Back in March this year, Herdmeister Mark Earls organised a talk at the RSA involving two of his collaborators (Prof. Mike O’Brien, professor of anthropology at the University of Missouri, and Dr. Alex Bentley, co-director of the Centre for the Co-evolution of Biology and Culture at the University of Durham).

ResearchTalk was there to capture the event so for those who weren’t able to make it, we hope you enjoy this brain food.

Mark Earls:

Prof. Mike O’Brien:

Dr. Alex Bentley:

European Customer Experience World event

A lot of folks are drinking the Zappos kool-aid these days. And it’s easy to see why. Because every now and then you come across a company that’s so contrarian in its thinking and execution that it leaves most observers bewildered. Before it was Google with quirky initiatives such as 20% time, something we now know powers its innovation funnel.

Online retailer Zappos is the latest purveyor of contrarian thinking, all in the pursuit of its happiness business model. For example, staff can spend six minutes or six hours on the phone with a single customer – there’s never any pressure to hit productivity quotas. New staff are paid to leave to gauge their commitment. And customers can return shoes up to a year after purchase, postage free, for a full refund. The list goes on.

The result? Booming sales – a couple years ago they broke the $1bn mark. And they were recently acquired by Amazon for – insert Dr. Evil voice – one billion dollars!

Harley-Davidson needs no introduction. It’s an iconic brand that, unlike Zappos, has been around for decades. And for many of us it conjures up distinct emotions such as freedom even if we’ve never experienced their products.

So, why are we telling you all this? Because you’ll learn more about how these companies are building strong cultures which drive profitability in the short podcast below (15 mins). It’s a discussion with the COO of Zappos and a senior marketer from Harley-Davidson, both of whom will be speaking at the upcoming European Customer Experience World event in May – check out the website for tickets and details.

Kindly hosted by Dean van Leeuwen, TomorrowToday’s intellectual adventurer and scholar of the new world of work. He focuses on customer loyalty and talent engagement.

In the chat we learn about…

• The genesis of Zappos quirkiness
• How Harley-Davidson is managing to stay relevant today
• Whether the ‘humanizing the organisation’ movement has staying power
• Examples of initiatives to build a sustainable culture of positive experiences/behavioural economics
• The evidence that these deliver topline and bottom-line results

STARRING:

• Alfred Lin, COO, Zappos
• Markus Kramer, director of marketing operations, Harley-Davidson
• HOST – Dean van Leeuwen, intellectual adventurer, TomorrowToday

Music by Amber Ojeda.

We filmed this at a recent AQR ethnography training event.

It’s 15mins of edited highlights featuring useful tips and rich examples, drawn from a jam-packed 3-hour* training session run by ethnography expert Siamack Salari (of EverydayLives) and semiotics expert Greg Rowland (of Greg Rowland Semiotics). Enjoy!

You can also find a brief writeup of the event here.

More AQR coverage here.

* In fact the training ran all day, the bit we didn’t show was the half-day devoted to worked examples with full delegate participation