- I, actually would tell you I fascinate sometimes over
losing everything and then having you guys write articles
like see he wasn't that good.
He was a fully shit and then rising like a phoenix and being
like, "Fuck you!" (audience laughter)
("OHZ by LRYBRDBTZ)
- [Woman] Coffee-- - [Gary] Yes, that'd be great.
- [Woman] food? - [Gary] Thank you.
Nice view, huh?
(audience applause)
Thank you.
Good morning.
You it's funny I was in Mexico City there was some
sort of speaker, just really intelligent,
I didn't understand a word he was saying but one of things he
said was 85% of what we do
is irrational.
And it was a really interesting moment for me because when we
talk about destruction and change of things of that nature,
you have to understand my dad was made fun of constantly in
1996 and seven by all his liquor store friends for not opening a
second liquor store and letting his son launch a website.
There're people in this room, I'm looking at the age group,
that remember very strong conversations in 1994 through
1998 that the internet itself was a fad.
Not that Snapchat is a fad,
not that Vine or Twitter is a fad.
That the whole fucking platform was a fad.
We are living through, this is for,
actually bear with me for five minutes,
'cause I'm gonna be talking to myself,
you're just gonna hear it. (audience laughter)
We are living through a far bigger culture shift than
anybody in this room, including myself, realizes.
- How do you balance your own signal to noise?
How's this room supposed to figure out what to pay attention
to and what to disregard?
- I'm not sure but I know it's
gonna be the variable of your success.
(audience laughter)
Right? I don't know, hey, you're asking like how do we make good
strategic decisions that become the framework of where we
dictate our behavior? I don't know.
What I will tell you is it's
a lot more listening than it is talking.
And I talk a lot.
I think you get a sense of my energy like I'm always talking.
I've, DRock's filming me right now.
I produce content every single day.
I'm always talking but I'm sneakily mainly paying attention
and so I produce content for reaction so I can contextualize
that reaction and understand the vibe of the ecosystem.
There are way too many people building companies,
I'm talking to startups now, I have a lot of passion for
this space, you're building it in a silo.
Your building it for how you see the world playing out without
spending a lot of time with customers so I think the way
that you eliminate noise is go to the source of what you want.
(audience applause) Thank you.
("Sheppard" by LRYBRDBTZ)
- [Gary] Hey man.
Good to see you. - Good to see you, too.
You talked earlier about that client that wanted to reach 22
to 29-year-olds with TV and radio.
- [Gary] Yeah, yeah, yes.
- How'd you convince them not to do that?
- [Gary] You know, I don't convince anybody.
I tell them the only think you can do in this environment is
Instagram and Snapchat and
Facebook actually has a lot more attention
of 20 to 30 than the world realizes.
It's a very take-it-or-leave-it thing.
I don't convince them.
My clients, as big as we are, as much clout as I have,
as why would they hire Vayner, are still probably executing in
the ballpark of 4 to 6% of our stuff.
- Really? - [Gary] Really.
Think about that.
So, but, I don't spend any energy on convincing people
that aren't convincible.
You know what I mean? - Yeah, absolutely.
- [Gary] None. It's just not a good game.
But you know what's fun?
I walk in with the same energy that I walk here,
I fucking drill him, like Roman, you have to fucking do this.
This is the only right thing and then I guess I'm empathetic to
that I'm in client services like there's plenty of places where
I get to make the final decision.
In that environment, I don't and what's really worked for me and
I think here's the real punchline to give you real--
- Yeah. - [Gary] I'm gonna win.
Like, the reason we're at 4 to 6% from 0% last year is
they saw that I was right.
How you doing? How are you?
Very good, a pleasure.
I pretty much have my life double mic'd.
I need to get a double mic t-shirt, DRock.
I just think you have to rethink the entire thing but to
break through the noise by definition you have to do
something fundamentally different than what everybody
else is doing and everybody else is doing the same thing.
I call it the Taylor Swift role.
So, I think Taylor Swift hacked culture.
I think Kanye does it as well believe it or not.
Here's what they do.
You scale the unscalable if you
want to break through the noise today.
So let me explain.
What Taylor Swift's very good at is she knows when people tweet
her and say, "Taylor, come to my wedding and sing me a song."
She actually does it.
Here's why she does it.
The 75 minute allocation of her time to do something like that
is not ROI positive for Taylor
based on what she makes for her time.
However, the amplification of doing something that makes no
sense on paper is where she gets all her value.
So, I get yelled at by all my smartest CEO friends,
the most fancy gals and guys on Earth for still answering all
these tweets and emails and replying one by one on Snapchat
but I know that depth is far more interesting than width in a
world where the width has just become completely obnoxiously
loud and impossible to break through.
The truth is there are
characters that look like me running around.
There are people that understand,
I know not that many, but you can get somebody into an honest
conversation because they do not have aligned interests.
They don't and the only,
they start the relationship with
knowing each other not at all and that's the closest on
aligned interest they'll ever be and this is all that happens.
And it breaks, so to me
let's just fucking get it out of the way.
I just think communication's very valuable.
Like it just works and just nobody does it.
Like really.
I mean great communicators win in life especially,
back to why married my wife five seconds into our first date,
especially if you're lucky enough to find another great
communicator and that's where client relationships and that's
where business partnerships start.
I just think it's better to know that it's not a work up front.
(audience applause) Thank you.
You know, for me all my diamonds come from the friction of how
I see things versus how I'm hearing everybody else talk
about them and so that's where my practicality comes from
because the, what I consider the irrational,
back to that, is helping me understand listen,
just 'cause I this if the consumer or the target is not
gonna go there it's not gonna matter how I see it.
I mean I have no interest in being historically right in
150 year window. I'll be fuckin' dead.
- [Man 3] Right.
- Alright, take care guys.
Alright, ready?
Thank you. - [Woman 2] Thank you so much.
- [Gary] Yeah, take care of yourself.
Thank you. Thank you.
Alright, we're stuck in an elevator here.
(DRock laughs) That's fun.
Listen, if I could, and this is a DNA thing,
but anything I can do to
subtract emotion and romance out
of your body, I would.
- [Man 3] (inaudible) based on passion at the beginning?
- The passion and delusion are two very different things.
("Red C" by LRYBRDBTZ)