Rethinking B2B: Amazon’s unexpected Aussie marketing lessons
Australia isn’t just another western market. Amazon learned this quickly in its 12th market roll out. In this episode of The CMO Show, Lena Zak, Country Manager for Amazon Business Australia, discusses the nuances of branding in an unusually personal, human‑to‑human business culture with distinct approaches to buying and supplier relationships.
From buyer instincts shaped by Amazon’s B2C footprint to the procurement friction unique to local organisations, Lena shares the surprises that forced her team to rethink assumptions and rework their approach, including the need to explain what Amazon Business even is before they could persuade anyone why it matters.
What are Lena’s biggest lessons?
How listening beat out global playbooks in a market where trust still trumps technology
How the whimsical Little Bo Peep campaign became an unlikely shortcut to clarity and cultural connection
Why simplicity in fast shipping, easy controls and fewer suppliers to manage proved the strongest lever for earning confidence with Australian organisations navigating digital transformation.
It’s a behind‑the‑scenes look at the decisions, challenges and creative swings that defined one of Amazon’s most interesting market launches and a reminder that in B2B, understanding how people buy is still the most powerful strategy of all.
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This episode of The CMO Show was brought to you by host Mark Jones, producers Kate Zadel and Kirsten Bables and audio engineers Ed Cheng and Daniel Marr. This is an edited excerpt of the podcast transcript.
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Mark Jones
One of our biggest challenges as marketers is thinking top-down, "I've got a product that I need to tell a story about. I need to convince people to buy it." But what if the opposite was true and in fact better? It was so good. It was such a great experience that once people found you, they never leave.
Hello and welcome to The CMO Show for 2026. I'm your host, Mark Jones. It's great to see you again. The CMO Show is brought to you by ImpactInstitute in partnership with our friends at Adobe. We are going to kick off the year with an interview I've been looking forward to for a long time. Lena Zack is the new country manager for Amazon here in Australia. This is a global organisation, as you well know, that has been around for a long time, but only kicked off their B2B procurement, purchasing business for marketers in June last year, 2025, of course.
So, how's it going? What's it like starting a new Amazon Business in Australia? How do you tell that story? What sort of marketing works? What sort of marketing maybe doesn't work? Amazon famously has an obsession with customer obsession. So what does that look like? And then, of course, we all want to know what's it like to work there. If you really have to write big, long memos, what's that experience like? Let's get into the interview.
Lena, thanks for joining us.
Lena Zak
Of course.
Mark Jones
I wanted to kick off by chatting about the Little Bo Peep campaign. Now for a big B2B company, you've gone to something that's kind of cute and fun. Right? Tell me about that.
Lena Zak
Yeah, I love the Little Boo Peep campaign. Thank you for asking about it. We launched the localised version of a global campaign, Little Bo Peep, which really tells the story of Little Bo Peep struggling with her flock of sheep and then discovering Amazon Business's smart business buying tools and just transforming herself into a fashion powerhouse. I love that story. I love the playfulness of it. I also love just the appropriateness for sort of what Amazon Business is all about, which is really empowering small businesses to do more without sort of having to think about the small business buying that's potentially just kind of a waste of time, and something that should be smart and automated and not be a time suck. Yeah, I love the idea of a B2B campaign that is a bit playful and a bit cheeky-
Mark Jones
And not boring, quite frankly.
Lena Zak
... and not boring. Yeah, exactly. Thank you for saying it.
Mark Jones
Doesn't all have to be not boring.
Lena Zak
Yeah.
Mark Jones
You mentioned localising it, which is one of the great challenges and joys of working in a multinational here. Any insights into what you thought about as you localise it for this market?
Lena Zak
Yeah. Look, Amazon Business globally, it's such a big brand and it has an incredible marketing team behind it. We've done, as Amazon Business Global, quite a lot of campaigns, including a range of... sort of that fairytale theme or that sort of common zeitgeist kind of...I think they did maybe Jack... I don't think they did Jack and the Beanstalk, but something similar. This one really seemed like it would appeal to Australian businesses. It's very locally relevant, that fairytale or that rhyme, I should say. So, yeah, that was the one we chose. We really didn't have to make a lot of changes to it, really the main thing was just having the Australian voiceover for it. But also because Amazon Business Australia is such a new brand, we only launched last year, as opposed to in the US, Amazon Business has been live for 10 years, it's a really well known brand, really well known B2B brand, part of our sort of thinking was really also around just introducing the brand for the first time and really trying to explain exactly what it does, and exactly who it can be for and how local businesses can use it. So that was part of our thinking and part of our sort of choice mechanisms around choosing that specific campaign.
Mark Jones
Now, for people who won't know your background professionally, you've done quite a few product manager roles and most recently at the AFR where, of course, I used to be a journalist as well. That's kind of a fun thing to have in common. I'm interested in... what did you learn about Australian businesses in that context that you've applied here? Because I think there's a real sensibility that's important when it comes to understanding how to position an organisation, just to pick up on what you were saying about introducing people to a brand and really understanding who those people are.
Lena Zak
Yeah. I have had some varied roles, a non-traditional career path, as I like to say. I think the constant, career-wise, for me has probably been digital transformation of really traditional businesses. At the AFR, I worked on an amazing project, which was actually launching AFR's first mobile app. I remember at the time having lots of conversations with people saying, "Oh, nobody reads their business news on a mobile app. People want a newspaper or at least an iPad to read over at breakfast." And I just remember thinking, digital transformation is so key here and broadening your audiences and really thinking about who your audience might be that doesn't look like you, that isn't maybe the AFR reader 15, 20, 25 years ago.
I think that Australian businesses back then were continuously evolving, and I think that that has remained true to today. Business customers and business buyers are as varied as humans themselves. And Amazon Business serves everybody from sole traders to NGOs, government organisations, huge enterprises, really anybody that's buying anything to keep their business running. I think that that, to go back to the AFR that is kind of similar, business is what makes the world go round, and just putting it in a box and saying it's only for this kind of audience is really limiting.
Mark Jones
Yeah. That internal stakeholder story is an interesting one that maybe cuts through to the experience of many marketers is that when you're in a transformation programme, there's a huge element of the unknown. We don't know how this is going to work out exactly, and we sort of know a little bit about them, but there's also some bold steps that have to be taken. When you launch the brand and you're part of the whole team that do that, what were some of the unknowns from an experience point of view?
Lena Zak
Yeah. I think one of the benefits of working for a global company is that you have the learnings that have happened in other countries. But of course, Australia is super unique in a lot of ways. I think probably for my internal global stakeholders at Amazon, it's been really eye-opening just how unique this country is, and how much more human-to-human interaction we actually still have and still value in a way that I think has really changed in other parts of the world.
So just building a brand here and earning the trust of business stakeholders is so key, and is something that we're really trying to do each and every day. Also, to just really learn about what Australian businesses specifically are looking for, and also what's been holding them back until now in their own digital transformation journeys. We're trying to make our products as easy and as accessible as possible, but we're also really conscious that actually the storytelling part of why do you need this in your organisation is going to be really key here.
Mark Jones
Yeah. I'm glad you said the bit about the personal side of B2B, which I think the Australian business psyche is very personal. We like to know our suppliers, to know how they think and feel. Would you say that was the main difference or one of the main differences compared to the other 11 new countries that opened?
Lena Zak
Yeah. Look, I think that when Amazon launched in Australia eight years ago, it really changed our expectations of the retail sector. We weren't used to fast shipping, we certainly weren't used to free shipping, we weren't used to having sort of the vast selection that we now have. So I think that Amazon's launch really lifted the game for the retail sector. I don't think that necessarily everybody was unhappy with how things were, but I think we sort of changed customer expectations in the B2C space.
Mark Jones
So, how would you make a distinction between the B2B and the B2C sides of Amazon?
Lena Zak
Yeah. Yes, excellent point. So what is Amazon Business? Really Amazon Business is Amazon's B2B store. So you can imagine all of the things that customers have come to know about Amazon, the selection, the convenience, the speed, and Amazon Business has sort of built on top of that store with features that are really designed with organisations in mind. You can manage your organization's spend, the access for your team of what they can and can't buy. We like to say it's almost like having a procurement person without having procurement person for small businesses. And then for larger organisations, it's really around integrating with your existing systems, but also just sort of modernising them.
We know that the tailend 20% of any organization's procurement is actually where you'll find 80% of your suppliers. And that is just a huge time suck on any organisation. So by trying to bring all that together, bring it to one place, but still having all of those same suppliers available, you can really stop your team from working on the small stuff and empower your procurement teams to work on the stuff that's really going to move the needle for your organisation, and really push your business forward rather than sitting around choosing which paper towels to get. Just do that with the click of a button.
Mark Jones
How do you build trust in this environment compared to what I would say is the typical B2C Amazon experience where we know that if... I'm speaking as a customer myself. If I buy a book, I can choose where it comes from, and I know that it's going to come in the next day or so depending on whatever the expectations were set. It's a pretty simple, almost two click I'd suggest. You go to your cart, you go check out. You know it's all set and then press another click, and you're done. It's very, very clean and simple. How have you built trust in the B2B environment with that sort of a mindset?
Lena Zak
That simplicity is exactly what we're after in the B2B environment, and that's exactly what the product is. So if you think about... as a consumer, you're now used to that ease and simplicity. And given that procurement professionals are also humans, they're used to that simplicity in their day-to-day lives. So why can't you have that same simplicity, that same ease of use in your B2B buying world? That is what the product is. I think you actually articulated it perfectly is we're just here to make business buying simple.
Mark Jones
What about governance and risk and security, some of those things? Enterprises will have pretty strict approaches to that sort of stuff, "Where does my data live?", all that sort of thing. How do you deal with that?
Lena Zak
Yeah. One of the great things about Amazon I think is the extreme focus on data governance, data security. As a consumer, I feel extremely comfortable with where my data is kept with the... As a marketer, sometimes it's frustrating, Amazon's strict controls and obsession with privacy for customers. As a customer, on the other hand, that makes me feel really, really good. I think that that is even more important, as you say, with enterprise organisations. And we focus a lot on their needs, whether that's in our businesses with AWS or, again, with Amazon Business now.
Mark Jones
Now, I've got two obligatory AI questions, because every interview has to have obligatory AI questions if it doesn't come up. The first one is about how you're using AI to improve the experience. Obviously, it's a world garden in terms of how it gets used in your customer experience, but how are you making it better for people on the procurement side?
Lena Zak
Yeah. Look, Amazon's had machine learning and AI for a long time. It's such a key part of how our site runs and how we... The search experience that customers have online, the personalization that you get again as a consumer or as a business, the products that get surfaced based on your own buying and your own purchasing needs, that continues to improve and continues to get enhanced. But really the benefit for B2B buyers is what we've seen for so long in the B2C space, which is that rather than almost starting from scratch every time, you are being surfaced products that are the right fit for you based on the ML, the machine learning, and the AI tools that we have. As you touched on earlier, we've launched spend and analyser dashboard I think this week or last week, this week, which is a great new tool that actually really empowers organisations with data on what they are spending, and gives them tips on how they can be more thoughtful with their business purchasing in order to meet their organization's needs.
Mark Jones
Yeah. The other thing that a lot of marketers are now getting their heads around, and this is potentially what's more in the SME and sort of medium-sized organisations, and thinking a lot about AI summaries in the large language learning models. Because if we think about marketers having to say, "All right. Now, I need to organise my content, my website, our offerings, so that it gets surfaced in an AI summary," it just changes the way that we think about a lot of those old models of SEO and marketing, how we build awareness. There's lots of stuff going on in that area that I find quite fascinating.
Lena Zak
Yeah. I also find it fascinating and probably a little scary. But, look, I really grew up and started my career in the SEO world, and so I feel like my expertise really lay there. I think that it's kind of a confronting time for us more old-school marketers.
Mark Jones
Right?
Lena Zak
I think that there's so much cool stuff that you can now do with AI to sort of take away some of the really churny work that a lot of my marketing team were doing. So I'm trying to find the areas, the things that AI can assist me and my team with, while just reducing the panic as well about the things that we can't control.
Mark Jones
Now, that leads me to ask about other country managers. Is there some sort of WhatsApp group channel chat? I can't imagine that's true, but how do you learn from these peers and people around the world?
Lena Zak
Well, there is a Slack channel.
Mark Jones
There you go. There is a Slack channel, okay.
Lena Zak
Yes. But Amazon has a writing culture, which is really-
Mark Jones
I've heard about this.
Lena Zak
It's a funny thing as a journalist, as a former journalist to find myself in a corporate role where my one real skillset is being able to write and all of a sudden it's really valued. So it feels very, very lucky, very luxurious. But the writing culture is really key, I think, to Amazon's success because the thing with a written document-
Mark Jones
Sorry, just to jump in, but this is where you go into a meeting and you've got a prepared document. Everybody sits around the table and reads it, and then we talk. Is that right?
Lena Zak
Exactly.
Mark Jones
I heard about this.
Lena Zak
That's exactly right. So everybody sits... It's so confronting when you first join Amazon. It's very strange. Everybody walks in and silently sits, and there's paper, and everybody's got their red pen-
Mark Jones
There's no quiet music in the background?
Lena Zak
There's no quiet music in the background. Everyone is just heads down reading and writing notes, and then you discuss. And the thing that that gives you is you are all on the same page-
Mark Jones
Literally.
Lena Zak
Literally. Thank you, yes. But I think that when you come into a PowerPoint presentation, it is very easy to hide things in a PowerPoint. Right?
Mark Jones
Mm-hmm.
Lena Zak
Just some things just don't go up. It's very, very hard to hide in a 6-page document. The information is really captured in a really truthful, but also really data-driven way. So it's not just storytelling, it's sort of the matching of storytelling with data. And that process I think allows you, whether you're in the room or not, to then really be up to speed on the things that are happening in teams around the world and organisations that you would otherwise have very little visibility into. So that, being able to have those documents and read and take those learnings from what's happening in Japan or in Europe or in the US, and obviously on a much smaller scale, apply those to Australia, I think has been really important for me as I upskill in the role, but also is just such a standard process at Amazon. It's how Amazon is able to sort of have leaders stay across details in so many varied forums.
Mark Jones
I presume there's some sort of template for things people are looking for, like context, the data bit, the story bit... how does it get organised. I guess I asked that through the lens of a marketer thinking like pitching a campaign, "I've got this glorious bit of creative I want to show you, but now I've got to write this whole story first." Is that right?
Lena Zak
Yeah, it's hard. It is hard when you first start because... Especially for some of the agencies that we work with, they really have to learn to write as Amazonians would.
Mark Jones
Wow.
Lena Zak
It's a steep learning curve, but I think it drives really great outcomes because I think that there is something about the written word that, again, just doesn't allow you to sort of fluff around and hide. It becomes-
Mark Jones
Unless you used AI to write it.
Lena Zak
Well, yes-
Mark Jones
You can probably tell.
Lena Zak
Well, firstly, you can tell. But to go back to your previous AI question, writing doesn't come naturally to everyone, and especially if English is your second language or if you are from a more technical background, it's hard. In a writing culture, that can be really challenging. So that is a great use of AI internally is to help people for whom writing is not... they're not maybe journalists and writing is not their forte, to allow them to still express their thoughts and ideas in a way that is acceptable to leadership. And, yeah, it's one of the great uses of AI actually internally and has been definitely embraced by teams.
Mark Jones
So if a CMO or a marketer was to take some lessons out of our conversation, an advice that you would share in terms of building an organisation with this product marketing, storytelling, data-driven written kind of mindset, what would be some advice for marketers going into the year?
Lena Zak
Yeah. I think that marketing something you believe in is always easier. I have been very lucky throughout my career. With some very minor exceptions, I have gotten to work on things that I truly believe in. And I think when that is the case, the marketing comes more naturally. I don't know if that's a device as such, but it's... I think it is something to think about when... As the marketer for a product or for an organisation, if it's not happening, maybe it's the wrong product for you.
Mark Jones
Yeah.
Lena Zak
Obviously, not every role anybody's ever going to have is for their dream product. My career started in media, and so for a long time... Even when I moved into product management and was focusing more on the marketing and the product marketing, I could still have customer obsession because the customer I was serving sort of looked a lot like me, it was like people who were interested in media. When I moved to Amazon, I worked on a programme that's now called Prime Access, which was all about giving low-income households in the US a discount on their Prime membership. So all about bridging the e-commerce divide, addressing some of America's food desert challenges, giving underserved customers and households the access to that same selection, speed, convenience that we all expect and come to rely on.
That was a really different kind of customer for me to serve. When you're truly customer obsessed and when you're truly focused on the needs of the customer, the storytelling comes more naturally because you're not... When you start from the customer, you can really work backwards on positioning your product and positioning your programmes to meet their specific needs.
Mark Jones
How did you get your mindset around that customer that you hadn't had experience with? Because I think that's probably a nice way to wrap it up is to be thinking about, "Well, there's gaps that I'm always going to have. I may not have the benefit of all the data and the knowledge and the insights that you do." Is it literally as experiential as getting out there and meeting people? What else would you say?
Lena Zak
Literally, yes, that's what I did. I went out, I met people. I spoke to a lot of people in underserved communities. I spoke to organisations serving them. I read a lot. There's a lot of studies you can always read a lot, right?
Mark Jones
Yeah.
Lena Zak
But there's nothing like speaking to an individual person and understanding that, "Yeah, I live in Washington DC, but I work three jobs. My child is disabled. I don't have a car for me to go to the shops. It's going to take an hour and a half, and so I shop at the convenience store that's located nearby. They're charging five times more per item than in a supermarket, and I have less money to spend on that." When all of those things come together and you think, "Well, there's a solution for that," then explaining that solution is really, really easy or easier. I shouldn't say really easy. I think it's when we start with the product and go down to the customer that I think sometimes the messaging becomes a little bit irrelevant. But when you run focus groups or when you meet individuals and just ask them questions, as a journalist, that's a thing you just learn how to do. You just ask people about themselves and-
Mark Jones
Yeah, it's normal.
Lena Zak
It's really normal. It's probably a specific personality type, as you well know, but people know what they want and what they need. It doesn't mean that you can always build those things or you can always tell that story through your marketing channels. But when you can, I think it's really powerful and really effective.
Mark Jones
Well, one of my old editors used to say to me, "There's nothing going on at your desk that your readers care about." In other words, get out there.
Lena Zak
Get out there.
Mark Jones
Right? So first-person research is a valuable tool. That's a nice human way to turn the conversation. Thank you so much, Lena Zak, for joining us on The CMO Show.
Lena Zak
Thank you. Thank you for having me.
Mark Jones
It's a pleasure.
I hope you enjoyed the interview. It was really great to hear Lena's perspective getting the business up and going. I wanted to just touch on the campaign that we spoke about, Little Bo Peep. Of course, it's all about fun, about fairytale, about mythology, but finding a way into what's otherwise a pretty boring part of the world. I mean, really, procurement is not that exciting. However, it's critical to how we all do our work. It's a huge business, and globally it's a multi-billion dollar business. So being able to have some fun, find a creative angle, of course, is a great reminder to all of us. Even if the business that you're working in, maybe the industry that you're working in is not all that fun from a consumer perspective, there's always a great way to tell a story and to make it far more interesting than perhaps you first realise. That's it for this episode of The CMO Show brought to you by ImpactInstitute in partnership with Adobe. See you next time.