("Legendary" by Welshly Arms)
- What if I told you this was
the last Monday morning of your life?
(somber music)
- [Gary] One of the things I've said a bunch publicly
is I haven't done mediation
'cause I'm scared it's gonna screw up my brain.
But I'm always willing to try new things.
Really excited about Inscape Studio and app that I invested
in personally actually.
Along with Stephen Ross personally and
we're excited about it.
Jacque's an incredibly entrepreneur and
very passionate about the space.
It's almost like if I started a Jets business, you know?
When you get somebody who's great at operating and is deeply
passionate about a space, it's a good combo.
So it was good to bring the team, try it out.
Think I'll be doing it more.
I got some practice.
Every time she was refocus, I was like,
"Oh, my God."
I was in outer space.
So going from meditation to getting on the stage
and getting crazy.
Good transition for this morning.
Good day. Lot going on.
Head to London tonight.
So should be good. And that'll be that.
(camera shutter opening and closing)
- Gary? - [Gary] Yes, sir?
- [Rich] Oh, wow. Nice to meet you.
I'm sorry, I won't keep you. - [Gary] No worries.
- [Rich] Nice to meet you, wow.
- [Gary] What's your name? - [Rich] I'm Rich.
I've been following you online for years. Wow.
- [Gary] Thank you, brother. - So cool.
- [Gary] Thanks for the kind words.
Pleasure.
(Gary laughs)
No worries.
- [Man] Can I get a selfie with you real quick?
- [Gary] Of course. - [Man] That's awesome.
I'm a huge fan. I read your book.
- [Gary] Thank you, brother.
- Listen to your interview on...
Lewis Howes. - [Gary] Yes.
- And then I've just been following all sorts of stuff.
- [Gary] Thank you, brother.
- [Man] Great work.
- [Man 2] We've been looking at ways to make agile,
iterative approaches into predicting,
trending hashtags, trending keywords.
- Cool.
- [Man 2] Before it even happens so a quick example to make it
clear to everybody, if we know Hurricane Matthew is coming in
two weeks, three weeks, we're buying keywords.
- Yep, I get it.
- [Man 2] We start selling duct tape and
glow sticks, water before-- - I get it, yep. Yep.
- [Man 2] How does that, are you doing something like that?
- We're doing that around culture.
So that's super practical and smart and
I would call that transactional.
And I love that shit, I do it for Wine Library quite a bit.
I'm much more into that culturally.
It's understanding that shadowboxing is happening.
It's understanding that meditation as a consumer trend
in the way that Soul Cycle and health happened is a trend and
so we're making a lot of bets.
It's understanding that 14 of Atlanta's hip hop artists are
about to become the next Drakes and Lil Waynes.
We're doing it a little bit more creatively and culturally.
It has more upside and more downside.
The transaction stuff I think is massively interesting.
The problem is for everybody in this room, most of their clients
don't sell the entire funnel.
- [Man 2] Right. - Right?
When you're a CPG brand, you're not selling it direct consumer.
You're selling it through CVS and that's why were at the mercy
of all these metrics.
The problem is the metrics and the sales,
don't match up.
That has to be talked about.
I don't believe that this is a call to arms to the industry.
I don't think we have all these crooks or bad people.
I think we have an entire broken ecosystem not just from the
marketing people but from actually the brand side and the
clients and just the whole kit and caboodle
is broken and the reason
I'm optimistic that it will change and I didn't get to
say this on stage so to give you something is as clients now
start caring more about Amazon and Walmart's new efforts to go
e-com and direct to consumer and as we know,
even the brands themselves
starting to sell direct to consumer.
- Yeah.
- They're gonna start having a much better read on if their
marketing is actually working.
Because I'm empathetic to Johnson & Johnson if they're
doing marketing, the reason they rely on math is they don't have
all the data on what marketing is actually making somebody go
by Band-Aids at Walgreens.
- I know. I know.
- But, Toby, I've not been in this business for a long time.
I've been, I would see more than 60% of the meetings I'm in,
the marketing math, the CPM costs,
the impressions, the you know things that,
right, look great and then you get to the end of the
presentation and the business is down.
- [Man 3] Hey man! How are you?
- [Gary] Good to see you.
- [Man 3] Can we do a quick picture?
- [Gary] Sure.
- [Man 3] Awesome, really appreciate it.
- [Gary] Take care, man. - [Man 3] Thanks.
- [Gary] Yeah, picture.
- [Man 4] Can I take a picture with you?
- [Gary] Yeah, of course.
DRock,
guys, it's this documenting versus create thing.
It's so real. It is so real.
This has been an unbelievably interesting year for me because,
morning guys, between documenting versus create,
huge value.
The eBay challenge, huge value.
And now it's going down in the DM,
I think we're making real strides, DRock.
These are three phenomenal pillars of non-motivation,
motivations always there, right?
But for people that really want to get value in a different way,
a lot of the challenge that I get from people is,
"Hey, okay like what about practical advice?"
First of all, I'm documenting it.
Just watch what I do, that's the most practical fucking thing
I'm doing mother fucker.
Sorry, 'cause it's just like...(laughs)
People want little basics tactics.
I mean there's a ton of free white papers,
don't buy the bullshit e-books that will tell you,
where you going, DRock? - [DRock] B4. (laughs)
- That will tell you but honestly like just
teaching people how to sell stuff.
You know teaching someone how to fish versus giving them a fish
is always the game but this documenting versus creating,
a lot of you is starting to pick up on it
and it's winning for you.
People are interested in people's lives.
People are interested in people's journeys.
People are interested in people's crafts.
People are interested in seeing different perspectives,
entertainment, education, it's real.
No matter where you are in the journey.
How are ya?
I wish, I fucking wish I was
doing this when the early days of Wine Library.
Could you imagine? (sighs)
(DRock laughs)
I can't even wait.
I don't want to be 50 but I want to be 50 'cause I can't wait to
watch this stuff 10 years from now and see how right I was.
Hey!
- [Woman] Hi. - [Gary] How are you?
- [Woman] Good morning. How are you?
- [Gary] Good to see you. - [Woman] Good to see you.
- [Gary] How've you been? - Great, how are you?
- Good. Good.
How are you? Such a pleasure.
The whole castle collapses.
Get the one wrong politician who want to make an agenda.
I'm not even going down that path.
Now, yeah now I assume that
that means what it always means which
is you know Instagram obviously has its policy,
like you know, influencers on Instagram should be a piece of
cake because the policies are in place there and accepted by your
company to do that. - [Woman] Yep.
And I don't think you guys are thinking animations, do you?
- No. - [Woman] Animation is one
of those gray areas. - No.
Meaning (censored) animation?
No. I mean to me like I wasn't think about it yes or no but
if it's a no, there's so much we could be doing.
- [Woman] I agree.
- Including like if we really want him to come to life,
let's go pay for the costume and have him run around the world.
Right?
What I want to,
I just know, I know exactly what to do and the
only thing is they're speaking to the,
you know, 19, 17, 22, 28-year-olds and I want to be
smart about who we pick and how we do it.
This is such a funny conversation.
It's funny because this is all we ever do and it works but to
take and it's like the ambition of my company to like get,
like this is unbelievable.
The level of importance this project has for me is enormous
because I actually think
like (censored) transcended our business.
Like we exploded the growth of that brand.
It is the (censored) now and it was all because we took money
from TV and put into influencers on Instagram and Snapchat.
It just happened.
It just works so.
Can you win with one when everybody else had eight?
You sure can if you believe that seven was wasted.
- [Woman] Right. - Yeah, you know?
Like that's, basically that's the entire thesis of
the next 20 years of my life.
Why do I have the audacity to think I'm gonna buy these things
and take them from $20 million in sales to 100,
'cause that's what I done in the businesses that I've run and
'cause I really think so much money is being wasted because
I think the nuances of interpretation like Dunk would
never consider this influence.
For him in the way he looks at it,
this is like mainstream. You know?
But for our world over here, right?
This is so influence compared, right?
And to me, mainstream,
like commercial don't even exist to him.
It's like saying, "Have you seen a dinosaur?"
- [Sean] More of a psych background.
- [Gary] Yep.
- [Sean] I went to school for psychology.
- [Gary] Yes.
I think I'm the most talented psych person on earth.
And I think it comes from my soul.
- Right.
- And so I, I don't want to become a data nerd.
- Right.
- I love the idea of you feeding me things like,
the fact that you just said that sentence,
we're set.
Feed me things that you know I'll react to like,
"Hey, this study on gratitude said these 4,
"7, 8, 9, 10 things." - Right.
- And we'll just jam. - Okay.
So things to bounce off of you from a pure data perspective or
a mix of this is the big?
- [Gary] Give me it all. - [Sean] Intense.
- [Gary] Yeah.
Watch something I put out and be like,
"Hey, did you know..." you know?
- [Sean] Right.
- [Gary] It's like a did you know kind of thing.
- [Sean] Okay.
- Gary, meet Priscilla. - Priscilla, how are you?
- [Priscilla] Hello.
- [Gary] Thank you so much for the interest and hello.
- [Priscilla] And if you dig into the details towards the
end, I break out, hey this is
what I was thinking based on my--
- Yep. Yep.
- [Priscilla] six years of brand experience--
- Yep.
- [Priscilla] of what I think the split could be.
- Yep.
- [Priscilla] But, as part of the pitch,
as part of the ask, is for you guys to come back--
- Love it.
- [Priscilla] With a recommendation.
- Awesome. I couldn't ask for anything more.
Right, and then, and the truth is that (censored) is the most
interesting because our belief at Vayner and I think we're very
different than the market that a lot of working media dollars in
the digital space are being thrown in the garbage through a
lot of the things that people are doing around programmatic or
banner or pre-rolls that could be dramatically more maximized
in a social environment and since part of this pitch is for
us to bring what we would do if, I always think if I owned the
company what would we do, that's all I can ask for and so then
that gives me the freedom to give you our best at-bat.
I don't think it's too crazy but it's all stuff that
I'm kind of into. - Yeah?
- The Million Dollar Man in wrestling's line of,
"Everybody's got a price," is still one of my favorite
all-time cultural.
- How often do you have to do bad news?
- [Gary] A lot and I hate it and I'm not good at it.
I know one of the reasons historically this company's
gonna be better than Wine Library was I wasn't
good at delivering vinegar. - Yeah?
- [Gary] I was much better at delivering honey.
What has happened is I've gotten better at
it's been very monumental.
You have to be able to be able at both.
But what I will say is even when I would say,
"Hey, I don't like the way you're not letting," I would
it's honey with vinegar, right?
It's like, hey, I love you at a macro.
You gotta fix this and tell me if I'm wrong,
here's my observation.
And then when you have a winner they'll be like, you know,
they're pumped because you gave them the honey,
they feel safe because they feel if they're safe in a macro and
then the person, I'm going back to this exact,
It's tough to break up that pattern.
- Yeah.
- People got undermined in the companies they worked with
before because the junior person would go over and just blindly
fire the senior person.
I'm so 360.
We take forever to make those decisions here.
(somber music)
- In a, this is the jumping off point
for our next chapter together. - [Randi] Okay.
Our next chapter--
- No more viral videos together and trying to convince people
Facebook was important. (Randi laughs)
I think they believe that now.
'Sup, man? How are you?
Real pleasure. How are things?
- Pretty good. - Yeah, man.
- Very good, sit. Sit, sit.
If you're looking backwards, it's over.
Who gives a fuck that (censored)
got nothing but time and you've got it.
Every second that you spend on being mad
about anything is wasted.
I'm mad about everything and I spend no time on it.
You're gonna win, my man.
I'm telling you. - Damn, that's fire.
- You know what I mean? (group laughter)
Right? - I swear to God.
- Listen, I've had a little bit of time with you,
the thing you've got nobody can take from you.
- Yes.
(somber music)
- Alright. - I love it.
- Alright, so we'll really, really break bread.
Let's do a late dinner and then
we'll go out or something or like or like.
Off to London.
Gonna make some magic happen across the pond.
24 hours of hustle.
UK style.
(somber music)
it seems like, yeah, you know?