Zappos.com: Building a Brand that Matters

Image by b_d_solis via Flickr

Last week at the Web 2.0 Summit, Tony Hsieh gave a stellar presentation that detailed how the Zappos.com brand has been built into the company that it is today.  As always, Tony amazed me with his openness.  For instance, not only did he offer to give a tour of their Las Vegas office to anyone that was interested, but he also offered to send a free copy of the company Culture Book to all that emailed him.  How many CEO’s of a billion dollar company would make those types of offers?

Why I’m Loving the new LinkedIn Applications

I have been a big fan of LinkedIn for a long time.  But its never been one of those social networking sites that I visit every day or spend much time on.  Instead, I would bounce onto the site when I needed to add a new business connection or update my profile.

But that might just change thanks to the new LinkedIn Applications that were launched last week.  While they only have a handful of applications right now, I am already finding them tremendously useful for tapping into information about my business network.  While they have similarities to what you might find on Facebook, the real difference is the type of network you are tapping into.  Each and every application on LinkedIn is extremely relevent to my business network.  Take for instance the following:

SlideShare: If you are regular reader of Hard Knox Life, you know I love presentations.  Now, thanks to the LinkedIn App, I can see when my network posts a new presentation.  Why is this so important?  Despite my heavy use of SlideShare, I don’t follow many people on the site, which means I miss new presentations from friends.  That’s all going to change now.

Reading List by Amazon: I’m a big reader and I’m always looking for recommendations from friends.  But I’ve found most of the recommendations happen face to face, which means I end up reading what every P&G’er is reading.  Now I can get the opinion of all my friends to see if that new Seth Godin book is worth the time.

My Travel by TripIt: I started using Upcoming a few months ago to track my business travel.  So I was a little disappointed to see TripIt as the travel app on LinkedIn.  But I still see a huge value of being able to see who else might be where I’m traveling, especially since the new job means my travel will be increasing quite a bit.  We’ll see if TripIt wins me over.

Related articles by Zemanta

• LinkedIn Launches Business-focused Application Platform
• LinkedIn Finally Adds Some Useful Applications
• How to Get the Most Out of LinkedIn
• Guy Kawasaki’s 10 Ways to Use LinkedIn
• LinkedIn Applications: I just added my blog and slideshare content! Wow!

Why design should matter for Brand Managers

Thanks to Chris Brogan, I stumbled across this amazing presentation on the importance of design.  Over the past several years, design has emerged as a powerful force at P&G.  This presentation does a great job capturing why design is an important element for every Brand Manager to consider.

Why the Digital Shopping Experience should matter to Brand Managers

Digital has emerged as a dramatic influence of both online AND offline purchases over the past year according to Resource Interactive.  In an extremely engaging and though provoking presentation on the importance of the Digital Shopping Experience, Resource outlines what brands needs to pay attention to in this channel.  They also go into deeper detail in the White Paper they wrote for Shop.org that went along with this presentation.  Both are worth spending some time with.

The web is buzzing about personal branding

Personal Branding seems to be the “it” topic of the week.  You have Chris Brogan writing a free ebook on Personal Branding for the Business Professional. Then Dan Schawbel is talking about pitching to journalists using your personal brand.  Now David Armano adds his upcoming presentation to the Chicago New Media Summit entitled “Brand U.0”.

As a branding professional, this buzz about personal branding intrigues me.  I know it’s not a new topic by any means, but it is surprising how few people think about it (including me).  I think I need to spend some time mulling this one over…

Mobile Marketing 101 from Deepspace Mobile

Paul Isakson once again provides a stellar presentation on What’s Next in Marketing…this time focusing on the topic of Mobile Marketing.  His agency space150 recently hosted a small event called Deepspace Mobile that took a look at the ever-evolving … and always Next Big Thing … topic of mobile marketing.  If you are looking for a quick way to get up to speed on the subject, check out the presentation below or view all them from Deepspace Mobile.

How to close the Brand Gap between strategy and creativity

Check out this great presentation on how to bridge the gap between Strategic Thinkers and Creative Thinkers.  Created by the folks at Neutron LLC, this is one of the better presentations out there on the subject of Brand Building.  Even better, Neutron’s website invites you to “Steal this Idea” with free downloads the cover other brand building basics.

Thanks to Anthony from Driven Leaders for passing this along

Young people are weird: A lesson on how to build lasting youth brands

Graham over at Mobile Youth pointed the way to a solid presentation on “Building Lasting Youth Brands”.  The presentation included three key lessons:

1. Base your brand on an enduring truth about young people
2. Keep changing to stay relevant (and “aim off” to avoid becoming dated)
3. Be where they are but don’t confused the delivery with the message

Digital Marketing is…

I was up in Cincinnati last week for a session on Digital Marketing (finally meeting Deb Schultz in person).  My part in the whole thing was giving a presentation on what Digital Marketing inspires me.   Still need to add more examples of CPG brands but this is what I presented as starters. 

UPDATE: SlideShare.net named this a “featured” presentation.  That always feels good

If you liked this post, please take the time to subscribe to Hard Knox Life through a RSS Reader.

Content Marketing = Brand New Marketing

Every once in awhile you come across a presentation that blows you away…both because of its content and because of its design.  The latest from Helge Tenno is one of those presentations (which I found thanks to Paul Isakson who consistently delivers his own great presentations).  Helge’s presentation takes you through the concept of Content Marketing, pointing out that “Content isn’t king.  Conversation is king.  Content is just something to talk about.”

Wonderful stuff that I really encourage you to check out.  My favorite quote of the presentation:

Content Marketing = Participating in activities facilitated by the brand (slide 62)