- I wanna remind this very smart room
that the number one advertiser on Google
during the five to seven golden years
of it being massively underpriced attention,
was a company called Amazon.
When you strike,
when you have the best hand, you win.
(bass music)
- Yeah!
- [Gary] You got your perspective.
(car revving)
(crowd cheering)
I just wanna be happy.
(car honking)
(ambient hip-hop music)
Yeah, I mean, I don't get that, you know?
In 1996, my dad had a liquor store in New Jersey
that's as traditional as you get.
That was 22 years ago
and I put my dad's store online
and I did email marketing, and I did Google,
and I did content and then,
a couple of months after YouTube came out,
I started a YouTube show in 2006,
which is now 12 years ago.
I have no respect,
or normally I deploy a lot of empathy.
I struggle deploying empathy,
I struggle deploying compassion.
If you are a business operator, in 2018,
we're recording this is October.
2019, which is when the majority
of the people are gonna listen to this.
And your excuse is well, I'm a pub,
or I make tomato juice, or I have three restaurants.
Digital is oxygen.
The real world feels secondary.
- Yeah. - Like to not be
a communicator, content producer,
part of the conversation.
It's gone from cute and naive to grossly negligent.
- Yeah.
- And, I just think it's unacceptable
to be a business in 2019, in the same way
that it would be to pay people not minimum wage.
Like I literally believe it's grossly unacceptable.
To me, it's like to quantify digital versus traditional,
it's just marketing.
Like, really?
You think sending direct mail print is a better thing
to do than advertising on Instagram as a restaurant?
Like really, sit down with me.
You're telling me right now, that it's a better deal
to spend all that money making a flyer
and sending it direct mail? - Yeah.
- Or running a radio ad,
or buying a small little ad in a newspaper.
Like this what you're telling me?
It is 2019. - Yeah.
- I felt bad in 2002.
It was early, the Internet was new.
I had compassion, it was cute.
In 2007 it was like, mm,
it was kind of like hey, annoying,
kinda like, mm, but still kind of.
In 2012, it's like you're not smart.
In 2019, like you deserve to die.
(bass music)
Look, I want people to be healthy and happy.
I just don't think that we should demonize people
that love their work. - Yeah.
- And we've gone the other way.
I love working.
I'm sad when I'm not working.
So, shouldn't I work?
Who's to tell me what time I should spend.
Work-life balance?
I will never have the audacity
to tell somebody how to parent.
I will have my points of view,
I will share them just like others,
but nobody talks about quality.
- [Woman] Yeah.
- Everybody's talking about quantity.
I think that's very nice
that mom and dad are home at 5:00 p.m.,
but if they're both still working on the phone,
are they actually spending time with the kids?
People need to be healthy,
and so if you're working yourself into depression,
I think people don't understand that most people
have bad work-life balance, because they buy dumb shit,
because they wanna look cool in front of other people,
'cause they're insecure.
This is not a work-life balance conversation,
this is a Keeping Up with the Joneses conversation.
Maybe if you didn't buy that home
that has six extra rooms that you never use,
maybe you wouldn't have to stress at work because maybe,
this is a far more complex conversation than I talk
about hustle, I talk about hustle, here's why.
If I looked at all of us right now,
and everybody behind these cameras or reading this article
and said get smarter, more talented,
I want you to get more talented.
That's very tricky.
That's unbelievably ideological advice.
If I said look, two extra hours of work,
actually has an impact on your success,
if that's what you're trying to achieve,
that's practical. - Yeah.
- You don't have to, but it's controllable.
Work ethic is controllable.
Being born with talent is not.
So a lot of my friends in Silicon Valley,
who make 50 million bucks because they have ridiculous DNA,
and unbelievable platforms of entitlement and advantages,
and all these other things that after they make
their 50 million bucks, they look down on everybody
and say have better work-life balance,
that's very sweet, but that's audacious.
On the flip side, the 95% of people
who are not happy with what's going on?
If they work on their side hustle after they work
and after four years, they're selling more strawberry jam
on the internet than the money they're making
being an account executive at Grey or at Vayner,
and now they're happy, that makes me happy.
- [Woman] Yeah.
- So, I think it's a much more complex conversation than,
hey, people, meditate for an hour a day and you'll be happy.
That is Band-Aids.
Why do you need to meditate?
What are you up to?
And what are you doing with your life?
And why are you working?
(bass music)
First in Line, what's up, I'm here in London
I got a Facebook Messenger hoodie that's pretty fuckin' rad
and so I'm Facebook Messaging you
and I'm gonna sign it right now,
and then Andy and DRock, are about to hide it.
You're about to watch them hide it and then one of you
are gonna find it.
We're having fun on First In Line, London.
We're havin' fun.
A little signature...
Andy, DRock?
Hide it.
(bass music)
Wonderful products I place there
that allow us to shoot completely different things.
I think we have a very weak creative conversation
around the new channels.
I am fascinated that people even have this debate.
How many people here have bought something on Wish,
the shopping app?
Raise your hands.
Raise it high.
Own it, don't be scared.
(audience laughs)
Cool, how many people here have never heard, it's cool,
I need the honesty here and everyone here's very fuckin'
like this, how many people here have never heard of Wish,
the shopping app?
Raise your hands.
This is the best moment of my life.
One more time, you have not heard of Wish, the shopping app,
raise your hands, high.
Okay, this is the best, thank you very much.
Wish, depending on who you listen to,
'cause it's a private kinda thing company,
is doing anywhere between three to six billion dollars
in revenue, which is probably the closest thing
to any kind of conceivable threat to Amazon in the world.
Wish is doing three to six billion dollars in sales.
They're spending 98% of their money outside of a Lakers,
Los Angeles Lakers patch on the jersey,
and the McGregor-Mayweather fight, they bought the corner.
Outside of those two activations,
they are spending 98% of their money on Facebook ads.
Wish's founders are engineers from Google
that worked on the Google Adwords product.
Wish is doing three to six billion dollars in sales
and more than half of this room, this room,
not some fuckin' random 100 people on the street in London,
this room, more than half of the people,
don't even know what it is.
That, is the punch line.
Thank you.
(audience laughs)
I think why it's the punch line for me,
is I've empathy to why that is.
One of the biggest mistakes that people make
is they make decisions in a focus group of one.
I have never made a business decision in my life
based on my own behavior.
That is laughable, stupid, and just naive at best,
and ideologically kind of like it's not a good idea.
And so, I'm fascinated by how many people
go into rooms and say,
"Gary, you're right!
"My 14-year-old daughter uses Instagram."
Great, Jon, you know.
(audience laughs)
This is not about you, or your three friends,
or your 17-year-old niece,
or like what your grandma did yesterday.
This is fuckin' data at scale.
This has, black and white, happened.
This is not happening, this isn't coming.
90 plus percent of the Fortune 500 CPG brands
are declining in market share.
In their marketing behavior, 80% of their spend
is either on television or programmatic digital,
which is digital 2006.
This is not confusing.
Meanwhile, Gymshark, and Fashion Nova, and Lola,
and MVMT watches, are going from zero to 25, 50,
100, $500 million in sales on 100% spend
on Influencer, Facebook, and Instagram.
This is not subjective debate, like if a video is funny.
This is what's happening in the business world.
Now, just as an observation, 'cause it's funny to say,
Facebook has done an unbelievably poor job
in showcasing the people that use the platform properly
in chasing the BMWs and McDonalds,
and Porsches, and GEs of the world.
Companies that blindly work on things
that have nothing to do, back to the prior presentation,
with actual business.
But, this entire industry that I have come to love,
trades on either subjective ego opinions,
or complete horse shit metrics.
(audience laughs)
Included in horse shit metrics, are things like data logic.
The way that I sold Facebook finally to corporate America,
'cause they finally found a report that they liked,
even though the ROAS on every report of Datalogix
is so phenomenal, yet the business did not grow.
Datalogix is Facebook's version
of Nielsons and Millward Brown,
and internal MMS that don't take inputs from Facebook,
and all the other currency that people are trading on,
that has nothing to do with the actual business.
I'm fascinated by this because it is not very difficult
to do an A/B Test, that does a hold out cluster
that can prove to Nestle's if their ads on Facebook
versus their ads on television are driving sales
at Tesco or Sainsbury's or Walmart.
You can do it, if you actually cared to do it.
This is a remarkably interesting time.
I wanna remind this very smart room
that the number one advertiser on Google
during the five to seven golden years
of it being massively underpriced attention,
was a company called Amazon.
When you strike,
when you have the best hand, you win.
(bass music)
Cheers, thank you.
Thank you so much. - Thank you.
- Thank you, take care.
I think that, for the biggest advertisers,
I have empathy for many other behaviors,
but it is the analogy and needs the context
so it's not hyperbolized,
that when something is grossly underpriced.
I'll give you an analogy.
If every English Premiere League team
reached out to RBS Bank right now, and said,
You know what?
Even though we've been getting
$15 million a year sponsorships for our stadiums,
we like you and we all wanna offer you eight year deals
at one million a year.
I think it's probably a good idea for RBS to buy them all.
That's where my mind goes with Facebook.
I don't think people understand the arbitrage.
It's not the television and outdoor and direct mail,
is zero or dead.
Not at all.
It's that most of those things are overpriced.
This other thing is underpriced.
That means it needs its proper allocation.
In today's world, if you are a massive company
in the UK market, between Instagram and Facebook,
you are getting to a shocking amount of people
at a very low cost.
But meanwhile, they wanna deck out
a double-decker bus for awareness, you know?
So, I would say this.
Nobody is allocating the appropriate amount of money
to Facebook and Instagram, given how underpriced it is.
Do I believe that Pepsi and Puma, in the UK or in Europe
should spend 50, 60% of their money
just on Facebook and Instagram?
The answer is yes.
Should they do a lot of the other things they do?
Yup, but they should cut the budgets on all those things,
so that they can afford the 50 to 60%
on Facebook and Instagram.
I believe that.
(bass music)