As the first pitch will soon open this year’s baseball season, the CEO of zappos.com figuratively threw out the first pitch at the opening day of the Social Media conference held in Las Vegas in early March 2009.
That pitch, “culture and brand are two sides of the same coin”, was one of the messages Tony Hsieh delivered to the packed room of close to 400 people. He gave an exciting and in-depth view of how Zappos uses blended media to reach its audiences.
Zappos – Happiness in a Box
Hsieh stressed that Zappos does more than just sell shoes. The company wants to be known for its customer service and for delivering happiness to the customer’s front door nicely packaged in a box.
To achieve its three Cs (Clothing, Customer Service, and Culture) goals for 2009, the company will continue to use a mix of media including telephone, social media, Twitter, and television – i.e. Hsieh’s recent appearance on NBC’s The Apprentice.
The company spends five weeks training new employees using a printed culture book (that is available for purchase on the company’s web site) and then does an evaluation based on whether the new hire can fit into the current culture.
Zappos – Culture Counts
The 10 values that make Zappos what it is today include:
- Deliver Wow through customer service
- Embrace change
- Create fun and a little weirdness
- Be adventurous, creative, and open-minded
- Pursue growth and learning
- Build open and honest relationships with communications
- Build positive team and family spirit
- Do more with less
- Be passionate and determined
- Be humble
Social Media Extraordinaire
Over half of the 700 Zappos employees use Twitter to communicate and keep in touch with each other. With that many employees, not everyone is going to get to meet or know everyone else. By using tweets, employees get to learn about other’s interests and hobbies.
According to Hsieh, Twitter gets introduced in the new employee’s training and is used to help build the over all culture of the company.
The company also uses a web site, text blogs, and video blogs that visitors can get a tour of the Zappos office and warehouse.
Success Takes Time
Because Zappos has been in the news a lot lately, it appears the company is an overnight success. In reality, the company has been in business over 10 years. It is experiencing overdue attention after working hard to build the customer service oriented culture.
Although the company has made the most of the social media craze, Hsieh’s message was more about building the culture first then using the media to reach the customer.
Not only did Hsieh throw out the first pitch of the season, he hit the first home run with his message.
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