What's Trending Gary Vaynerchuk Interview SXSW | Austin 2017

- Guess who I'm with? The amazing Gary Vaynerchuk! CEO of VaynerMedia among other things. Many other things. - Thank you. - How's it going? - It's going really well, it's great to be here. This is my 10th South-by so it's changed quite a bit. When we used to do things like this it would be on like a small FlipCam. Now there's very expensive cameras and rigs and lighting. A lot of has changed, a lot's the same, but I'm very happy to be here. Hello, everybody that's in this room. Thrilled to spend some time together. - Awesome. So you're always part of the trends, you're forecasting. What's the thing we're talking about this year? What's exciting you?

- Listen, the fact of the matter is nine years ago, Twitter exploded here, and then all of the sudden South-by had to be this place where things got launched. The reality is really, besides Twitter and Foursquare, nothing's ever been launched here, right? So-- - This is an opening for you, why don't you launch something here?

- I think this notion of like, what's exciting? The same stuff that's always been exciting, which is I'm not super worried about features or what's getting covered the most by the media. I'm worried about where consumer attention is and how do I storytell natively to that platform in that environment? So things that I'm not excited about are consumer VR. I do not think consumer VR is here next week. I think we, especially if you're at South-by in this lounge, we're excited about it. We understand the technology is there. It's exciting. But the day when an American or a human being spends three, four hours a day in contact lenses and lives in a virtual world is much further away than the people that are in that industry wish it to be. The things that excite me is that Facebook ads are underpriced and Instagram and Snapchat influencers are underpriced. And most people just have opinions about it, even very bright people in this room and the people watching at home, and there are very few practitioners in March 2017 marketing. And that's what excites me because when you have lack of practitionership, there's ability to exploit those opportunities if you're deeply grounded in those principles. - [Shira] It's funny because some people actually think there was a bubble. I think there's always gonna be those case studies or those circumstances-- - What bubble? - Well, of like the influencer marketing bubble.

- Influencer marketing hasn't even started. Even though it's a one to three, on people's best guesses, billion dollar market, the reality is that influencer marketing has always been here, right? John Wayne smoked Lucky Stripes. Somebody we're paying attention to doing something with a brand is tried and true. It's just that Instagram and Snapchat and Facebook and these platforms are at such scale of distribution now and there's no middleman. NBC and Comcast used to get the middle price. Now the platform is the distribution and the end user's getting those economics directly with the brand. So we're living through just the early stages of that genre, because that's just tried and true. That just always has been here. It just looks a little bit different than we saw it 40 years ago. - Now you're an influencer, you could say, but you're also a CEO, you're an entrepreneur, you're a businessman. How do you balance between your own personal brand and then being responsible to a company and employees and all that?

- [Gary] I run my company. I'm the CEO of an 800 person $130 million a year business, and that takes up all my time. The GaryVee thing is my side hustle. I have a team that records content in vlog form, we use-- - [Shira] He's right here, that guy. - DRock. - [Shira] Does he just travel with you? - Yes, DRock is the person I love the most. (laughs) DRock is with me all the time and it's my hack, I figured it out. DRock films, we make a vlog. In that we have 18 hours worth of content that's happening. A lot of those turn into my Medium posts. meme videos. A lot of those turn into my audio podcast. I don't have time to build a personal brand. I don't have time. I live my life as an entrepreneur. And I don't win on being attractive or funny, I win on being an operator and being right about things that are happening, and that's just my day-to-day life and then we produce it at home. But I spend all my time running my company. When I do public speaking, that's business development for VaynerMedia. It's a lot more fun to get a $3 million scope doing a keynote at the ANA than being part of an RFP process. That's just smart business. I think being an influencer... First of all, 99% of people that say they're in an influencer in their Instagram account are full of shit, and for the 1%-- - [Shira] Well don't put that on your Instagram account. Like, I'm an influencer. - Many do. (Shira laughs) And then I think the ones that like, being in influencer means that you're bring value to people as a person living and creating content through these platforms that people are paying attention to. And so you've gotta have a lot of talent to actually win that. For every Logan Paul, who I see in the background, there are 8,000, 80,000, 800,000 people that aspire to make videos and pictures on Instagram and make a living out of it, and the reality is they're not interesting enough or smart enough or talented enough. So it's just supply and demand of are you able to have somebody's attention. - And what is someone supposed to do if they don't have a person to run around following them on a camera?

- [Gary] Do what I did for the first 30 years of my life. Build a business that allows you to afford one. (laughs) - That's good advice. - I think this, Shira, I think a lot of people forget about my narrative because of my spiel in this genre. I spent the first 15, 16 years of my life building an actual wine retail business before I even said one word to the world about my business thoughts. I didn't come out the womb and say I'm an influencer. I built an actual business and then I talked about building businesses. - [Shira] But the platforms weren't there yet, right? It evolved as your-- - That probably helped me in some ways. But yeah, because they weren't there. And by the way, they were there. So a lot of people here, there's a lot of OGs in here, blogging was very real in 2002, three, four. I passed on that because I'm not good at writing and if you can't write, you're not gonna be successful in blogging. And so the thing I tell everybody in this room and people watching at home, self-awareness is a big part of this as well. You have to know what you're good at and what you're not good at. The amount of people that have started video shows 'cause they hear video marketing is good but they're scared to be in front of a camera and they're awkward, that's just not a good strategy. It's not your normal place. You have to know yourself. And so even though the mediums were there, I could have been a blogger, I just knew that i couldn't communicate very effectively in the writing format and so I punted it, kept building a business, and then when short form Twitter, when video for YouTube came out, I'm like, that I think I can do, and that's what I jumped into. - You talk about hustle all the time, right? At what point in the hustle, if it's just not working, do you say maybe I needa move in another direction?

- [Gary] That's hard. When to tell somebody to quit off of their dream or what they wanna do is very difficult, 'cause the reality is it coulda been the next day that something good could have happened and you just jumped off. At the same token, I equate it to American Idol rehearsals where people really think they're great at singing and they suck shit. I think that there's a lot of people who think if they just keep doing it they're gonna break out and be a micro-celebrity, and they're not going to 'cause they don't have the talent. I think that's a very personal answer, Shira. I don't think I have the answer even if I really know somebody. It's a very difficult one, that's one that I don't think I'm in a position to answer. - First time Gary does not have an answer. - I don't answer most things. For people that follow me, I stay very narrow, very deep in my lanes. I don't know most things. What I do know is attention of end consumer. what you're up to, what you're not gonna do and what you're gonna do, and that's what I trade on and that's a good place to play. - [Shira] So speaking of that, what are people doing now? What are people wanting? What does everybody have to take notice of now?

Where's Gary playing? - This is a mobile-only world, in my opinion. Here's what I mean by that. When I trade attention, nothing's dead. Billboards aren't dead, radio's not dead, television consumption's not dead. It's the advertising behind them that you wanna drive your business results that needs to be debated. What's overpriced and what's underpriced? I think the number one bet in marketing today is buying a Super Bowl commercial. I think it is the number one deal in the world. I think it's grossly underpriced, every person in here will know the 30 second story of that brand whether they watch it on YouTube or during the Super Bowl, and it's an incredible bargain. At the same token, I think the number one worst deal in marketing today is buying programmatic banner and pre-roll ads on the exchanges and justifying digital spend on CPM costs. Because nobody in here's paying attention to them and we're pouring ungodly amounts of money to it. So that you would say wait a minute, Gary's not a digitalist, he's a traditionalist. I'm not, I'm going very narrow. I think iHeartRadio live read radio ads by the jockey who's running that station is an incredible bargain. Radio! Meanwhile I think that back to television, I think the Oscars are the most overpriced ad at $2 million a spot because we want that, as marketers, to be the Super Bowl but it's not. The sport of watching commercials during the Oscars is nowhere close to Super Bowl. So for me, it's mobile only. Mobile is the only place where there's true, besides Super Bowl, underpriced attention. You've gotta be very narrow within that. I'm obsessed. I think everybody in here will regret not spending more money on Facebook ads during this period because the average $6 to $14 CPMs that you see today are gonna be 50, 60, $70 in four to five years, and everybody's gonna cry. There's people that think Facebook ads are over right now, that are just non-practitioners. This is back to my opening line. There are people in this room that have opinions on VR, on AI, on Alexa Voice, on Snapchat ads, on Facebook ads and they've never executed in those environments. I think it's massively important to be the architect and to be the plumber mason, and I think that's what's lacking, Shira. And something I've always relied on, which is I'm trying to be strategic, but I'm executing my shit daily. Biggest reason I'd build a person brand is so I use Instagram, Snapchat, musical. ly, Facebook, Twitter every day, every feature, every time. It keeps me a strong strategist 'cause I'm in my shit, not pontificating on TechCrunch. - [Shira] There you go. That deserves an applause, come on. (audience applause) So what platforms are you excited about right now? You are everywhere. - [Gary] Facebook. - Yeah, Facebook.

- [Gary] I'm heavily excited about Facebook. I'm excited about Snapchat because everybody thinks that it's over 'cause Instagram's stories, and yet there's tons of attention there and the marketplace to buy filters there is $5 an hour for 20,000 square feet. If you're a smart marketer, buying filters on the open marketplace in Snapchat right now could be remarkable if you care to sell to people under 35 years old. Influencers on those two platforms. iHeartRadio, weirdly enough. Live read by the jockey, not the ads in the radio. - Digital radio networks, that just-- - No, no, no. - Just iHeartRadio?

- [Gary] iHeartRadio. No, let's go more specific. When the jockey that runs the station live reads. These are the nuances that I watch and I watch them, for people in the room, not on internal modeling mixes that justify spend behavior in Fortune 500 companies, but based on actual transaction data, if stuff is actually selling, if donations are actually being made. That's another important part that we should be spending more time on. There are people that literally justify behavior based on views and likes and following count and that is just, that lacks-- - [Shira] So what do you justify, engagement-- - Sales. - Sales? - Selling shit, Shira. - Yeah, you wanna make money. - Well, yes, I wanna make money. And anybody's who's getting paid to help a business wants to make money. Like Comcast wants to sign people fuckin' up. They're not there to feel good about themselves. This is fuckin' business, what the fuck is everybody talking about? (laughter) - Yeah, you could be a capitalist hippie, neo-hippie.

- Listen, I love hippies but like... The reality is if you're talking about business, you're talking about business. raising money for the PTA, that's your goal. Everybody has a goal. Running for office, bringing awareness to the family that lived next door to you whose house burned down. You can go very noble, vain. Having more fans. You could be whatever you want, but the one thing that ties every person in this room with is that we're all fighting for the attention of the end user. Before you tell me how great your service is and why yours is better than Amazon's or your sneaker's cooler than Adidas', you need my attention. And we're pouring hundreds of billions of dollars into places that no longer have the attention. - [Shira] All right, so lastly, we're wrapping this up, advice for people that are starting new companies. Maybe they can't be buying tons on Facebook or boosting. How are people supposed to be heard this day and age with now big publishers coming in playing?

It's harder, you know? - [Gary] First and foremost, patience. Startups lack patience. Everybody wants everything tomorrow. It's gonna take three, four, five, six years of you working eight, nine, ten, fifteen hours a day before something interesting can happen. Just 'cause you wanna be an influencer in snowboarding, nobody else wants you to be. So first and foremost, you have to actually have talent. That's another thing. If you're a startup, your product has to be good. Let me promise everybody in this room, and I know a lot of people in this room. The greatest marketing of all time, if I'm lucky enough to produce the greatest marketing campaign and execution of all time, if the product that marketing is deployed against is shit, you've lost. First of all your startup has to be good. Is it valuable? If you're just starting, are you bringing value? Second, you have to persevere and produce-- You know how lucky small companies are now? We have distribution. Be a practitioner, know that when you post a piece of content-- So many people come up to be and say Gary, it's so hard. I look at their Instagram and they're not posting any of their content with hashtags, which is a by accident way to pick up exposure in a world where they have no money. When I took over my dad's business I did $3 million a year, 10% gross profit. $300,000 before expenses. My first year marketing budget was $14,000. When you have no money, and I built that business from a $3 to a $60 million business in five years. I had to make every penny perfect. So I was right about email marketing in '96 and because of that I had 91% open rates. When Google AdWorks come out, the day it came out, I paid five cents a click for words before anybody bid me up, and I was super right and that worked. - [Shira] How much is that luck versus preparation, and do you every get anything wrong? What do you do when you make a mistake? - I get everything wrong, it's just that I can't recall it 'cause once it's wrong I'm moving onto the next thing. Dwelling on what you fucked up on is the quickest way for the next thing not to work, right? (audience applause) I think I do everything-- You know this, this is a fun thing to say, some people in the back know this, I was a breakout YouTube star in the first year, 2006. I decided that the right strategy was to leave YouTube completely and go to Viddler because Viddler offered me equity in their company and I've left an enormous amount of attention, I deviated from my attention thesis to do short term economics and equity in a company, and I lost, I lost. When DRock finally came in my life two years ago and we started to try to build up my YouTube for the first time, I was sitting on 40,000 followers in a world where I could have had millions if I'd just stayed the course. So I make mistakes all the time. I'm re-org'ing VaynerMedia every day 'cause it's based on a mistake I made the prior year. I just don't give a fuck about my mistakes. Everybody else cares about your mistakes. If you're worried about your own mistakes, you've already lost. - That's awesome, thank you. (audience applauds) - You're welcome. - Gary, that's a great way for us to leave it off. - Awesome. - You're amazing. - I love you. - Gary Vaynerchuk, everyone! - Thank you guys. (audience applause) - Remember to share this video on Facebook. Gary, you better be sharing this video on Facebook after. - I will, we're doing all good stuff. - We're closing this up. And stay tuned for more right here from the Comcast Social Media Lounge. - Oh, I have free books. - And check out his books. And where is the books online for people who are watching live? - No, I don't wanna shill, but for you guys, there's books. (Shira laughs) - Google it. All right, bye. - Great to see you. ("Karma" by Jura Kez)