"I've Got a Golden Ticket!"

My new friend @Ribeezie direct messaged  me, (also known as “DM”), on Twitter this morning and told me to “Now bring back some of that good stuff and share ” about Zappos Insights inaugural conference.  Zappos, a billion dollar online commerce destination, is known for their leadership in customer service.  Insights was created as an educational forum to guide entrepreneurs to successfully attain milestones. It was a privilege to be a part of their LIVE event, a revolution in leadership and corporate happiness. One of the speakers at the event, social media maven Brian Solis,  said it perfectly, “In the end we’re measured by our actions, not our words.”

Three huge takes aways from the event that will transform the productivity and efficiency in our organizations.

1. Share….Stop self promoting and start listening. Share information that you know delivers value because you have been listening. Whether it be employees, personal relationships, twitter followers or facebook friends. The way to effectively intrigue people to  take action is fueled by being inspired.
2. Discover your foundation before you start building.… The most crucial component in determining success in a company and in your personal development is first discovering what matters to you most.; Your core values.  It starts with you, outside of your professional life. The business owner behind closed doors.  When you look in the mirror what do you see? Integrity, Transparency, Adventure… Deceit…? In order to grow we must be honest with ourselves.  It is so clear to me now that if I had taken the time to discover, write down, and share my core values with my team  it would have reduced management, increased productivity and complimented my company vision. But instead I found ego was something in my company that created road blocks for our success. What’s interesting is ego is so far from my personal values. If I had taken the time to write down what’s important to me, I would have quickly discovered my team mate  strayed from our core values and that situation could have been remedied with eloquence and efficiency.

Zappos Core Values: Direct Link

1. Deliver WOW Through Service
2. Embrace and Drive Change
3. Create Fun and A Little Weirdness
4. Be Adventurous, Creative, and Open-Minded
5. Pursue Growth and Learning
6. Build Open and Honest Relationships With Communication
7. Build a Positive Team and Family Spirit
8. Do More With Less
9. Be Passionate and Determined
10. Be Humble

3. Half of the world is searching for the other half of the world, but don’t know how to find them.  Brian Solis emphasizes that before even planning an online marketing strategy establish your identity. Most brands don’t even strategize, they just jump on a band wagon. But lets say you are developing a strategy, before that DISCOVER your identity that you plan to communicate in this strategy. I LOVE that Brian reinforced this. I hadn’t even thought of charting out my brand identity before planning. I figured my identity is obvious. Surf brand means you’re a surfer right? No, not necessarily. You must establish your brand to stand for something. A Cause. Something bigger and selflLESS than selling a pair of board shorts.

Don’t judge a book by its cover.  I used to be a yacht stewardess and some of the wealthiest people you would never know. Grease stained jeans, sandals, ripped tee shirt and the ability to have any dream they desired.  Tonight I was in a situation where I was judged. You never know who you are talking to, who that is person is connected to and for you start ups which Simple Simon may end up being your next investor.  Even a popular blogger who has the power to express any opinion pro or con. Luckily my mother always said, if you have nothing nice to say then don’t say anything at all. Well as long as you’re not KIIS that is…

You guys decide. Here are the sequence of messages:

Would you think you are the winner if you received these?

Thank you everyone for your support on Facebook, Twitter, your emails….  So my attorney contacted KIIS FM on my behalf after they didn’t show care while talking to me.

And here’s a paragraph from the KIIS response to this situation: (By the way I am more than happy to share the full email at request. Just don’t want to crowd the screen.)

Ms. Devora is not a winner in this contest and it is clear that she knows she is not a winner…… (Yea since you guys have told me you made an internal mistake I can see that you are not honoring the winning message. That’s no secret. But the screams of excitement when I received the winning message and having witnesses seeing me texting in suspense hoping I would win. Plus staying up the whole night waiting for the “call you soon” phone call. That can not be faked.)

The fact that Ms. Devora spent so much time and effort trying to guess a future winning word does not mitigate the fact that she did not follow the contest rules as posted. The rules are clear.  The Text For A Trip word is revealed each and every hour and KIIS FM never revealed the word “Branson” – and we have airchecks of every word revealed as part of this contest to prove this point.  We also have the text records that we received from Ms. Devora (based upon the cell phone number that she gave us via email) that supports our contention that she entered the contest and attempted to be a winner on at least two occasions and then she apparently attempted to try another word, apparently at random, to win the contest.

Let’s get something straight, I have NEVER entered any sort of radio contest and don’t have a clue as to how they function other than I heard the DJ say text a word to a specific number so I did and I kept getting  “Try Again” messages until I received the “Congratulations” message and then in disbelief I tried again and it said “Sorry we have our winner”. And I thought to myself OMG I actually am the winner. That’s when the screams of excitement started. SO Mister KIIS FM I am not psychic. I only played your game to be with my hero on my birthday. And whether your systems made an error or not how can you possibly feel okay allowing any listener the joy of winning something so important only to have a tech glitch. The thing is that even if the DJ messed up and said the keyword by mistake, just the fact that I received a winning message should be reason to care.

And no I wasn’t offered any sort of consolation prize for playing.

For those of you who don’t know I won a trip two nights ago through KIIS FM in Los Angeles. See the winning photo on yesterday’s post. The next day they called to tell me opps they made an error. How can anyone get away with saying I’m a winner and then take it back. Its not concert tickets. Its a trip with my hero, Branson, on the best airline in the world.
Then in this social media world I of course share the joy after “winning” so you can imagine how embarrassing it is to say to my friends, family and acquaintances “opps”.

I talk again and again about where the value really lies in social media. Business people think they’ll monetize off the plentiful numbers but have yet to find a model that does so effectively. After this whole experience its more than apparent that the power in social media is a power for and by the people. When we get duped by corporations we are told to trust like Clear Channel and KIIS FM we finally have a way outside Consumer Reports to stand up for ourselves and scream that this just isn’t right.

I’m thinking about throwing my own contest. Maybe I’ll ask Tony Hawk to fly Virgin with his number one fan. And we’ll do the contest right. I just hope that at the end of all this Virgin tells KIIS to screw off just like they have expressed to me.

[digg=http://digg.com/business_finance/KIIS_claiming_error_on_Virgin_Australia_s_contest_winner]

Richard Branson is my hero. Everyone who knows me knows that. So you can imagine the volume of my screaming excitement when I won a trip to Australia on the inaugural Virgin Australia flight this Friday out of LAX. And on my birthday weekend! What better of a dream could have come true. Now KIIS is saying they made an error. “An Error!”

So they just called back and said opps our system messed up. Can you believe it!!!!! I go on saying how this is not how Virgin handles business. Why I love VIRGIN is their care for customer service and their code of ethics.  KIIS FM’s response QUOTE “This is the KIIS FM contest, we’re doing the contest, not VIRGIN” …  “WHAT!!!!!” I told them, “What am I supposed to think when I read a message that says …

From: 41027
Sent: Feb 25, 2009 12:40 AM
Subject: KIISFM: Congrts ur textr 102!

KIISFM: Congrts ur textr 102! You’ll b flyin VAustralia THIS FRI for a 4 day/3 nite trip 2 Sydney Australia. We’ll contact u @ this # soon”

Are you freaking kidding me!!!! And I grew up in LA so I trusted KIIS. Why would I think they would dupe me. Branson please make right of this strange situation and make my birthday dream come true.