A ruse or brilliant marketing by Amazon? Yes
SAN FRANCISCO — What a farce.
That was one of the immediate reactions when word leaked out Monday that Amazon’s much-ballyhooed search for a second headquarters outside of Seattle would result in not one, but two new locations. On Twitter, people used farce, sham or stunt to describe what had happened.
Amazon’s critics were apoplectic at what they called a bait and switch.
“I was shocked,” said Robert B. Engel of the Free & Fair Markets Initiative, a nonprofit that is a determined foe of the retailer on all fronts. “They’ve duped more than the bidders. They’ve duped all of us. They can’t even live up to a promise that wasn’t fair to anyone but Amazon.”
From the company’s point of view, however, things seem to be working out rather nicely.
The quest kept a persistent spotlight on Amazon as the suitor everyone sought — would it choose Denver? maybe Atlanta? surely Chicago? — even as the company apparently decided instead to set up smaller operations in the Washington metro area and in New York City, the two most obvious places all along. (Amazon declined to comment.)
Amid the guessing game, the company got information from dozens of cities about how much they would pay for a strong Amazon presence, valuable data that it will no doubt use to expand.
“What we see is Amazon evolving into a corporation whose headquarters is virtual and whose physical presence will span the globe,” said Charles R.T. O’kelley, director of the Berle Center on Corporations, Law and Society at Seattle University. “Instead of being headquartered in one place and moving to a second headquarters, Amazon is going to be, and be thought of as, everywhere.”
This, after all, is how Amazon sees its destiny: to become not just the everything store, as it was branded a mere five years ago, but the everything company. People will buy groceries from Amazon, be entertained by Amazon shows, pick up snacks at Amazon Go stores, see all the ads they need on Amazon, find a plumber through Amazon, communicate through Amazon’s Alexa virtual assistant — and that is just the beginning.
Set against such ambition, the words “second headquarters” or, in Amazon parlance, “HQ2,” which proved so beguiling to the media, politicians and local governments ultimately mean little.
“The word ‘headquarters’ is a