This is an awesome 60-second video. It's an awareness test -- play it and follow the instructions before reading the rest of my blog post:

While the commercial is about bicycle safety, I think the message really applies to communications in the business world. On the marketing side, just because we buy an ad somewhere doesn't mean consumers will pay attention to it. Internally, just because all the factual information is emailed or said in a meeting doesn't mean that the message you care about has actually been communicated... The challenge for both is: How do you inspire people to pay attention to what matters to you?

I'm at the Zappos outlet store in Las Vegas right now (Dean Martin location) and Alfred (COO/CFO of Zappos) is dressed up as an Easter bunny, handing out candy to the kids!

I gave a presentation at SXSW earlier today titled "Top 10 Lessons Learned in E-Commerce." The powerpoint of the presentation is here:

I had set up an account on Twitter (username: zappos), and I had used the track feature ("track zappos"). It was interesting seeing the comments about the presentation afterwards for people that were twittering and using the word "zappos". Most of the comments were positive (people seemed to enjoy hearing about the Zappos philosophy on company culture), but there were also a couple of negative comments, including one twitterer that said he left the room early.

Speaking of which, someone just sent me this link from Valleywag that said Jeff Bezos (CEO and founder of Amazon.com) was in the room.

Seeing all the Twitter comments about Zappos during the presentation, I thought for future presentations, it might be interesting to display all the Twitter comments in real-time, even asking audience members to vote on which topics to talk more about... It would be a way to make future presentations relevant to what each audience actually wants to hear.

I received the following email from Kelly, one of our employees... It's great to see the Zappos core values going beyond just our customers!

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Last night I took my 7-year-old daughter (Hannah) to go see the preview
of Disney's "College Road Trip" movie... at the movie, several radio
stations and Disney reps were handing out gifts.. well, the Disney rep
must have not planned on having many kids attend, since she ran out of
the much-coveted kid's gifts... my daughter was lucky enough to get
one... while many other children were running around showing theirs off,
some of the kids were sad that they did not get one... one little girl
in particular was in tears... My daughter walked up to her and said "my
mommy works at Zappos and her company believes that we should treat
everyone kindly and try to spread happiness. I would like you to have
my gift if it will make you smile. I don't need it. Now smile and have
fun at the movie." and she gave her a hug.

Next generation of Zappos ???

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I received an inspiring story from Martha, who works on the graveyard shift... I thought I would share it on my blog. Here's what Martha emailed me:

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Tony,

I just have to share with you something that happened last Tuesday morning when I got off work.

But first, we have to go back to 1984 when I spent 7 weeks traveling around Europe. I had spent all of my money by the time I got on a plane in Frankfurt, Germany. We landed in London and had to get off of the plane while we were there for about an hour and then we were going on to Los Angeles. I got thirsty but knew that I only had my lucky dollar and a bunch of foreign coins in the bottom of my handbag. I spotted a snack bar and a sign said "FOREIGN MONEY ACCEPTED." I got a coke, and started drinking it as I waited in line to pay. I had drank more than half of it when I got to the register and spotted a sign that said "NO FOREIGN COINS, PAPER CURRENCY ONLY." I had nothing but my lucky dollar and was not going to part with it. I tried to get the cashier to take ALL of my coins which would surely been enough to cover the price of the coke times over but she said no.

Finally, a gentlemen in line behind me said that he would pay for my coke. I thanked him and tried to give him all my foreign coins. He would not take them and told me to just do a favor for someone else. He said just do random acts of kindness for others. Throughout my life I have tried to follow his suggestion as much as possible. It doesn't always mean paying for something for someone, many things you can do are free. Examples: Bringing your neighbor's trash can back from the curb, bringing their newspaper to the door, opening a door for someone, or just putting a smile on someone's face. It can involve money. Examples: The person in front of you in line may need a penny or a few cents so that they don't have to break a dollar, pay for someone's coke, etc.

Okay, back to what happened on Tuesday morning. I stopped at Walgreens down the street. I had a ton of stuff to get. When I got to the register, 2 people got in line behind me. I let them both go first rather than wait on me. Then it was my turn. I was about a third of the way into being checked out when an older gentleman got in line. He had 2 cans of peanuts, some salve and a chapstick. I turned to him and told him to give them to me. He had a strange look on his face and asked me why. I told him that I was going to pay for them so that he didn't have to wait for me to get checked out. He asked why. Out of my mouth came "It's a random act of Wowness" I totally meant to say "Random act of kindness," but because of working here at Zappos, the word "WOW" came out. Rather than correct what I said, I just went with it. He handed me his items, I had the cashier scan them and put them in bag and I gave them to the gentleman. He said "Tell me about this "Random acts of Wowness" I explained that it was doing nice things for people, even strangers. I briefly told him about my experience in London. He was so grateful, thanked me and left the store. Then the cashier asked me more about this "Random acts of Wowness" I explained that I worked at Zappos and that we WOW our customers.

I feel that I shared this Wowness with 2 people and that they BOTH will play it forward. (Have you seen the movie "Pay it Forward?") I had such a great feeling when I left the store.

On Friday morning when I left here at 7:00 am I stopped in the same Walgreens. I had barely gotten in the door when I heard, "Hi Martha." I thought that someone from work was there. I looked around and realized that it was the same cashier from before. I said to him "I'm surprised that you remembered me and my name." He said "I wrote your name down from the credit
card receipt and of course I remember you, you're the person who told me about the "Random acts of Wow or Kindness." He said that he had told other people about it!

I was so WOWed by this cashier! He got it. I feel that he will be WOWing other people now.

• Martha C.

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Thanks for the story, Martha. It's great to see that our WOW philosophy is extending beyond how we treat our customers at Zappos!

This past Friday and Saturday, Alfred and I hosted a 1-hour all hands
meeting in Vegas and in Kentucky. For Vegas, we rented out the Henderson
Pavilion, and it was the first time in over 5 years that we had gotten all
the departments together. In Kentucky, we rented out a movie theater and
it was the first time we had gotten all the shifts together. For both
locations, it felt like we were one big family, and it was really neat
seeing everyone together and feeling the energy of the crowd.

We went through our financials for 2007 and made a surprise announcement
about the bonus we were going to give to everyone for helping us beat our
operating profit goals for 2007: Each employee would receive a bonus check
equal to 10% of whatever he or she made in 2007 -- roughly equivalent to 5
1/2 weeks of pay! The response from both crowds was amazing!

We then went over our goals for 2008, and spent about half an hour taking
questions from the audience. The public version of our powerpoint
presentation is here:

http://www.slideshare.net/zappos/zappos-all-hands-2008-02-29-public

We spoke with some employees after each of the meetings, and it was great
hearing what they planned on doing with the surprise bonus check. Some
people were planning on saving most of it, while others were going to use
it to pay off medical bills that they were previously stressed about
figuring out how to pay. When back at the Vegas office, the daughter of
one of our employees came up to us to say "Thank you for the trip to
Disneyland with my mom." It was great to hear the stories of how we were
able to positively affect our employees' lives!