Is It Too Late To Start Making Content Now?

whether she wants to be a B2B influencer on LinkedIn or Tik Tok influencer YouTube influencer or a Twitter influencer the great thing about attention is it's a free market yeah it's like sports if tomorrow you are good at YouTube and you had no success prior than that day whether you've been bad at it for 3 years or you never did it before the day you start it will work if you are attention is the number one asset Gary nice to finally meet you in

person finally so we're in your hood and I have to say this view it's not bad cuz you know we watch online we're like we're not seeing all of this that's right okay cool so as you know I've started a podcast right but here's the thing it's very loose I'm not trying to put a label on it it's basically me chatting to peers and marketing brand as well as agency and asking them like where is marketing going and then looking at the influential people that I actually have made it via the brands and saying like what do you need from Brands basically now I'm excited for our chat because you know I went through the archives okay and I basically feel like you've said some stuff some iconic [ __ ] right some of it has definitely landed still stuck but I think some stuff you know people give you a hard time on so five questions let's go through them let's do it now as a true marketer we start with the end in mind okay so who are we talking to so for the guys out there I'm from South Africa proudly African so we're saying we're talking to brandley Brenda zandi they're Stu in maybe the 9 to5 they're a brand manager they look at you and they're like damn I want to build an agency I want to do something so that's who we're talking to understood so I'm going to play this first one we're going back to 2007 right so perfectly so I want to set this up right you know the one thing that's undeniable about you is that you know often people say like how does Gary get it right you know whether it's 5 years 10 years in advance and the question I put out here is you know so many people and especially from our backgrounds right we are brought up in a society where you've got a it's posted to path dat you've been through so much right then there's black tax that you're paying so it feels almost selfish to say to your parents you know what I want to go do my own thing and often you land up sitting in corporate or agency or whatever it is for 10 15 years and when I look at the optimism here and you foreshadowing and saying you know Web 2. 0 let's say you're talking to zandi and she's like seven years in and she's scared of leaving what advice could you give her like right now in terms of hey you can take the risk and don't have that parental guilt that if Zandy spoke to 70 80 90y old people not named me and not someone who is her grandfather or mother a non-relative yeah that if she's spent a lot out of if she's had five conversations with anyone who's 80 years old and ask them about life the number one thing she would extract is you don't want to live life for regret absolutely the thing I always said to Zandy is if you quit now working at Miller or Nike in Johannesburg or Cape Town wherever you are and it doesn't work out this dream that you have that's making you want to jump M well good news you can always go and work for Proctor and Gamble or unil lever or craft the thing that people that tend to be stuck in a corporate environment don't understand is they've that the world has done a very effective job to tell you that you having a gap in your resume is bad at a time when good yes exactly cuz rumes is are supposed to oh we say CVS back home right CVS need to look certain way I was saying to him like I started out as a DJ and then I was like I cannot be a 40-year-old DJ and I took that and made it into a CV I still to this day even for my latest job they were like what's that Gap but I made it a positive story well that's right and more importantly like the world's changing like this company I've never we've never required a college degree we don't I have no clue where these two gentlemen went to college did you go to college doesn't like oops you know what I mean like it doesn't even cross my mind so the world moving and so if you play your life by yesterday's rules you're in trouble you're better off playing your life on today's rules with an eye towards tomorrow's rules and so what I would tell zandi and anybody else is either you won't do it and you'll regret it your whole life or you will do it it'll either go phenomenal and be the great gift or you'll lose and at least you tried and now you can go back to a job and you know the fun thing is when you go back cuz I did a stint in entrepreneurship it actually just makes you smarter to handle your p& l right like I handle the risk on my own yeah a lot of people are being humbled in the last 10 years of not being capable of being entrepreneurs and that's okay I was with a Creator today at an event who has amassed millions and millions of followers through ice cream and viral ice cream he thought like oh let me go build an ice cream store too he realized he couldn't and so now he's back to doing full-time and that's great that's not a l that's not a Scarlet Letter absolutely as a matter of fact it's going to make people realize that entrepreneurs who could pull it off it's a very small rare Talent absolutely and I don't think I'm special for that that's like an athlete or a singer or an art like everyone has different skills and so I would say that if it's burning inside of you and you want to try you must because regret is the ultimate poison in life absolutely I think that sets the tone perfectly number one I

love when you do these Vlogs right because you did one in Dubai as well it innately shows us like how hard it is to actually do the thing cuz it's easy to look in and say yeah you've got a team it's so easy to roll out but the iconic part here was the fact that number one you were learning from the market I don't want to swear but I have to say like the thing that I hate with my peers is they all we have like a little WhatsApp group right so we're all from different brands and they're like oh but like this culture thing it's moving so fast like where can I learn and I'm like have you opened your feed like you can't just expect to get it in a book or just sit with the CMO right and so again let's talk to proverbially zandi they're sitting there and they're like I just feel like I'm not in clue with culture but here's you every single week you're putting yourself out there any words of AD advice for the brand managers that just feel I can't keep up with culture and the insights that there's no choice you know when I hear people say well I can't keep up with another platform as a Creator like I don't want to post on these like all you're doing is you're limiting your upside abolutely and I think look I think the reason most brand marketing is very bad is because I do think that most brand managers and CMOS live in Ivory Towers and boardrooms and have no idea what's actually happening to their consumer and are more worried about their customer meaning the retailer that sells their stuff than the customer that buys it from that retailer exactly Joe's T and not you know Kaba that's buying the C light that's right and so for me the reason I'm always able to win historically or why I get a hard time from The Establishment is because I don't think about anything but the consumer yeah I don't know how to how could you possibly do that why would you do that exactly that's the ultimate goal like you say what's a good marketer you know like you reverse engineer backwards the goal is for someone to buy your stuff if you don't understand what's interesting to them the biggest issue with professors in marketing is they speak in theory versus reality absolutely of course reaching and not Market context as well cuz Mina is different to the rest of Africa course all I think that matters is relevance it's why the point you just made forget about me you know forget about Europe versus Africa versus America I'm talking about Manhattan this a small island do you understand how different the people that live up there that's the upper e side are than the people live down there Tribeca this is like a this is not just America this is not even New York State City this is Little Manhattan and literally 20 minute walk this way and 25 minute walk that way it's like Bizarro different parts of the world we staying in a Time Square and we just like what yeah Time Square is not even New York it's like a Melting Pot of Tourism and so yeah I think marketers are looking for Simplicity don't forget a brand manager has a lot of responsibilities besides marketing y I know they have supply chain yeah price increase they have which is real they have retail relationship distribution they have to get along with the sales team like I have a lot of empathy for everyone we're talking to on the call that empathy doesn't allow me to look the other way go when the last thing they are is consumer Centric absolutely no it's well said and the thing I want to add in is the unconscious bias as well cuz so many times you'll have brand managers sit there oh I don't listen to I'm a piano now every brand manager wants to book the biggest I'm a piano DJ because it's cool now you know that's right like that stuff I have never understood gar I'll never forget early in my career I had a 65-year-old white male who was selling product to teenage diverse Americans say to me but Gary I don't get YouTube and I said good news we're not trying to sell this candy to you yeah exactly to me I didn't see the ad I'm like cuz you're not the taret market okay cool it's like were you

speaking to me at this point by the way 1. 7 million views today nice one um so basically with this one right like LinkedIn and I love how you show up on LinkedIn and right now especially in South Africa sorry in South Africa there's this whole rise of B2B influencers right so you're seeing like brand managers at Nike abev and I love it but you know again when we have this offline chat it comes across like oh you guys are so self- involved you're always on linked selfpromo you know what I mean and it's like those that get it and those that don't but I found it to be a very effective you know um platform even for getting recruited right of um in now 2024 do you feel that it's very saturated and do you feel like there new tactics if someone wants to come in and disrupt let's just say again zandi now feels she needs to amplify no I think zandi whether she wants to be a B2B influencer on LinkedIn or Tik Tok influencer YouTube influencer or a Twitter influencer the great thing about attention is it's a free market yeah it's like sports if tomorrow you are good yeah at YouTube and you had no success prior than that day whether you've been bad at it for three years or you never did it before the day you start it will work if you are good at the craft it's marketing yourself is like sports if I never played tennis and tomorrow I went on the court and I'm just naturally athletic and I have good hand eye corination and it goes well it's the beginning of me being good at it absolutely and just be authentic right nobody wants to know about you getting a promotion talk about the bad days well that's LinkedIn the to your point the that's not even doing content yeah when people know that you got promoted on LinkedIn it's because you update ated your account and it's an automatic post that's what they think that's not content it's not that's just the way that LinkedIn works as a program and when you update your bio it automatically no cuz people get so Cho they like I updated my profile I'm like you know there's more to it than that yeah LinkedIn is a social network exactly many people that it sounds like we when someone says that that's someone who still thinks of it as a tool

absolutely and it's a long journey so this is a big one yeah you know like sorry 9 hours but this is also controversial cuz I know that people will say but like you don't really live where I lived so just for context I'm obviously South African Indian right born and bred there and one of the hardest roles I had was when I was on Johnny Walker I can say it because I don't work there anymore and I had to cover Emerging Markets so I'm talking banin too quis and I realized when you travel to these markets yes every place is going to have a divided Society but in every single country you had creators for an example wanting to do the best so I resonate with this because I think you're not defined by a zip code as what we say postal code right because if you have it in you and you find the channel look at the stats I mean Gary like digital maturity is moving so fast in Africa you know what I mean everyone is mobile Centric mobile first so it's not the fact that everyone doesn't have access to the internet it's about them understanding what are you going to do once you have that access that's right and by the way when when I'm speaking about this of course there's different opportunities in different situations but to your point like when we're talking about internet access we're in a much better place than we were 20 years ago when we talk about social network access like I mean look do I believe that if you were born in North Korea today that you have less of an opportunity of being a Tik Tok star of course you do you live in North Korea absolutely like of course but anybody who watched that video exactly you watch it got it that's when people say to me that's a [ __ ] video Gary I am defied by my sick Hood I'm like you saw this which already defeats the purpose million VI you're a human being that has access to the internet and could watch a YouTube video no exactly and so the most followed person on Tik Tok in the world is from where you know it I didn't even to come back home right and so like I will never accept that and here's why even if it's true that wherever you're from is more challenged it is yeah if someone has ever made it from where you're from they've established the ability that it's possible and more important if you believe that you can't it's already over absolutely I mean two examples Trevor Noah and Tyler Trevor Noah like we know him as Trevor you know what I mean we seen him in the malls and stuff but we see him now like Grammys and stuff and it's mind-blowing but digital was a big catalst for him to break through now you look at Tyler like Hub went to school with Tyler he literally just remembers her in the cafeteria and now she's probably going to win a Grammy so you're right if you're watching this and there is no

excuse this was such a great conversation and I just feel like more people should have seen it because you know we also know black coffee for a long time and to get him very vulnerable like that where he talked about like it shook me the fact that he said like he was hurting cows and he would look up and think about what would his life be but then you mentioned the point about digital and how when he even kind of you know approach digital he realized oh there's a tangibility element to it so coming back to this theme of zandi right so zandi has all these pressures and she's feeling some type of way about staying or leaving the thing is what's also happening is people have elitism ing where they work right so it's like if I'm a brand manager oh you work for kid Kat you good people oh sorry What's That Brand and so you know when you talk about losses I like it because in my life I've worked on Amazing sexy Brands and then I've worked on Brands where people are like don't really stock it but I'll tell you what I learned more on the unsexy brands than the ones that already have awareness what is your take on that you know on that that's that is Corporate High School Dynamics like that is one of the lowest forms of intellect and kindness judging someone based on the brand I get it yeah it happens honestly I really struggle with that entire framework like as if to your point you're talking very narrow marketing circles as if you're a better person cuz you work at BMW than somebody that works at a brand that or Honda at least but you're what you're saying is like there are big Brands and there are brands that people don't know exactly look you're talking to someone who so is not interested and sorry Gary that also happens on agencies as well also you don't work for a wpp agency it's the number one thing I tell people when they join Vayner media every time I hire new creatives yeah that work at droga or widen or Chris or like all these big shops I'm like you're about to learn humility because in those other places in this [ __ ] marketing world we live in if you're a droga creative they're going to just think you're good and at Vayner media they think it's the Gary V show or social media and they don't respect it as much but in reality this is the actual thing just like being a star on Netflix 7 years ago was not as fancy as being a star on a TV show and now it's the reverse it's the same [ __ ] over and over exactly what I would say honestly like I just think that's a bunch of insecure people running in an insecure framework and I feel bad for it and at worst I don't like when people are mean about it that's what my reaction is visceral because watching people put people down as if they're somebody blow I don't understand the lack of humility in corporate marketing wild that's why I think people want to leave as Wells but that is why I wanted this conversation cuz Gary like until we get you to South Africa to come and speak the thing is so many of my peers watch you know and we love what you say the thing is we go back to our day today and we like okay but this is the reality right by the way in America too by the way you know this is not a South African phenomenon or a smaller Market or Dubai or I me it is corporations exactly people are living in fake environments they're fake meetings yes I tell people all the time I don't want to be in a fake meeting exactly like I I just that's why I hate networking events as well right I mean I love a can's moment but I also know the [ __ ] that happens well to me it's funny I understand what you're saying and I'll say it a different way but we're saying the same thing I love networking events cuz I'm strong enough to realize what's fake and not absolutely and so there's always real you can always find 20% of the crow real exactly like I think what attract you know what's butting in the attraction of our budding friendship is look you find people along the way who just see what you see yeah just you know what I mean and it's about also exposing the world cuz I love this because I feel like going back home now after we finish the 199 so which we love you know we feel like you feel a bit more closer to South Africa I would say Africa as well cuz we're a very close Community you know from Ethiopia all the way to South Africa and speaking of we got something he's scared cuz he thinks it's something real there you go but while you look at that thank you so much Gary I mean we're definitely going to have you back the genuine giraffe this is Beautiful by the way just saying South African giraffes are different to Kyon giraffes yes I'm very aware and then this is a really nice print uh you must have your morning coffee or tea in it it's amazing I will do that listen actually let's talk about

Africa for a second yeah 35% of the youth in the world in a decade is going to live in the continent yeah because of the way the globe and the map work people don't realize how big Africa is Absolut it's not actually properly sized thank you saw that infographic right I I've known it for I've known it since junior year of high school I just don't think people understand that much like the Middle look Dubai what's going on in Saudi now 25 years ago when you talk to business people I was in business I'm not a youngster anymore when you brought up the Middle East you had people being like aren't they on camels like people are so silly especially Americans we're very insular I love America but we're pretty funny in our world view but the entire world's view on Africa is wildly underestimating like the rest of my professional career will be under an era of the rise of Africa as a continent absolutely as a world business power and we we're buying because I mean I worked in fmcg for the longest time and I would have to go out and find sister market like say South America and I mean I can say this now it's a positive story we will moving Johnny Walker as good as other markets you know it's not like everyone whether it's the dusty camels or it's out on Safari we have this thing about aspiration afro optimism I'm like look back to like looking at old videos as I sit here in 2024 and say what I'm about to say I will get great enjoyment watching this video in 2045 Africa look there's incredible things going on in the Middle East especially in Saudi absolutely obviously China has got one agenda to be the dominant player in the world there's a lot of geopolitics I'm not going into politics I'm talking business I'm talking culture I'm talking Talent it is so clear to me clear as day that Africa's day in the sun in the world stage you see it with music already oh my God yes yeah we have playlist for you guys by the way it's I'm a piano versus afro beats it's absolutely you see it it's already happening it's already clear just the sheer brain power this becomes another thing that frustrates me I don't think people understand the sheer Talent the sheer Brilliance the creativity it's just going to be a great joy to watch Africa 2030 to 2050 take its proper stage on the World stage and I'm excited about it I as you know behind the scenes like I will be doing business in the market and I can't wait I know thank you for saying that because sometimes you need someone to Echo it we believe in ourselves we are very confident by the way I'm just saying that you know but I feel like sometimes having Advocates like yourself say it especially for the guys that are looking and watching this right and they're like oh okay can I tell you that is why this black coffee one was so important because yeah besides the fact that it was at cans we were like wo the fact that black coffee is understanding the conversation with you are so powerful and he were sharing his story it means that he sees value in you and he's unlocked you in our market so even it's me today tomorrow I want my other peers to come and interview you of course so yeah that's thank you so much thank you for having