Alexa Skills Marketing Guidelines
The purpose of these abridged guidelines is to outline the design and communication standards for the Amazon Echo and Alexa brands. This resource is intended to help you navigate the Amazon requirements for using our brand assets including trademarks and logos. The requirements outlined in this self-service guide apply to any marketing material that mentions Amazon or uses Amazon’s trademarks or logos. The Alexa Voice Service and Amazon devices may not be featured in TV commercials, film, video advertising, radio broadcasts, packaging, sweeps, or contests without Amazon review. For additional guidance on Amazon Alexa brand usage, please refer to the full, unabridged Alexa Brand Usage Guidelines. Please follow all outlined requirements in order to retain the right to use the Amazon Alexa logo and branding assets.
Brand and Messaging Guidelines
How to Describe Alexa
Please use the following descriptions when talking about Alexa.
- How Alexa Works
- Alexa is a cloud-based voice service from Amazon. Alexa is the brain behind Amazon Echo and other Alexa-enabled devices. Using Alexa is as simple as asking a question—just ask, and Alexa will respond instantly.
- Alexa Short Description
- Amazon Alexa lives in the cloud and is always getting smarter. Ask Alexa to play music, hear the news, check the weather, control your smart home, and more.
- Alexa Long Description
- Amazon Alexa lives in the cloud and is always getting smarter, delivering new capabilities to your device automatically. The more you use Alexa, the more Alexa adapts to your speech patterns, vocabulary, and preferences, with new features continually being added. Ask Alexa to answer questions, hear the news, get weather and traffic reports, control your smart home, and more.
- Referring to Alexa
- Always refer to Alexa by name.
How to Describe Alexa Skills
Skills add new capabilities that allow you to create a more personalized experience with your Amazon Echo, Amazon Fire TV, and other Alexa-enabled devices. Skills let you receive flash briefings, order food, request a ride, track your fitness, and more. When you discuss customers setting up Alexa skills, instruct them to “enable” (not download) the skill, and if applicable, direct them to link their accounts in the Alexa app.
Do
- Use exact, approved Alexa descriptions and utterances when demonstrating how to interact with Alexa. Examples of approved utterances include: “Alexa, what’s on my calendar today?” “Alexa, play song of the day.” “Alexa, add milk to my shopping list.” Additional approved Alexa utterances can be found on the Meet Alexa page.
- Test your utterance at least three times to ensure that you are using accurate language for your utterance.
- Always include the wake word “Alexa” in utterances. Wake words come at the beginning of an utterance.
- Prioritize features that highlight Alexa personality and minimize the number of “OK” or “Yes/No” responses from Alexa.
- Use the following whenever possible: “Ask Alexa,” “Just Ask Alexa,” and “Just Ask.”
- Leverage language from the Meet Alexa and Amazon Echo product detail pages for capability and feature claims. Please note that if you intend to feature any other 3P features, capabilities, or content, you will need to seek permission directly from those 3Ps.
- If you make any claims about Amazon devices (e.g., fills the room with immersive, 360-degree omni-directional audio) please use the claims listed on our product detail pages. You may not make any comparative claims (e.g., compatible with more smart home devices than competitors).
- Refer to skills using the following format: “[skill name] for Amazon Alexa” (e.g., Jeopardy! skill for Amazon Alexa). If you have space limitations, the following format is acceptable: “[skill name] for Alexa” (e.g., Jeopardy! skill for Alexa).
- Use Echo devices or Amazon Echo Family when referencing Echo products as a group.
- Always refer to Amazon devices using the full name:
- Amazon Echo
- Echo Plus
- Echo Dot
- Echo Show
- Echo Spot
- Amazon Tap
- Amazon Fire TV
- Fire TV Cube
- Fire TV Stick
- Fire tablet (as a general reference only please include the correct model name when referring to a specific tablet, e.g., Fire HD 8).
- Please note that any use of Amazon Trademarks must conform with the Amazon Trademark Guidelines.
Don’t
- Don’t use the terms “personal assistant” or “virtual assistant” to describe or in the same context as Alexa.
- Don’t use the term “always listening” in reference to Amazon Echo or Alexa-enabled devices.
- Don’t showcase Alexa response when a wake word has not been used.
- Don’t make any comparative claims with any other products.
- Don’t directly combine skill or product names with Alexa (e.g., “Jeopardy! Alexa skill”, instead, use “Jeopardy! skill for Amazon Alexa”).
- Don’t refer to your relationship with Amazon or Amazon Alexa as a “partnership” or “collaboration.”
- Don’t position Amazon logos in a way that implies there is endorsement from Amazon.
- Don’t position any third-party brands in direct placements with Amazon trademarks (e.g., ABC Technologies Echo devices).
- Don’t refer to Amazon trademarks in possessive or plural form (e.g., Echo Dots, Alexa’s skills). If referring to multiple devices, please add a qualifier (e.g., Echo Dot devices or Alexa-enabled devices).
- Don’t use shortened versions of products and service names such as “Dot” or “Tap” or blend product/service names such as “Kindle Fire.” “Amazon” may be added to any product/service name as desired.
- Don’t place ™ or ® symbols beside Amazon trademarks.
- Do not manipulate the Amazon Echo light ring in any way, including placing your logo inside of it, or using it as a decorative element.
- Do not design your marketing materials in a way that makes them appear similar to Amazon marketing materials (e.g. packaging, detail page layouts, etc.)
- Don’t refer to a product/service as “all-new” or “new” if Amazon is not including this language on the product/service detail page.
- Don’t use Amazon logos as part of a sentence (e.g. “Works with [Amazon Echo logo]”).
- It is ok to show families in marketing collateral; however, please avoid showing children under the age of 13 interacting with the Amazon Echo device unless directly marketing a kid skill.
Visual Brand Guidelines
When featuring Amazon trademarks in your creative assets, please include the correct trademark attribution per the Amazon Trademark Guidelines, and follow all requirements set forth in the Trademark Guidelines.
Works with Alexa Badge
Only Smart Home devices that have been certified as Works with Alexa are eligible to use the Works with Alexa badge. Please refer to Obtain the WWA badge, WWA Program Guidelines, WWA Trademark Usage Guidelines, and the full, unabridged Alexa Brand Usage Guidelines for more details.
Alexa Skills “Just Ask” Badge
Non-smart home Alexa skills created using the Alexa Skills Kit are qualified to use the Just Ask Amazon Alexa badge. Smart home skills may not use this badge. The only badging allowed for smart home is the Works with Alexa badge. For additional guidance on Amazon Alexa brand usage, please refer to the full, unabridged Alexa Brand Usage Guidelines.
Download the badges above by clicking each image.
- Clear Space
- The clear space for the Alexa badge is half the height of the Alexa icon. No other elements should encroach on the logo’s clear space. Whenever possible, use the maximum amount of clear space the placement in layout will allow.
- Minimum Size
- Alexa badges should not appear smaller than 190 px in width for on-screen applications, or 1” in width for printed applications. Sizes below this can damage the badge’s integrity. For applications smaller than the minimum badge size, use the Amazon Alexa icon.
Alexa Speech Bubble
The speech bubble is a graphic way to illustrate examples of Alexa utterances or the vocal commands and questions that trigger corresponding Alexa actions. They are a quick and visual way to give customers examples of what they can ask Alexa.
Use the Alexa speech bubble template when designing your speech bubbles.
- Flag
- The speech bubble can have a flag in one of six positions. Always face the flag toward the speaker, even if that speaker is off-frame.
- Typeface
- The speech bubble uses Bookerly Regular Italic. Each utterance begins and ends with quotations and uses sentence case. For rare digital cases when Bookerly Regular Italic cannot be used (e.g. HTML emails), Georgia Italic and Times New Roman Italic may be used as backup options.
- Width
- The speech bubble should always be wider than it is tall. The width of the speech bubble should reduce by quarter lengths.
- Color
- The speech bubble is rendered in white with a 50% squid ink stroke with a weight approximately 20% of the point size of the type contained within. The typography is rendered in squid ink.
For speech bubbles featuring a third party, please refer to the Co-branded Utterance Bubble Guidelines.
