Fender strikes the right chord with insights-driven approach, driving 44% YoY growth

Fender and Flywheel executives discuss campaign with Amazon Ads

Goals

Every musician, across every genre, in any generation, has at least one thing in common: They had to start somewhere. As the story goes, before Jimi Hendrix became the greatest guitar player of all time, pushing the boundaries of his Fender Stratocaster, his first instrument was an old one-string ukulele, given to him by his father. And before Stevie Ray Vaughan defined Texas blues rock on his Stratocaster, he taught himself how to play on a toy guitar from Sears.

For nearly 80 years, Fender’s legacy has been defined by supporting the artists and guitar players that shape music and culture. This is neatly summed up in a famous quote from founder Leo Fender: “Artists are angels, and our job is to give them wings to fly.”

That ethos remains today. Fender creates instruments that inspire musicians' journeys from the very beginning for years to come—wherever that may take them.

“We know that the first time a player interacts with a guitar, it's a pivotal moment,” said Keith Legro, Vice President of Marketing, Americas at Fender. “The sound, the feel, the style of that instrument, it's what's going to help determine whether or not they become a guitar player for life.”

Those first few strums are crucial for a would-be musician, and Fender understands the importance of inspiring customers right away. But Fender found that it can be challenging to reach these first-time musicians who are shopping online.

“The challenge with selling premium instruments online is that customer interaction with the instrument is limited. In a traditional music store, a player can see, feel, play, and hear the instrument,” Legro said. “On Amazon, we found that guitars were selling for a significantly lower price than we were seeing in traditional retail stores, and we knew that if we're not providing a product at that price point, then we would not have the opportunity to serve those new players.”

Informed by deep customer insights, Fender developed an exclusive line of entry-level guitars and launched a robust campaign to help reach millions of aspiring musicians.

Approach

Like a perfect song, a campaign is only as good as the notes that build it. So, Fender began by working with Amazon Ads to use proprietary machine learning tools to analyze 17 million insights across 456 variables to learn more about their customers and how to better connect with them.

“Amazon Ads was a breath of fresh air,” Legro said. ”That allowed us to see the consumer journey, whether it was the creators they're interacting with on Twitch, the content that they're streaming on Prime Video, it allowed us to understand our audiences in a way that we hadn't been able to before, and identify where we could meet those consumers with our brand.“

With these insights, Fender was able to confirm that the customers purchasing in the Amazon store were gift buyers and beginners who spend less than their loyal customers.

“This gave us a richer and more comprehensive picture of our customers and more importantly, how we could reach them,” Legro said. “It was a level of customer understanding that we couldn't get anywhere else. This presented a great opportunity to introduce new musicians to the Fender brand on Amazon.”

With these insights as their sheet music, Fender was able to compose a bold strategy to develop a new line of acoustic and electric guitars exclusively for the Amazon store called the Fender Debut Series. This series of guitars was designed specifically for beginners at a more approachable price point.

“We were aiming to make guitar more accessible,” Legro said.

Results

With the Fender Debut Series ready for its introduction, Fender and Amazon Ads worked with their agency Flywheel to get the message out to audiences.

“Between Fender and Flywheel, we used a combination of programmatic display, online video, as well as paid search, leveraging Amazon's first party signals,” said Christine Gambino, Chief Operations Officer at Flywheel. “One of the great things about Amazon is the signals they provide that allow us to understand some of the behaviors of the consumers and where we can ultimately meet them on the journey.”

In just six months, the Debut Series made up 15 percent of Fender’s sales in the Amazon store, which resulted in a 44 percent year-over-year growth.¹

“The launch of the Debut Series has been incredibly successful for Fender, and it's also been something that's been exciting for me personally,” Legro said. “We've opened the door to a new generation of players, and it's something that's going to continue to happen, because a new cohort enters Amazon every year, and these players now have the chance to become a part of the Fender community.”

Looking forward, Fender and Flywheel are focused on leveraging Amazon Ads measurement solutions to understand omnichannel business impact, including how Fender’s Amazon presence affects brick-and-mortar sales. They’re also taking a more sophisticated approach with Amazon Marketing Cloud to understand the complete customer journey to implement those insights into future media planning and optimization decisions, and continuing to utilize Amazon Ads AI-powered solutions to identify the perfect combination of products that will keep new players engaged and help them develop into lifelong musicians.

“Launching the Debut Series on Amazon has helped us continue to democratize the guitar as an instrument, because it gives everybody the opportunity to pick up a Fender guitar and play,” Legro said.

Source

¹ Amazon Internal, US, 2025