It has been approximately 90 days since I retreated from the Vegas desert to the Venice beach and started working at Wingman Media. Being a marketing agency (and not an online e-commerce site like Zappos.com), Wingman Media offers a totally different working experience than Zappos, to say the least. With Wingman, I simultaneously set up and manage multiple interactive campaigns for various clients whereas with Zappos, I was focused on affiliate and search engine marketing (SEM) for Zappos and only Zappos.
In addition, with Wingman, I am learning an infinite amount of information regarding popular marketing efforts while managing relationships with vendors (i.e. designers, programmers and writers) and coordinating production so as to meet deadlines accordingly. Of course, with Zappos, I was able to learn some priceless knowledge pertaining to branding, e-commerce and comparison shopping engines while conducting business with multiple partners (affiliates and CSE account managers) as well as reporting and optimizing on affiliate and SEM campaigns.
With regards to corporate culture and/or office environment, Wingman Media with it’s 30-40 employees is minuscule compared to Zappos with it’s 1200+ employees at the Henderson office alone (there are also a couple hundred employees at the Zappos.com warehouse in Kentucky) so, you could imagine how the size of the offices would vary greatly. The Wingman office is two stories with 2 conference rooms, 3 single bathrooms, a ping-pong table and a compact kitchen area with a fridge, a sink, a microwave, some counter-top space and a water dispenser.
The Zappos office consists of 2 buildings, one of which is 2-story; 8 multi-person bathrooms; about 12 or so meeting rooms; a help desk area with bookcases (containing different books for your free reading pleasure), a popcorn machine, a dance dance revolution machine and a cold beverage case filled with drinks; a room with a king’s thrown along with the appropriate king/queen head pieces and, last, but not least, a humongous break room containing free food and drinks (Monday/Wednesday/Friday are sandwich days where you make your own sandwich and Tuesday/Thursday/Saturday are catered days where Zappos orders out something different).
Furthermore, at Wingman, we have marketers (traditional/offline as well as interactive/online), media buyers, account executives, sales persons, a small accounting team and our two founders, Rich Kagan and Steve Dubane. At Zappos, there is a marketing department, an accounting department, a merchandising department, a creative services department (with designers, developers and bloggers), a training department, a legal department, an HR department, a customer service department, a resources department, a project management team and a help desk team in addition to CEO Tony Hsieh, CFO/COO Alfred Lin and life coach Dr David Vik.
And so far, at Wingman, we have not had anything quite like the festivities that I encountered regularly at Zappos. For instance, there are parades at Zappos where employees team up, dress a certain way and “parade” around the office(s) making noise and often throwing trinkets and candies and such. Also, I can’t forget to mention the Zappos cook-offs, potlucks, team outings, fashion shows, vendor parties, merchandise parties, Christmas parties, CLT graduations and, of course, frequent happy hours.
As you can imagine, two totally different companies, two totally different environments and two totally different workloads – both having their own positives and negatives, goals and objectives and, both hiring! For jobs in Los Angeles at Wingman Media, feel free to contact me directly via my contact page and I will follow up with you to discuss our current openings. For jobs in Las Vegas at Zappos, visit jobs.zappos.com and find a job that fits you (you can also contact me and I will do my best to get you some assistance).
