Dan Janal

Dan Janal
Marketing and Publicity Speaker

Be Seen. Be Heard. Bezos

Those of us who have played in the technology space for 30 years know the name Jeff Bezos very well.

Before last week, you might not have heard of Jeff, but you definitely heard about his company. He’s the founder, CEO and visionary behind Amazon.com.

Consider his PR moves in the past three months:
·      He bought the Washington Post. I buy an online subscription. He buys the entire company! By the way, he bought it with his own money, not Amazon’s.
·      He’s the subject of a new biography that shows warts and all. I don’t know if you’d like to work for him.
·      He blew the socks off a “60 Minutes” reporter when he showed Amazon’s latest prototype: a drone that delivers books and peanut butter.
I’ve seen Jeff getting reamed in press conferences for not making a profit for many years. I’ve not seen Jeff in the business news pages while Bill Gates and Steve Jobs were grabbing headlines for many years. I don’t think we’ve seen the last of Jeff Bezos.

I think he’s just getting started.

What can you learn?

·      The race goes to the slow and tactical. He didn’t care about not making profits for Wall Street. He was building for the long term.
·      He knows how to make a splash. The drone story dominated newspapers the next day and for several days to come. Amazon might never deliver via drone, but that doesn’t matter. He grabbed the spotlight.
·      He knows how to make a statement. When you buy the Washington Post, you get taken seriously.

Granted, you can’t do all these things. You’re not a billionaire (yet). But you can be bold and bedazzle.

That’s Bezos.