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A Collision of Internal and Public Relations at Zappos.com

By: Amber Morris | 08/27/2010

I love shoes and I love Zappos.com's incredible customer service so I follow them on Facebook. Yesterday morning, I was surprised to see a post inviting me and their 61,000+ other fans to their "All Hands" employee staff meeting ...

Zappos.com Wanna get in one one of the biggest Zappos.com meetings of the year? Well, you can! View the Zappos.com All Hands meeting straight from our blogs! Tune in from 12:45pm (PDT) to 4:00pm (PDT) to see how we keep things fun, a little weird and nothing but business. Oh! And we have a really awesome guest speaker lined up. Trust us, you won't want to miss this.

My immediate thought was a vision of executives at many other companies pretty much hyperventilating over the thought of opening an internal communications meeting up to the public.  My next thought was ... smart.

Foremost, I believe that internal communications messages should be in line with external messages.  Employees can and should be brand ambassadors, sharing and exemplifying positive brand messages.  I can only imagine Zappos.com's messages are all about their pleasing their customers ... why not share that with the world?

Also, well-done employee relations events and splashy press events can be expensive.  Combining them is a great cost-saving approach.  Plus, Zappos.com may not have had anything truly newsworthy to share, but opening up their meeting becomes the news.  It likely also creates a greater sense of excitement and pride among their employees.

Finally, we live in a world where the value of transparency is skyrocketing.  Does it get much more transparent than allowing the public to take part in an internal meeting?

What do you think about Zappos.com's approach?

Posted in Employee Relations, Public Relations