Delivering Happiness, one mile (and touch-point) at a Time

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Tony Hsieh, author of Delivering Happiness: A Path to Profits, Passion, and Purpose and CEO of Zappos, along with the Delivering Happiness team members, are setting on a mission to, “Inspire and Be Inspired” throughout the country on a three-month, 20+ city Bus Tour on a 47′ baby-blue tour bus.

The mission? Make memories, change lives, inspire and deliver happiness. How? Through events planned with likeminded organizations, companies and people across the country. Delivering Happiness has also selected partnerships with companies that share similar philosophies about company culture and happiness and include, Red Bull, Popchips, Grey Goose, LIVESTRONG, Charity Water, among others.

But, how do you connect with those who aren’t fortunate enough to physically collide with the Delivering Happiness Bus Tour? The Delivering Happiness bus tour is taking an unconventional approach from typical road trips or national book tours, by not only engaging with the physical world through tour stops at companies such as Groupon, LIVESTRONG, Twitter and others, but through also providing content and engagement with the virtual audience, by leveraging the following online touch-points:

Delivering Happiness Bus Website: Fans of the book and the tour have the ability to track the location of the bus, and stay connected with everything happening on the tour through the interactive Tweet Map featuring tweets from the Bus Crew, Daily Travel Journal posts and the Trip Map.

Twitter: Readers and fans alike can engage and contribute to the tour through the two Delivering Happiness Twitter accounts: www.twitter.com/dhbus and www.twitter.com/dhbook

Facebook: Fans can find out about upcoming events, latest happenings from the road, photos, videos and connect with others to share stories and seek advice: www.facebook.com/deliveringhappiness

Ustream: Throughout the tour the team will be livestreaming from various locations across the country. Viewers can tune-in, engage and see firsthand inside the bus tour by visiting the Delivering Happiness Ustream channel.

YouTube: Tour footage that’s not broadcasted live will be edited and posted on the YouTube page each week.

Meetup Everywhere: Wondering where the next official Delivering Happiness Tour event is taking place? Meetup Everywhere is a platform that was launched earlier this year by Meetup.com and designed to connect likeminded people in their local communities. In addition to the “official” Delivering Happiness Meetup groups, there are more than 280 Delivering Happiness Meetup groups throughout the country.

Dailybooth: Through the platform, Dailybooth, the virtual audience can get a peek inside the bus and get to know members of the team, through daily photo posts.

Ning Community: Recently, Delivering Happiness launched a new online community for people to Join the Movement and the ability to connect, share and inspire others through online forums. In addition, people can enter a contest to win a seat on the Delivering Happiness Bus. Delivering Happiness hopes to leverage the relationships of the new Very Happy Person (VHP) program to ignite the Ning community.

Gowalla: Delivering Happiness is one of two companies to test the new realtime Moving Spot feature on Gowalla. Through the use of a API transistor that is located on the bus, it gives the ability for a Gowalla user to follow along with the tour and check-in on the bus, no matter it’s location and aggregate photos and comments on single Delivering Happiness branded Gowalla check-in page. Delivering Happiness is also partnering with Red Bull and LIVESTRONG and will be dropping virtual Red Bull cans and LIVESTRONG bands throughout the tour for users to pick up.

Foursquare: Delivering Happiness has an official Delivering Happiness Bus Tour Foursquare check-in. Users can check-in to find out tips and information about the tour by checking-in at the Delivering Happiness Bus Tour account.

Celebrity Shares Phone Number with 4.3 Million Fans

It happened so quickly, some of us may not have even noticed. But one night, several weeks ago, a president of a professional sports league sent out his office phone number to over 1 million fans. By accident.

What happened next? Well, the expected. The phone began ringing off the hook and fans retweeted the phone number, spreading it like wildfire. What was less expected was when the pro sports president began fielding these calls and carried on conversations with numerous fans for close to 90 minutes.

This was Dana White, President of UFC. What was Dana’s initial reaction? “If I’m dumb enough to tweet my number on here, I’m going to sit here and I’m going to talk to these people.”

At Digital Royalty, we listened to the overwhelmingly positive fan feedback and knew we could build upon this situation, learn something from the “accident” and make it something bigger. We used Dana’s serendipitous, misfired tweet as inspiration to develop a concept that will give fans unprecedented access to this larger than life personality. We always set out to bridge the virtual and physical worlds, providing value to fans when, where and how they want to receive it.

Dana now has a socially dedicated phone line with a number that will be available through all his social media channels, which total 4.3 million fans on Facebook and Twitter combined. Whenever Dana has free time to chat with fans, he’ll turn the phone on and invite the 4.3+ million people to give him a ring. Taking time to talk with fans is something that Dana really enjoys. This concept wouldn’t work without an authentic desire to connect with his fans.
When asked about accidently tweeting his number, Dana said: “And then when it was over I was like, that was cool, I’m actually glad that happened.”

On Saturday, Dana gave his phone number to the 4.3 million fans. Within 5 minutes, his number reached over 9 million people via social media due to celebrities retweeting the number. We shared the experience virtually by hypersyndicating video of this taking place for his entire network to watch. The fan reaction was just as we anticipated. Fans from the U.S., U.K., Australia, Canada and all over the world called in to make their predications moments before the event. A powerful testament to social media providing a unique value to fans that can’t be found anywhere else.

Identifying Your Brand’s Ambassadors

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Is there something you are so passionate about that you relish the opportunity to talk about it and tell other people? And next thing you know, those people share your same interest and sentiment for it too? Maybe it was your new hybrid car, a brand of jeans, a restaurant or a new band you discovered. Word of mouth is nothing new and it’s still the most powerful form of marketing in our opinion. However, when brands identify and listen to their natural, self-made evangelists to empower their passion, it becomes an epic force.

This is exactly what Digital Royalty has been helping author Tony Hsieh, Zappos CEO, do with his Delivering Happiness: A Path to Profits, Passion & Purpose #1 New York Times Bestseller.

As part of the Delivering Happiness book team we have helped organize a Very Happy Person (VHP) program to harness the power of our most active, vocal, and passionate supporters in order to fuel an overall happiness movement that lives beyond the successful launch of the book.

The first step in identifying the brand ambassadors actually started before the book even hit shelves with a Delivering Happiness blogger program that allowed people to apply to the blogger program. Selected bloggers received two advanced copies, and in exchange they were asked to write an honest review (via a blog post) the day of the book launch, or leading up to it.

More than 800 bloggers from around the world were welcomed in the blogger program. One thing that was unique about the Delivering Happiness blogger program is that it wasn’t limited to business bloggers. The program included everything from food bloggers to photography bloggers. By not limiting it to a specific industry or topic, Delivering Happiness was able to reach a larger and more diverse audience. Recently, our newly segmented, dR-dubbed “Blogger Relations” Department (comprised of every member of our team) dug through 800+ blogs to identify the people who fit within the VHP program requirements.

In addition to bloggers, VHP’s are identified on Twitter, Facebook, Dailybooth, Meetup platforms and all other social media touch points. We looked for people who expressed the desire to spread the movement whether it be via frequent comments on our blog posts, Facebook updates, or retweeting book quotes and information. We’re the first to admit that reading hundreds of blog posts, responding to tweets, Facebook comments, and emails can require a hefty time investment but it is an investment with a unique return: the development of invaluable brand ambassadors. Or in our case, a Very Happy Person.

Collectively, our Very Happy Person program is a group of virtual leaders. They are the grassroots of the Delivering Happiness movement, and have the ability to make things happen – whether that’s generating buzz on Twitter or the blogosphere, or simply rallying their friends. Whatever your brand’s purpose may be, identifying and empowering passionate customers/fans to promote your product or service can arguably be the most effective form of marketing. Why? Because each passionate customer and/or fan already has a preexisting loyal audience who values what they have to say. These special “delivery agents” makes the message real, tangible, more relevant and trust-worthy. Just like celebrities, these are your brand’s influencers. And, influence converts.

What’s next for the Delivering Happiness VHP’s? Already, the VHP’s have played an intricate process in helping the team plan the Delivering Happiness Bus Tour stops and events, by providing feedback and offering resources. Most importantly, they will play a vital role in carrying on the Delivering Happiness Movement beyond the tour. Leveraging the excitement and momentum of the book launch, Delivering Happiness will soon be launching a new website that will include message boards and forums to serve an as an outlet for readers to connect and share their own personal experiences with other Delivering Happiness friends. The VHP’s will be an important component in the development of this online community and for the overall success of the Delivering Happiness movement.

The Danger of Deleting

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By: Kirsten Stubbs

While social media allows us to engage with brand enthusiasts, it can also make a brand an open target for negative sentiment, both warranted and unwarranted. This July, a client of ours made a post to their Facebook wall which generated an unrelated politically-charged comment.

We were faced with a decision that’s not uncommon for brands to face on a day-to-day basis. Should we:

  1. Delete the comment
  2. Respond to the comment (even though it was unrelated to the brand)
  3. Report the individual to Facebook
  4. Leave the comment untouched and see what happens

After all, controversial comments–warranted or not–cause most of us, instinctually, to put up a guard. But with this comment unrelated to the topic of the post, what was keeping us from hitting “delete”? If we deleted the comment it seemed as if we were admitting fault for something completely unrelated to the brand. We had nothing to hide. In a way, this was a true test of customer loyalty. We didn’t delete.

Instead, we left the comment and watched carefully to see what the next move would be by “fans” or even the negative commentator himself. Within just a few minutes from the negative post we watched as fans of the brand’s page, brand evangelists, rallied to support our client. Not only did they state their support of the brand, but gave anecdotes, specific experiences and reasons why they supported the brand. Some even reminded the negative commentator that a brand’s wall was not the appropriate forum for a political debate. Others went as far as to include links to the cause-based groups and pages on Facebook that were.

Because of this one comment, the page reached an all-time interaction high. And in the wake, there was a full-page of positive testimonials. And as we know, there are few things more valuable than a positive peer recommendation.

So what’s the moral of the story? Just because Facebook, Twitter and other social media mediums make “delete” and “make private” options available, does not mean we should get trigger-happy in ridding a brand’s reputation of any and all smudges. As the example above shows, it could do just the opposite: create transparency. Or better yet, bring your brand evangelists to the surface.

In our case, the outcome of untouched negativity resulted in more good than deleting the comment would have. Just like in high school, in the social media world, your friends have your back.

We’re Only Limited by Our Imagination

Imagine this. The president of the fastest growing sport, who has 1.1 million Twitter followers, tweets that he’s headed to a bar, he has free tickets and he wants to play you in Pop A Shot.

This actually just happened.

I was in San Diego with UFC President, Dana White and this is one of many social media stunts we’ve pulled off over the past year.

The goal was to integrate a marketing partner and a commercial partner. Enter Bud Light and Dave & Buster’s, two brands that fly the same social media flag as the UFC.

The video speaks for itself, but let us share a few public numbers:

  • 12: Number of seconds it took fans to show up after Dana’s tweet
  • 300: Number of dollars Dana gave to a fan who received a speeding ticket while racing to the event
  • 15 million: Number of directly accessible impressions made within two hours via social media (Facebook & Twitter)
  • 200: Number of people who showed up at Dave & Buster’s within minutes
  • 100: Number of free beers given to the first 100 fans to arrive and say “Hey UFC, give me a Bud Light!
  • 60: Score of the lucky fan who won a seat next to Dana at the event
  • 2: Number of media outlets who showed up to cover the story (NBC San Diego and Heavy.com)

For additional media coverage of the event, click here.

Forbes Names Digital Royalty One of 20 Best-Branded Women on Twitter

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This morning brought a pleasant surprise and a humbling air to our office (virtual and physical) when we learned Forbes had named Amy Martin of Digital Royalty one of the Best-Branded Women on Twitter. Amy shares the honor with women including Ivanka Trump, Ann Curry and Alyssa Milano, amongst others. The list, released today, was compiled based on each woman’s ability to create a cohesive, interactive and engaging brand across multiple social media platforms.


© Digital Royalty Inc.