- This is the agency that is gonna teach the next generation
how to do the new form of creative. It's cool.
("Unstoppable" by This Is Wolff)
("Should've Called PRT 2" by Jimi Tents)
Good afternoon.
Couple weeks ago or a month ago I thought it would be good idea
to get a lot of the creative leaders in the company together.
But what I want to accomplish here through the four or five
hours of discussion is actually just to get us collectively
hearing the discussion.
I want to basically have conversations of things
that I'm seeing a lot.
A lot of what I think 2017 has been about at VaynerMedia was
somewhere around September and October of last year it just
became obvious to me that the organization had become too far
away from what I thought needed to be done in output of work and
cultural in many different facets and I think collectively
a series of events whether it's the reorg or different things or
when I spoke at the end of the year last year and made it a
very short end of the year talk about we're to be the best
Facebook commercial, that whole thing.
A lot of my energy is in that direction.
I want to continue it to be in that direction so to this
collective today is not to talk about structure or job titles or
responsibilities, I want to talk about the work.
I want to spend the entire time here talking about the work,
what does the work look like to you,
and I really want people to participate.
You know will get into jams of like good or interesting or
opportunities or other things you've seen but ultimately what
I want to do is have the discussion be the output of
today and then I'll take it back to the lab and decide if there's
things that I want to do or don't do but I think it's good
to be very healthy for a lot of people to hear other people's
points of view or thoughts or dreams or aspirations
of what we do here.
And I really want to set the tone on a couple of the pillars
and where were going to go so
why don't we go around and say hello.
Let's go counterclockwise 'cause I think that's funny.
Juliet 'cause you're looking in your bag why don't you start.
("Should've Called PRT 2" by Jimi Tents)
I want to make sure that we walk around with
the audacity that we should have,
not worrying about being treated like the below the line,
afterthought, (censored) always sets the tone
and I don't care.
Now, that's easy for me 'cause
I'm playing the long game, right?
But I'd like to empower and please,
figure out what you need to not care as well.
When I feel those vibes, especially from another agency,
I laugh at it.
You have to understand once the television commercial
marketplace collapses, the entire above the line
traditional agency world goes through massive disruption no
different than bookstores and limousine services had to
when their markets collapsed because of innovation.
And so this is a very important time for us 'cause here's why,
we have to, at all costs, become the organization that is most
known for making the modern-day mobile commercial whether that
is in Facebook where I've been sending a lot of the energy or
for a lot of brands here that are targeting 30 and under,
I've become increasingly
fascinated with the interstitial
Snapchat ad that allows you to swipe up and then watch a three,
four, five, six minute video and if you look at the macro data of
the depth of consumption in that platform on long form video once
swiped up, it's scary.
So to me, I'd like to put in
the bucket of long form mobile video.
You know, I think one thing that people are not spending enough
time on is everybody's lazy, right?
Everybody's lazy.
Everybody lazily reads headlines that and thinks that you been in
every one of you been in a meeting in the last six months
when talking about video for the mobile device,
people think it needs to be short.
That it need to be 15 or 30 seconds, right?
First of all, this whole notion of 15,
30 and 60 is ludicrous.
It is completely format based on how television eventually formed
itself and the thought that we should ever even be thinking
about that in this new environment is ludicrous.
I want to make sure we know that.
Number two, get yourself educated,
get to the analytics team, go read.
Long form video works on
mobile devices and I want you to push back when you're in a room
and they go that is to be a
10 second video or a 15 second video.
Like, two, three, four, five minute videos work.
They just have to be good.
Today we're in a weird little limbo that I would say we're 20%
all the way through, right?
And tomorrow we're gonna be on the right side of this equation.
And so, I just think the advertising world that we all
grew up with or we're passionate about
is unbelievably on its
last breath and I'll tell you why.
It doesn't just start and end with traditional.
I would tell you that I believe that almost the far majority the
of digital advertising is straight garbage.
So I look at print and outdoors
modern version as a Facebook picture.
I love the idea we went (censored)
we would live in a (censored).
We want an opportunity with (censored).
If we won the social AOR (censored),
if we did, if we got it now we're taking over,
the first three months, two months if our pictures on there
are with purpose to get to creative insights both quant and
qual, I love the idea that our
video work starts at month three
because we did work to get us insights not just relied on our
insights team or a brief and the way we interpret it.
We actually used quant, reason my content works so well is
I respond to the content and then make more content.
And so it's an inexpensive way for us not to waste the clients'
money for the first two months, (censored) you put a bunch of
stuff, you see what actually works that's then along with the
insights team, the pillars in where we create the four videos.
("Should've Called PRT 2" by Jimi Tents)
We are a winning digital creative shop.
This is about winning it all.
This is not a conversation.
Like, please nobody leave here with like whoa is me.
You know how bad it is out there?
Like we're winning.
It's just we're not gonna win the game that's coming and
that's my responsibility, right?
That's ultimately my responsibility.
So that's what I'm really focused on here.
We're winning because guess what,
every agency only cares about the subjective call of this and
not respecting the context of the platforms and working off of
the digital asset interpretation of the 30 second spot and
mailing it in and just doing it for programmatic media
that nobody sees that all.
There's no shop that is devoted to being a disproportionately
talented video creative shop
in a Facebook environment pot committed.
That's what I want us to be.
This is the agency that is gonna teach the next generation how to
do the new form of creative.
It's cool.
("Should've Called PRT 2" by Jimi Tents)
You want to be successful?
You Google things, you Google things like how to make a
Facebook video go viral with the first three seconds or
what's good in the first five seconds.
Get smart.
The first article ever written about me in my career was in the
Star Ledger in New Jersey.
New Jersey's state paper and it was titled,
"Grape Expectations".
(group laughter)
And it was it was written about this
25-year-old kid who launched a website and has now built one of
the biggest liquor stores in the country right here in
Springfield, New Jersey and there's a very long quote from
me in the article.
You can probably Google this.
And fuck man, I can't believe how fun this is about the say.
In it they interview me and they go,
"What's the secret of Wine Library?"
And I go, "One of the three most successful wholesalers,
"these are people you buy your wine from who's the legendary
"guy, who's the smart guy of the three."
You know, one of them was family inherited,
the other one supposedly lucky-ish but I don't believe in
that but this was the smart one.
This was the guy that really was thoughtful and was smart.
In it my quote is, one of them sat down with me at dinner the
first year I started running Wine Library.
I started making some changes and he sat me down,
he asked me for dinner and this was supposed to be a big deal.
It was an honor for me to have
this dinner with this legendary wholesaler.
And halfway through the dinner he says to me,
"Gary, running a successful wine shop takes three things:
"price, selection and service and what you,
"young man, have to figure out this year is which two of those
"three you're gonna focus on to build a successful business."
This is me telling the story and then I say and in that moment is
a 22-year-old kid I said in my head this guy's a fucking
asshole and I'm a do three out of three.
("Should've Called PRT 2" by Jimi Tents)
The brand team sits down and they go oh,
we've got a tough budget year.
It's gonna be a tough year, we have no money.
And they said they had $2 million and
it seemed like a fortune.
We are absolutely in a fucking bubble,
my friends.
I'm just gonna remind you, there's two young women,
they're in Savannah, and they're gonna fucking kill you.
You know why?
They can do a lot of shit with (censored)
and we don't think we can.
Please help me change that culture.
(group applause)
You know what's fun about that?
Somebody just said it to me, we're all on the same page now.
Like meaning make the fucking videos we want to make,
be smart, work with each other.
It's just great to get that, getting us all grounded.
- [Man] I was just gonna say allowing for a platform where
people could talk that enabled you to hone in on that.
- Uh-huh.
Big, right? - [Man] Yeah.
- Like doing the work in real time in front of everybody.
- [Man] Exactly.
- [Man 2] With real world examples.
I think that was the most powerful stuff there that I got.
Literally taking exact examples and going,
well here, I'd tweak that, I'd tweak that.
That's bullshit, who cares?
And then just the dialog that surrounds that.
I think that at least for me, specific examples of it.
Got it, now I can extrapolate that.
We can take that in a 100 different directions.
- [Gary] People don't get it and it's not your
fault they're not getting it.
It's that I have to figure out more and different and
intriguing ways to articulate it.
- [Man 3] Yeah. - And this was one of them.
And maybe this was the one that got,
you know? - [Man 3] Yeah.
- [Gary] You chip away.
- I think it probably was for a lot of people.
- [Gary] I think so too.
I mean I think, look, just getting everybody aligned on
things at a moment in time so all the different fractions
can't speak to the way it used to be,
the way it's gonna be, the way we interpret it,
that was pretty crystal clear.
Honestly, if I just leave with everybody making videos in those
six formats or genres like to the best of their fucking
ability that will be a game changer for us.
It will work.
("Should've Called PRT 2" by Jimi Tents)