People won’t think to use your product or service if they don’t know your brand.

Since you have to wear clothes, why not put them to work marketing your product or service? It’s an easy win for your company, and in some instances, such as networking events and conferences corporate clothing will help you stand out in a sea of suits.

Every time I wear branded clothing, someone comments and asks me about my company.

Even as far back as College Pro Painters, our painters wore shirts emblazoned with our logo, so that while they were up on ladders people would see our brand. This also proves helpful when recruiting for new employees: one summer I had my painters wear their painting shirts with huge logos to the university pub.  I bribed them with free beer to do it, and needless to say, it helped me find new painters every time.

While building 1-800-GOT-JUNK?, I would place my branded jacket on the outside of chairs so it would be seen while I was sitting down. On planes, I’d fold it in such a way that the logo stood out even when placed in overhead bins. I was relentlessly getting my name out to prospects.  I even made license plates with my company name on it for two companies I built.  At conferences of sometimes 2,000 people there were four of us in 1-800-GOT-JUNK? fleeces with huge logos on our backs. People thought there were at least 20 of us walking around because they saw our logos so often in the middle of all the suits.

I’d love to say that I was chilling out at Whistler and I came up with this brilliant idea to let you promote your blog here, but I cannot take credit.

I learned about this idea from a great friend Gini Dietrich of The Fight Against Destructive Spin.

Turns out she learned about it a couple of weeks ago, from Toronto HAPPO champion, Danny Brown, invited his blog readers to pimp their blogs in the comments of his blog. You should go check it out – An Invite to Pimp Your Blog

So, you can do the same here. Let’s see what kinds of blogs you have and let’s see if we can find you some new readers.

Please include the following:

1. The blog’s name and link

2. A one sentence description about why someone should read your blog.

3. Your full name

4. Your Twitter handle (if you have one)

As an alternative, if you don’t have a blog, give us one blog post you’d like me to write about in the comments.

Go ahead! Promote your blog here…

Tyler Wright PR Guru

Step 3.  Pick Up The Phone

Know Your Angle To Land Free Press

Step 1: Know Your Angle

Zappos Gets Culture

This post is from a guest blog post I wrote last week for McNeill Nakamoto a great Vancouver recruiting firm.  Jessica Rozitis kindly let me re-run it here.

In October, I had the opportunity to visit the current cultural buzz factory ‘Zappos’ the billion dollar online shoe store.

I got a unique opportunity to have dinner with their CEO Tony Hsieh & their COO Alfred Lin.  The following day which was Saturday they set up a 90 minute exclusive tour for 12 of us followed by an additional 90 minute  behind the scenes Q&A session where they really opened up to us.

To start with – I was intrigued and a little bit cynical.  Where they REALLY as good as all this press was saying ?

I’d been the Chief Operating Officer for 1-800-GOT-JUNK? during the heyday of the companies growth and cultural buzz.  During the midst of my tenure I was lucky to be there when we ranked #1 Company to Work For in BC two years in a row by BC Business Magazine and then ranked #2 in all of Canada to Work For.  I knew how the whole culture thing worked.  I saw how we cranked it up – and I saw it go up and down at various points during our growth.  We were having tours & Q&A’s of our company every Friday during those days too.  Were they really this good ? What did they do differently ?

I’d also helped build a couple other companies over the years with awesome cultures. College Pro Painters was where I cut my teeth with culture, and Ubarter.com was where I had fun trying it the dotcom way.  1-800- GOT-JUNK? was where we nailed it.

So with Zappos, I just wanted to see if they were REALLY as good as all their press said (and I’ve had lots of experience getting Free PR too)…..

Here is what I learned at Zappos.  I wouldn’t say I was blown away – I wasn’t – but it was damn good and I learned.  I was and still am in awe of HOW DEEPLY rooted their CEO & COO both live the core values that eminate throughout the company.  I have to go back on a weekday now too – to be fair – in an office that seats 700 people only about 20 were milling about.  My bet is the energy is mind blowing when they bring me back.

Key Points I saw and learned:

—First 10 hires are the most important people to ever hire.  They hire everyone else and they set the direction of the company culturally.

—Core values first…Make all your decisions based on them.  They asked employees what the core values should be and they call each other on them daily.

—They grade employees on how they are living the core values in all roles, two times a year.

—They bring job candidates from the airport in a shuttle. And after they drop off the candidate they ask the driver for his thoughts on the candidates fit culturally – the interview starts at the airport.

—To figure out your company core values they really pushed to have us ask ourselves what are our own personal core values….the company values come out of those.

—Core values should be short phrases not just single words like “passion”

—They tell the employees that they are responsible for care taking the core values.

—Culture is like what makes a flock of birds work with out leaders as they all fly and turn as a group. It’s their cultural DNA.

—As their CEO Tony said – if you don’t fire people for not following core values they become a meaningless plaque on the wall (the values – not the people)

—In 2003 they decided they wanted to be about customer service. So they cut a profitable model of drop shipping to REALLY focus on Customer Experience – and um – it’s working.

—Most important thing they’ve done is exceed expectations.

—Every year they print and give out a Culture Book (I got copies of 2008 & 2009) and it is only edited for grammar and spelling.

—Tony is obsessed with Happiness  – and suggests we all read the “Happiness Hypothesis”

—I think their quirky decorating of all workstations is a little bit too cluttered, dusty, and could use a few days of junk removal – but if that’s the only negative I found then even a guy with all my A.D.D. could turn a blind eye.

These guys GET Culture.  I only wish I could buy shares in the company.  Too bad Amazon bought the whole company for over $900 Million a few months ago.

Cameron Herold, BackPocket COO at Zappos

There is a popular misconception that PR should be considered a part of the marketing department. Believing that story is a big mistake. Public relations, in the way that I’ve been doing it for 22 years, is a sales role and you need to treat it accordingly.  Typically, marketing & communications people are not wired the same way as sales people…and it takes the mindset of a salesperson to excel at PR.