Amazon

Last week, I wrote about Union Bank and their "Do Right" campaign. I love the campaign, but I was left with questions as to whether employees live it and customers experience it. One company who leaves me with no such questions is Amazon.

As an interesting addendum to the post below I came across this Quora answer from an ex-Amazon employee to the question 'What allows Amazon to be so innovative?'. Alongside mentions of visionary leadership, entrepreneurial culture and future-focused approach, there is of-course talk of the relentless customer focus for which Amazon is famed (and the 'working back from the customer' approach that I've mentioned before).

BookExpo America, the annual event for the authors, agents, publishers, distributors, and assorted vendors of the book industry, just concluded last week in New York City. The gig was filled with handshakes and the tote bags filled with galleys and schwag, or so I read on Fortune's website.

When I bought my iPad it was very easy to download my new Kindle application to read all my books I bought on Amazon, and I’m sure that Jeff Bezos knows that my Kindle may be replaced. Bezos can do this because he’s not in the book reader business, he’s in the book seller and publisher business (along with many other products). Bezos is not cannabalizing his core. 

Getting ready for the iPod coming to an Apple store near you, iTunes TV show downloads is about to happen. Apple will be offering US TV shows for $1 each, as reported by the Financial Times. This coincides with the scheduled release of the iPad sometime in April in an attempt to pull adoption. TV episodes are normally $1.99 for standard-definition and $2.99 for high-definition through iTunes.

Amazon has announced a competition for customers to create their own 30-second video commercials for the brand. Two winners will each get $10,000 Amazon.com Gift Cards, and their work will be screened at "a U.S. film festival." 

by: John Caddell

Showtime is offering a free Kindle download of the pilot script of the upcoming TV show Nurse Jackie.

by: Dominic Basulto

With all the gloom and doom surrounding the economy these days, it seems like the consumer-facing companies that are going to do well during an economic downturn are those that actively address customer "pain points." Over the past two weeks, both Amazon.com and FedEx have shown that they are attuned to customer needs with new moves designed to alleviate two big customer pain points.

by: Ilya Vedrashko

You might have seen one of yesterday's top tech stories about sales predictions for the Kindle e-reader (378K to be sold in '08). If true, it's a good news for Amazon, but also an important development for the publishing industry, and by extention, the ad biz.