- This notion that quality is given up
when you do a quantity of creative is a huge misnomer
and something that I think would really benefit the industry
and most of all the brands.
(upbeat music)
You've got your perspective.
(audience cheering)
I just wanna be happy.
Don't you wanna be happy?
- So tell me.
- Yes.
- I've just had a very quick briefing here from Harriet,
but I gather you've got a little bit
of a different take on the market.
- A little bit of a different take, yes.
I think, you know, we started the company 10 years ago.
I, as an individual through my content
and things of that nature, have been quite loud.
But as an agency, we've been incredibly quiet.
Hence why I think we're kinda ready to get a little louder.
Hence why we made the amazing addition of Harriet.
- Was that a, um--
- Super deliberate.
- Super deliberate being quiet?
- Yes.
- What was the rational behind that?
- I think when you're disrupting,
you know, the longer people underestimate you
or don't even know you exist, tends to have value.
I also was coming from the outside.
I was coming from Silicon Valley investing
and wine ecommerce, - Really?
- So I came from a very different background, I, yes--
- Wine ecommerce?
- In 1996, I launched one
of the first ecommerce wine businesses in America.
So that was my first career,
being a marketer for my family's liquor business
and launching this big ecommerce business was really
how I learned my craft of media
and creative and things of that nature.
And so--
- What made you decide to leave wine?
I mean, personally I'd have stuck with the wine.
(both laugh)
You know, what made--
- It was a family business-- - Okay.
- And my, you know, I got into my early and mid 30s
I'd invested in Facebook and Twitter and Tumblr,
which obviously changed the course of my career.
The world, the world opened up for me a little bit
and I started realizing that I was a marketer.
That I was a marketer that happened
to grow out a wine business.
I was a marketer that happened to understand
how to invest in apps 'cause I thought
they would be the platforms that people would market on.
So, there was a little bit of a self-awareness,
self-revelation kind of going on for me.
And then I also knew that I didn't know anything
about the biggest companies in the world.
That I had done the small business thing,
that I had done the Silicon Valley thing,
but I had never really understood
what Coca-Cola or Budweiser or BMW was thinking
and, more importantly, watching from the outside
I was curious to why they were doing what they were doing.
So I decided to start the agency for two reasons.
One, I wanted to learn that world
and two, I wanted to buy brands eventually.
- Wow!
- So my big ambition to be in this industry
is to buy nostalgic brands from CBG Holding companies.
- Okay.
Wow!
- Yeah, so a little bit of a different angle.
- Yeah! (laughs)
- And so that all manifests, as you can tell,
in the form of creating a very different shop.
First of all, the first 30-40 employees
at VaynerMedia back in 2009
to 2011 had zero days of agency experience.
So that was interesting.
Number two, I built an agency
that did creative and media all under one house.
Which now seems to be a conversation,
but was very foreign in 2009 when I started VaynerMedia.
- Okay.
How many people do you got at your agency now?
- Eight?
- (Harriet) Eight, just over 800.
- Okay, wow!
Big, I thought you were going to say 40 or something.
- You know, this is back to kinda the strategy,
you know, by being so quiet, you know,
we've been able to sneak up on our size, our scale.
You know we have an office in London.
We're opening up Singapore this summer so--
- 800 people!
- Yes! (laughs)
- Wow, I'm absolutely blown away
by that, that's a big agency.
- Yeah, it's the biggest, you know it's funny.
I think when you walk around here and,
Harriet maybe you can add some context, it's interesting.
You have a small group of people who are either our clients,
which we have many of, or people that have worked with us,
or people that have followed me on social
that have a bigger inclining
and probably think we're the next big thing.
And then you have an enormous amount of people
walking around here that still have never heard of us.
And it's kind of fun to be an enigma.
- Yeah, I can see that!
- But it's also fun to now be at a maturity level where,
when you're not only 800 people, when you're not only,
you know, 150 million dollar revenue business,
and you're an independent, I mean,
I don't know the stats on Wieden+Kennedy,
but we have to be the largest independent agency
in this industry besides Wieden and yet,
by not over emphasizing on press
and awards in our first decade,
it hasn't allowed the industry to get to know us just yet.
Which will be fun to, you know, be involved
in the industry a little bit more in this next decade.
- Yeah, sorry you did mention a couple stats there,
could you run those past me again?
You said you um--
- Our revenues are gonna be 150 million this year.
Our head count you just heard.
You know, we work with Pepsi and Kraft and Chase.
Yes, Harriet?
(muffled speaking)
I think you're right, it's funny.
As such a showman, it's funny that I'm more conservative
on the numbers I throw out than higher.
- What was it?
- (Harriet) I think we track it
to be a bit more than 150 million.
- Plus, I'll put. (laughs)
You'd said you reckoned your ambition was
to buy nostalgic brands, have you fulfilled that
or are you still heading towards it?
Is that your goal still?
- That's my goal, the only thing I was probably very wrong
about when I started the company 10 years ago was
that the the world would melt financially five years ago,
five years later, that was my big thesis.
Let me learn the industry, and then let me buy a brand
and convert my talent into the brand.
- So you reckon that we were gonna have a double dip.
- I did, I though '09 with the bailout was a bad decision
and was putting a band aid
and my intuition was that the world was gonna melt.
My main thesis to start the industry was
Facebook, Amazon, and Netflix were gonna win
and the world was gonna melt.
And I was right about three of the four things.
And the fourth one has led to a very different path.
I originally thought my agency would be converted
into a brand.
Now, it's too big of a company and we enjoy it too much
that when I do buy a brand eventually
in three, five, seven, nine years, then,
then we're gonna still keep the agency obviously.
And we're gonna take some of the agency people over
to work on the businesses, but I just don't know when
that will be and honestly I'm so worried
about building the agency that I'm not overly,
I can't control that anyway so I have to,
I have to be prepared, but I don't spend a whole lot
of time trying to figure out when.
- This is fascinating stuff.
- Yes, it's definitely different.
- Yeah, I'm really interested, definitely interesting.
- I also, I also think it's double interesting,
and let me tell you why.
I'm not sure, but one of my things that I'm very passionate
about is to inspire a bigger push
towards independent agencies doing different things.
I think it would be healthy for the business,
I think the holding companies are smart enough to know
what they need to worry about is the consultancies.
Right, they're gonna worry about Accenture and others.
But I do think for the health of the industry,
having more significant independent shops
I think would really matter.
- Well, you see that in television.
I mean the great, most of the great kind of creative ideas
on television and drama and things are come,
certainly in the UK, coming out of the Indie community.
- They have more freedom. - Yeah, you have more freedom!
- You know, I mean let's call it what it is.
There's a very financially heavy infrastructure to
this creative field, I mean-- - Yeah, yeah that's right too.
- Most, you know, when you look at all the creative shops
that have worked down there at the end,
if you follow all the lines, they're run by a CFO.
- Yeah.
- They're not run by a CCO.
- Yeah, that's true.
- That is true.
And I think it's something that's worth having more
of a conversation about.
- Yeah.
So what would you like me to focus on within my 300 words?
- That, that we need a more progressive conversation
on volume of creative,
that the industry needs to start not demonizing quantity.
- Okay.
- This notion that quality is given up
when you do a quantity of creative is a huge misnomer
and something that I think would really benefit the industry
and most of all the brands.
- And how and what way would it benefit?
- Most brands can't make relevant creative
because they're not making enough creative
to hit the many different cohorts
they need to be talking to.
And so they end up making one vanilla piece of video.
- I know, I kinda see what you mean.
Don't speak 'cause I want
to just get this down-- - You got it.
- In your great words.
I'm sorry, "They're not making enough creative
"to hit all the cohorts,
"so just making one vanilla piece of work," okay.
- You know, we are too infatuated with reach
and not enough around relevance.
And if you don't make 70, 400, 3000 pieces
of meaningful content,
you can never create actual relevance.
- Yeah, okay.
- But if you go walk the streets right now,
one of the worst words in the creative community
is volume and quantity.
- That's very true, yeah.
- And that needs to be cut,
we need to have a more thoughtful conversation around it.
- Yeah, they're bad words at the moment.
- They are, and so--
- Yeah, funny enough I was at a Net, um, a Net, no god,
an HBO session yesterday where they were saying,
"Oh, how can you increase your output
"without, sort of, losing the secret sauce
"of HBO, you know, volume,
"and how can you do that without sacrificing--"
- Now, now that in the form
of a one hour drama is a far more interesting debate
than trying to communicate a toothpaste or a shampoo
or a soda pop to the end consumer, right?
You know, if I'm trying to sell, what we know
about long-form video, theater, movies, television
is some shows are not meant for everybody.
We have four people here and that's okay.
Meanwhile, we have this audacious conversation
that this 30 second spot is supposed
to make everybody inspired to buy.
- That's very true.
- HBO does do a lot of creative.
- Yeah, they do.
- They have many different shows.
If HBO was a creative agency, they would have one show.
- Yeah, I love that, (laughs) yeah, yeah.
Yes, so that's a very important--
- Here's another one, here's one of the report,
and I know it's limited words, but you do whatever you do,
I'm gonna give you one more point that's big for us.
We are outrageously structured on actual business results.
Because my selfish ambition is to own businesses,
all the work we're doing is actually trying to figure out
how to drive businesses, not maximize our revenue.
And that has led us to being more client-centric.
Because I don't want to necessarily be the most profitable,
I wanna figure out if my hypotheses are true.
- Yeah.
Can I--
- You can.
- I'm assuming that your early career
in wine and investing in Twitter,
you know, gave you the kind of finances
to kind of support your vision.
- Yes, but you'll appreciate this.
I take even more pride in the fact that I know how
to run a business and we haven't raised any capital
and we've been able to pay the payroll every single week
and it hasn't needed me to include any capital
from my personal self, so, as you can tell by my answer,
I'm very proud-- - You should be!
- That I'm an actual business operator, because a lot
of people, you know, run businesses that don't make money
because they're getting VC capital
and other people are running businesses that over try
to exact profit at the expense of their clients
because they're publicly traded.
So, I feel like I have this nice little middle zone.
- Yeah, absolutely.
So, you're gonna stick your head above the parapet,
you've come down here now.
- Yes.
- And you're gonna go, "Hey guys I'm here, you know,
"we're here and we're huge actually,
"and you've never heard of us or most of you haven't."
How are you gonna go about doing that in Cannes?
What are you, are you just walking around talking
to people--? - Slowly, slowly, yeah.
You got it.
I've been coming to Cannes for seven years.
- And you're not, you're involved in any seminars?
- I am, I am.
I love speaking to the Young Lions,
I just did a talk, I'm not sure in where they--
(off camera muffled speaking)
- Oh okay, fantastic.
- You know, I'm doing this with you, like,
but the reality is this.
When you're running a marathon, you do marathon behaviors.
- Yeah, it's true.
- And so the answer to your question is patiently.
(interviewer laughs)
Which, you know, confuses people
'cause I have high energy as a human, and
so they confuse my natural DNA with my business behavior.
You know, this is my seventh year at Cannes.
- Yes.
- And so, even though I'm high energy, and confident,
and excited, I'm also respectful,
and I didn't wanna scream from the top of my lungs
and, you know, I've been patient, I've been learning.
Now that we've got a little bit of a real,
a business that, you know, I think, you know,
I'm flattered when people are like, "Whoa!"
You know, and now that I understand the industry,
now that I know where having an independent shop in 10 years
at this scale puts us in the history of the industry.
Not just right now, in the history of the industry.
How many people have gone from zero
to 150 million independently is very far and few between.
I take a lot of pride in that
and I enjoy being part of this industry,
even though we might be taking a little bit
of a different point of view on it.
- Yeah.
This is fantastic.
I'm going to unfortunately stop you though.
- Makes sense, 'cause you only have so much limited time.
- Well, it's not so much that as I've got so few words...