CASEY NEISTAT: When YouTube asked
me to come talk to you guys tonight,
I said, sure, but with one condition.
And that condition was it would just be me talking to you.
I didn't want any visuals, I didn't want a script,
and I didn't want there to be any chance that you might think
what I'm telling you, what I'm sharing with you
is anyone's words but my own.
So I've always wanted to be a filmmaker.
I've always wanted to be a creator.
And that journey began when I was a teenager living
in a trailer park on welfare and I maxed out three credit cards
to buy my first video camera.
I fell in love with the process.
And about a decade later-- a decade after that--
I achieved what I would describe as the pinnacle of success
as a creator--
the benchmark, the apex.
I had my own television show, one that I wrote,
and I directed, and I produced, and I edited.
The only people that had anything to do with making it
were my brother and me.
It was ours and we sold it to HBO--
like the biggest, baddest in all of cable.
I mean, "Game of Thrones," man--
"Game of Thrones."
Me.
The show is critically acclaimed.
"Variety" called me the Dr. Seuss of filmmaking, which
I still think is probably the best compliment
I could ever receive.
Everybody loved it.
We got a lot of press, and then nobody watched it.
No one saw it.
The people who did watch it had no idea what to make of it.
It was heartbreaking.
So two years ago, I decided to give that show another go.
I'm doing it again.
Instead of a show, I'm calling it a vlog.
Instead of taking it to Hollywood
and trying to sell it to a cable news channel or anything like,
I'm just going to upload it to the YouTube, to the internet.
And let's see what happens.
Now, I don't really understand Nielsen ratings.
I don't really understand those kinds of metrics,
but in the last two years, that show
has been viewed 1.5 billion--
that's billion with a B--
1.5 billion times.
[CHEERING AND APPLAUSE]
And those aren't clicks--
those aren't mindless clicks.
That's 8 billion minutes of people watching content
on YouTube.
See, it wasn't that the show was wrong on HBO.
It was that the fit was wrong.
My audience wasn't there.
That audience-- this generation wasn't there.
It was somewhere else.
And once I figured that out was when I started to really find
my footing in this industry.
Now, a very quick digression.
Sunday afternoon, five days ago, I'm
sitting in Washington Square Park eating a piece of pizza
out of a cardboard box.
And my two-year-old is sitting next me.
She's licking the cream cheese out of her bagel
because that's what she does because she's a baby.
This grown man comes up to me.
He's probably 25.
He's trembling.
He's shaking.
And he says to me, he says, I'm so sorry to interrupt you.
I know you're with your family.
You changed my life.
I saw your Nike commercial, and I quit my job
and moved to New York City to chase down my dream.
And I want to repeat a really important part
of what he said to me.
He said, your a Nike commercial.
An advertisement that I made for a shoe company
had that impact on him.
Now, I only have 1 minute left, so I'm
going to use this last minute to talk to you about physics--
gravity, in particular.
Ready?
Now when I let go of that microphone,
you knew it was going to fall.
There was no doubt.
And when I think of the state of media right now,
I think of my hand is old media.
My hand is television and this floor is YouTube.
And just like the moment I released that microphone--
that microphone being this generation,
being the demographic that all the ad buyers and advertisers
and brands in this room salivate over--
that demographic is that microphone.
And just like when that microphone left my hand,
there was no chance it was going to pause midair and go
back up to my hand.
And when I look up and I see traditional media
to my demographic, my peers, disappearing into the clouds,
right here, firmly rooted here is something called YouTube.
And that's where those viewers are.
So I want to end this by saying to you--
that is the advertisers, the buyers,
the brands in this room--
that we love working with you.
We love having you enable us to do our craft.
And there's 120 of us in this room tonight
and there's tens of thousands of us
at home around the world sitting on the edge of our beds
making videos in our parent's house
that is going to capture the next generation.
And I implore you to come join us.
Let us help you reach the audience
that you want to reach because we'd love to have you.
We'd love to have you be part of our movement.
Thank you very much.
[CHEERING AND APPLAUSE]