- Reporting live from the end of CES.
This happened two days ago, this episode.
Babin and I were just walking,
and he said to me, "Fuck, dude.
"I don't think we can put any of it out."
There was so much important information,
like secret information, it was just
something we couldn't put out.
That's today's episode.
Bottom line is like, some days
it just fucking works out that way. (laughs)
Enjoy it.
(dramatic rhythmic music)
("The Coast" by Sample and Hold)
Hey, guys, CES 2018 off to a good start.
Some good meetings, called Andrea,
our new Chief Client Officer.
She's right there.
(Andrea gasps) - [Voiceover] Back seat!
- (laughs) And so it's going well.
We're going to a dinner party right now
that we put on and little wine,
little senior executives, a little networking,
and then the MediaLink Party,
which I'm not sure I'm gonna go to.
Last night was a pretty exciting night.
Do not understand, if I lose tonight?
It's even better.
And so I didn't sleep actually.
I was just excitement, which never happens,
so I'm gonna try to get some rest
'cause it's a long week, but I'll sneak
in there real quick, kiss some babies.
It's (laughs) I'm gonna get mobbed this week.
(laughter)
- So need to be careful with myself.
- Here we are. - See ya.
How are the kids?
- [Shelley] Everyone is really good.
- Everyone's good? - Everyone is really--
Jay? - Good holiday?
- You have changed his life, truly.
- So awesome. He,
not knowing that we
were connected-- - I know, I know.
- He's been following you, you realize that?
- Yes, yes, yes. - He said to me,
"Mom," do you know Gary Vee?
- Yes, I remember this story.
- Okay?
And now he writes like Gary Vee on his LinkedIn, and as--
- I saw that, but there are
words! - 15,000
views in a minute? - (laughs) I love it!
- Like something like that, like--
- I love it. - He's not
the Gary Vee status yet, but I gotta tell you,
watch him. - On his way?
- 'Cause he's damn close. - I better--
Time to get back to work! - You better watch out!
- Let's go, Babs!
I love it, good for him. - He's catching up,
and his confidence, I mean he always had
that confidence-- - Yeah, but now it's--
- It's an educated confidence, you know?
- Yeah!
- And so it's really quite remarkable.
- That makes me happy. - You know, you gotta
bottle that, so I really cannot thank you enough.
- That makes me super happy, but listen,
we can create the framework, but it takes them
to take advantage of it. - Absolutely.
- You know, he did. - But even--
- Here we are in a partnership dinner
with the Female Quotient, Shelley Zalis
is one of the most interesting and dynamic
executives that I know in the game,
and VaynerX, PureWow, and VaynerMedia
have teamed up with FQ, the Female Quotient,
or the Girls' Lounge, all her incredible energy
on the most important issues like
quality, not only on the female scale, but just life.
Just an incredibly fascinating woman
that I've gotten to know over the last five years,
who I have an enormous amount of respect for.
Sharp as a tack, heart of gold, big time brain.
Just love her energy, character.
Wait 'til you see her puffy (laughs) pink coat,
but nonetheless, we're gonna do a little
fireside chat here and talk about
the quality issues in the marketing world
as we see across the world, and how do you
not over-pander, how do you not under-pander?
Should be a good, great question
to a great group, and I like these
kinda small dinners where you get to think,
and that's what tonight'll be about.
I think, you know--
The thing that's been running through
my mind quite a bit around change
is respectful disrespect, right?
You know, you were talking about--
This is a true scene, we actually
have it on film in the back room
before this started. - Oh, no!
- We're talking about the main stage at CES
and the issues that I'm sure we'll get to tonight.
And I literally asked Shelley,
I'm like, "Where is the main stage?"
(Shelley and audience laugh)
What is the main stage?
I've been coming to CES for six years.
I've never gone to the conference.
(laughter)
I didn't know there was a main stage
at CES until some of my friends texted me
about like, let's break the main stage, right?
In that moment back there, I'm like,
"It's respectful disrespect."
I'm not disrespecting CES.
I'm not mad at the status quo.
I'm just not spending any time on it
because the only way you can change
is when you don't accept what's already been accepted.
You're just only focused on one thing,
which is the reality of the marketplace,
the young consumer, whatever you're doing for a living.
So for me I think, you know, listen,
when you're an entrepreneur, you don't
have somebody judging you, the results judge you,
and so maybe it's been easier for me
than a lot of you that are executives,
so I have a lot of empathy to that.
But I do think that respectful disrespect
is what comes to mind in making change, which is
I'm fascinated by people looking backwards
because nothing that happened yesterday
is what gets you to the next place
except the thematics, but the details
and the execution change, and so
to me, when we were talking about this,
I asked you, "Who picks the people for the panel?"
(laughter)
This stuff is so simple! - (laughing) He did say that!
- I have a lot of CEOs who are always like,
"I'm mad at my salespeople," and I ask her,
"Well, change their bonus structure."
You can get any salesperson to do anything you want
in the world by making the bonuses
reflect what you want to happen.
If you wanna do more Facebook stuff, make an
arbitrary bonus that if you do seven
Facebook things, you receive 80% of your bonus.
And then everybody will do that,
and so for me, I think we shouldn't
even talk about this tonight.
I think we need to figure out who's
picking it, and mandate, and move on.
- But there's been a lot of conversation.
I don't want to say controversy,
but a lot of conversation with CES
this year on women on the main stage.
I think you've all seen a lot of press
and more importantly, a lot of tweets
around it, and people kinda arguing
about why this and why that, and so
Steven has been instrumental with UM
and CBS Interactive, so I wanna thank
all of our amazing (Gary applauds)
partners for bold leadership.
(applause)
We'll be having--
- I agree 100%, I love the concept.
What we're gonna do is go around.
We're gonna give you a little bit of time
to think about this, but this is not about
four to seven, or eleven people
getting up here and taking the mic.
When you look at the pedigree of everybody
in this room, whether they're in
the beginning of their career or later in it,
everybody here has something to add,
so we're gonna go around and ask everybody for what
their point of view is, as an actionable item
to make this better, and take all 50 thoughts
and consolidate them and create an output.
That's what we wanna challenge everybody to think about.
Like what's the actionable item,
like if you're the Lord of executing this fix.
- Or the Lordess.
- Or the Lordess of fixing-- - Just saying.
- Just saying, of executing this fix,
what is your point of view?
(soft, inspirational electronic music)
And I've just been listening, and I think
about things quite a bit, about
in a very basic term of offense and defense.
I think a lot of what we're talking
about tonight is defense, or reacting.
So Battle of the Sexes, Billie Jean King
did not convince the UTA to change the rules.
They created the Virginia Slims Tournament.
Nice, but we're not talking about the reality
of that situation, which is they built
a different thing, which they were in control of,
and so whether it's my idea of dictating
or grassroots, it's still, there's a gatekeeper.
We need to understand real life.
I think everybody here does, and so instead
of pandering to the gatekeeper, to me it's binary.
Either we go back to let's figure out
who the 54 gatekeepers are and collectively
put pressure on them, and/or create
our own thing and all go there.
I really just genuinely believe it's A or B.
One of my favorite things about even coming
to events like this and then micro-events
within events like this, is meeting new people.
So fun little thing on your way out
to the elevator, I think there's a lot of people here
that don't know each other that should,
so one face that you don't recognize,
and say, "Hello," I think would be
a really good, tangible execution.
Hope you have a great CES and a healthy 2018.
Thanks for coming.
(applause) (indistinct chatter)
(dramatic piano music)
♪ I don't know what you see in me ♪
♪ You see the truth, see the me in me ♪
♪ You see enough to believe in me ♪
♪ You see the sun but it's heating me ♪
♪ Oh, whoa, whoa, oh, whoa, oh ♪