibly smart about streaming video. Its Netflix-rivaling streaming video service is one of the major perks of its wildly popular Amazon Prime service. More recently, the company has shown off its chops as a producer of critically acclaimed original shows and movies.
Still, it's a little mystifying that it's taking all that heft and funneling it into a throwback to the heydays of ’80s and ’90s cable television. Back then, QVC was riding high on its ability to tap deep into Americans' desire to pick up the phone and call now(!) to buy stuff they probably didn't need. When online shopping came along in the mid-90s, getting that instant consumer gratification became a lot easier—you didn't have to wait til another product came up for sale to find exactly what you wanted.
But Amazon has the bottom line to show that Americans are still as obsessed with buying stuff as ever. And given Amazon's strengths, Style Code Live is a relatively cheap and easy way for the company to iterate. Amazon has never been afraid to experiment, even when its failures are very public. It's trying to build some buzz around an area of retail it’s still hasn’t quite yet nailed: fashion. And in fashion, a little fun doesn't hurt.
“What everyone thinks is going to be the most efficient ways to combine purchase, social media and streaming, is still going to need tweaking,” says Robert Thompson, director of the Belier Center for Television and Popular Culture at Syracuse University. “Style Code Live is the test kitchen of the types of things Amazon is going to be doing in the future.”
Here's what you can expect on Style Code Live: a lot of informal banter. Hip young hosts (one of them, Frankie Grande, is pop star Ariana Grande’s older half-brother). Well-connected guests (the first episode featured fashion blogger Danielle Bernstein and YouTube star Tati Westbrook). The hosts call on fashion models to “come on out!” At this point women—it's only been women every time I've watched the show—emerge from behind a wall, twirling and posing and modeling the fashion and makeup picked out by the show’s featured fashion expert. Each product is highlighted live in a clickable carousel below, organized in chronological order by show segment. (So far, you can only watch Style Code Live in your browser, not on your phone.) In between the live bits, pre-taped spots from the world of fashion and interviews with celebrities like Prepon fill out the rest of the half-hour or so.
During the live portion of the show, the hosts routinely remind the audience to ask questions via chat—one host actually sits in a corner of the studio with a laptop monitoring the feed. An icon sits in the lower right corner of the screen that people can click on, a la Periscope, to let the hosts know they're enjoying the show.
Thompson suggests this live component is Amazon’s way of drumming up drama, similar to the way QVC would limit how long and how many products were available. "But appreciating that drama depends upon your watching it live, as the title suggests, as opposed to watching it later," Thompson says. Amazon does let you view episodes on-demand after the fact, but Thompson points out that going through all that trouble is fairly ridiculous: “Imagine queuing up three episodes of QVC on your TiVo and watching it later. That would be weird.”
Weird or not, Style Code Live really is kind of corny. "To an audience that’s grown up with great programming on Netflix, FX, AMC—and Amazon, for that matter—this has a kind of cheesy, local production quality," Thompson says. But he does point to two smart moves by the company: populating Style Code Live with social media insiders, and the fact that the show must have been very cheap to produce. “Amazon used very simple sets; it's all interiors,” he says. “All the company had to pay for was the electric bill and the talent.”
Amazon produced Style Code Live for its customers who “love fashion and have wanted a place to keep up with trends, get insider style tips, and discover new products and brands,” says Munira Rahemtulla, head of the show. But the reality is that Amazon still tends to be a destination for more practical products, like books and batteries, even as it tries very hard to remake its image as a fashion brand.
But the company is doing more than a TV show. Amazon now sells its own private-label fashion lines; on episode two, it even hawked a white button-down shirt from one of these lines. Even when it’s not selling its own stuff, it's able to cross-sell from other online stores it owns. (I noticed the blue jumpsuit one of the hosts was wearing was sold by Shopbop, a company Amazon acquired in 2006.)
Amazon hasn’t said whether it might charge retailers to be featured on the show. But it stands to reason that even as Amazon uses the show to advertise products it sells, it could also make money selling ads itself in the form of product placement. Notably, the show is free for viewing by anyone, not just Prime members.
On a less mercenary level, Amazon could also be going for the feeling of intimacy that comes from feeling like you're hanging out with a small group that's actually answering your questions on the show.
“The show gives people who are passionate about fashion and beauty a place to interact with each other, ask questions and chat with the hosts, and really be a part of a community,” Rahemtulla says. It's possible Amazon's optimism about its foray into old-school home shopping is well founded. But like fashion consumers, it's also possible Amazon's latest move is purely aspirational.
