King of Amazon.com

Hey there everybody, I hope you're all doing well.
I apologize in advance for the relatively short length of this post and, quite possibly, for the entire lack of direction for the post. I would go on to explain WHY I think that the post will be directionless, but I might as well just show you. So, let the party begin--


Many nerds all along the watch tower will have heard, by now, of the acquisition of Zappos (an online shoe and accessory store) by Amazon.com. The giant.

If you click on the title to this blog post it will take you to a letter written by Tony Hsieh, CEO of Zappos, to all of his employees to announce to them the sudden, and somewhat sneaky, sale of their wonderful company to the online giant known as Amazon.

The letter is actually fantastic. It's a true testament to Hsieh's character and heartfelt gratitude to his employees. It's the kind of letter that every employee deserves but only a lucky few ever get the opportunity to see. Really good stuff.

But it gets better!

Near the end of the letter, Tony goes into a Q&A session and, near the middle we see this question,

"Q: Can you tell me a bit more about Jeff Bezos (Amazon CEO)? What is he like?"

to which he responds with a short answer, saying "We’d like to show an 8-minute video of Jeff Bezos that will give you some insight into his personality and way of thinking. He shares some of what he’s learned as an entrepreneur, as well as some of the mistakes he’s made."

And the video that follows is really what I wanted to talk about, today. Don't get me wrong--The letter is awesome and I'd love to sit around all day and praise it. But the video is fantastic. I recommend anyone who's interested should click on this blog post's title to go to the site and then watch the video (It's about half way down the page...you'll see it).
The video features Jeff Bezos, the CEO of Amazon.com.

Now, I don't know about anyone else, but I've never been a huge fan of Amazon. I figured that it was the site where my mother goes to find books for book club and, as such, I have no place even looking at the site. But, literally, after watching an 8 minute video of the founder, my entire perception of the website and of Bezos, himself, is completely transformed.

In the video, Bezos comes across as fun, energetic, and down-to-earth. Not some krazy high-powered executive who sits at a huge high-back chair with a big furry cat and slowly mumbles to himself about how the next Oprah Book Club book is the "big cog" that will put his master plan into action and he'll finally rule the world of suburban-mom book clubs.

Not at all. Instead he gave 8 minutes of enjoyable one-way banter, using common language and basically shared the "things he knows" about business. It was his very clever way to spending 8 minutes sharing his business philosophy....I can't even imagine how inspiring it would've been to me, had I been an employee.

What's remarkable, though, is that it was still absurdly influential to me. I have an entirely new view of him, his company, and I feel like he let me in on the ACTUAL answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything. (that was a semi-geeky reference for those of you who think I'm particularly strange for writing it in that way.)

So what was the purpose of him releasing this video? This 8 minute grail of genius?

Long story short? Brilliant marketing.

It was a brilliant opportunity for a super-successful CEO to poke his head out into the public and allow everyone to perceive him as some friendly, approachable, everyday joe. He's no longer a CEO of an evil corporation. He's a cool, business savvy, friend who gave everybody some advice the other day.
It was so influential that I immediately left the article to go onto Amazon.com and check if he'd released any books. I then took the time to find the phone number of the local public libraries and ask them to scour their catalogs to see if they were holding any of the books he'd written or books that were written about him.

Couldn't Tony Hsieh just answered "Well he's a really great dude. I really respect him. He's got business philosophy that matches my own. And we occasionally party hard together."

Gosh...see? I have no direction for this at all...I just wanted to share how absolutely brilliant that video is.

Builds brand loyalty. Hopefully stops millions of Zappos customers from hating Amazon. Keeps Zappos employees comfortable. And adds a very human face to an otherwise very corporate and intimidating company.
Really super stuff. I'm very impressed.

And now, as I sign off, I'll apologize one last time for spending 20 minutes of all of your lives on something that wasn't nearly as inspiring as that Jeff Bezos's video.

Hope everybody is doing well, out there! Take care, ya'll!!
(P.S. THIS would make a good collar-pickin' Christmas present. *wink wink*)