Drones, OWLS or Royal Mail? Delivery Innovation for E-Commerce

A perfectly-timed publicity stunt by e-commerce giant Amazon certainly had the media fooled last week. News outlets all fell for the story - first mentioned by Amazon CEO and Founder Jeff Bezos - that Amazon was testing the use of unmanned drones to carry out doorstep delivery services. The service - appropriately named Amazon Prime Air (Amazon Prime is the real service they wanted to promote) - was featured in the video below.What are the potential downsides of allowing drones to make deliveries? Perhaps having hundreds of thousands of them in the air at the same time? And what if Amazon's drones accidentally come into contact with an alternative delivery service - OWLS from Waterstones?Still - a great example of effective seasonal PR

Here is the Amazon Prime Air promo video:

And here is the instant competitor response from book-loving, Harry Potter-inspired Waterstones...