just be real, and use your best judgment

Zappos never ceases to impress me. This is its CEO's blog post , which details about Zappos' layoffs. Talk about transparency & honesty. And real honesty, not advertising honesty, in that. Not only the guy meets with his customers on a regular basis, he has the same honesty & transparency policy with his own employees (and their twitterings about the layoffs): in the post, he says that "our twitter policy remains the same as it has ever been: just be real, and use your best judgment." I guess I am mostly impressed by the consistency of Zappos approach: in good times equally as when the shit hits the fan, they don't change the way they do business, treat their customers, and relate to their employees. That's really hard to imitate and even harder to compete with. And I really don't think that "just be real, and use your best judgment" can be summarized any better as a lesson to brands.