The other week I had the extreme pleasure of speaking to Jeff Bezos and his Amazon team. What an amazing thrill.

We used to be competitors (me as Half.com’s former VP of Marketing that grew Half from zero to 8 million customers)…and tremendously exciting to meet with the one-time foe you respected yet competed against.

In the 90 minutes I spent with him and his Amazon team, it’s clear that Jeff is one of the few CEO’s that gets it from a marketing standpoint. Years ago, he abandoned the conventional path of glitzy Madison Ave style advertising for marketing investments in free shipping etc.

I write about this same “convention issue” in my book, Buzzmarketing. Namley, conventional approaches will produce conventional returns…and nobody I know on Wall Street wants conventional returns.

Jeff clearly has a sense of humor, and intelligent playfulness, which exudes a sense of fun–and in this day and age, we’ve got to have fun at work. A key element for employee buzz (see my chapter 16 in Buzzmarketing).

The overall energy from the group, in turn, brought my energy level up exponentially and could sense that that same energy oozed all the way to the Meeting Planner (Paula Tawney) who treated me like a king.

Speaking is an adrenaline rush for any business speaker, but you find a few gems where that adrenaline rush peaks like no other. Amazon & Jeff…one of those special peaks.