Oliver Luckett, Snapchat Spectacles Marketing & Leadership Qualities | #AskGaryVee 234

- On today's episode, Oliver stops by. (hip hop music) - [Gary] You ask questions, and I answer them this is The #AskGaryVee Show. - Hey everybody, this is Gary Vay-ner-chuk and this is episode 234 of The #AskGaryVee Show. We've been on a major hiatus and we have a guest which I'm excited about. - Really excited. - Before we get into Oliver and his new book and all that stuff and the questions from Dunk, I just want to say what's up to everybody. A lot of you asked if I stopped the show. I haven't. I was in LA, I'm filming my show, my Apple TV show over there just a lot of-- - Gone all Hollywood on us. - Got a little Hollywood on you guys and then I was just traveling before. I'm just busy being the CEO, you know, I don't do #AskGaryVee on location so and even in the weeks that I was here bunch of business decisions going into the fourth quarter and New Year's so I just been working my time. - Big election. - (laughs) Big election. There's been a lot going. Jets suck shit. going on so but before we get into the show, Oliver why don't you create some context. Obviously, we've been running in similar circles. - We were on CNBC together one time. - I remember that. - With the Nervo Girls. - That was fun. I remember that. You've had a really, you know, great digital career. - Thank you. - I've heard your name a whole bunch through the years. We haven't had the pleasure really jammed together so I'm excited about this but a quick one minute bio and then we'll go into this and then we'll answer some questions. - Sure. Yeah, I started off in technology and voice over the internet and video for the internet with Revver and then as technology started going in to Hollywood and in to entertainment built the last company was called The Audience. Before that I was, I hated the title, but I was head of innovation at Disney so I really brought that brand into social media. You know, broke it into all the characters and into the attractions. - So much so that Bob felt comfortable giving you a quote on the front cover which is always an indicator did the person do a good job while they were at the company. - Yeah, it's a little nerve-racking when you reach back out to these people if you've left. - By the way, I look at that. - What'd they really think? - I look at that because you know I've seen it a bunch of times. I was the head of this at, you know, at Nike and then they're doing something and nobody from Nike saying anything. So when I saw that I'm like hmmm. Alright. - Yeah, no, that's exciting and then wrote this book over the last year and half kind of really naturally evolved with Michael Casey, who is a editor at the Wall Street Journal. We met on Nekker Island which is Branson's island. I was a speaker there. He came up to me afterwards and was like, "I think this really resonates and I think you couldn't have "better timing," and it was right as I was selling The Audience so it all worked out great. - Good for you, man. - I'm very happy about it and thank you for having me. - So you know, yeah, no worries. What is this book and what's the premise? - "The Social Organism" most people see it as orgasm. - That's what I saw actually. I literally thought that's what it said. - So, I'm always the first disappoint. - I can't read either. - Anyone with dyslexia-- - Yeah, I'm dead. - they get really excited about it. - I thought this was like a social orgy. I didn't even read it right. - Well, orgies are social. - Fair enough. Yes, fair. - So it fits. - So go ahead. - No, but it's a book that is a lot of different concepts that came together and I was asked one time to draw the future of social. Details Magazine had said I was this digital maverick and those things are cringe worthy, as you know, and so they asked me to draw the future of social and the only thing I know how to draw was when I was a little kid I was super nerd and I studied molecular and cell biology and worked in the research lab so I know how to draw pathways. Like when you cut yourself how bleeding stops through the arachidonic acid pathway and then I went into telecom-- - I figured that would come up in this conversation. - Yeah, exactly. This is deep shit over here. And then in the telecom world I knew how to draw routers and switches and things like that but none of them, even combine those ideas, none of them could explain it in any depth. As you know, it's a very complicated almost soup of inputs and outputs and people's reactions and so I just had this moment where I realized that maybe the only way to explain it is to look at it very practically and say look this is really 1. 3 billion organisms connected together over a network that has no time and distance because of TCP/IP so maybe it behaves like one organism and so the metaphor stuck. And so I started going back, I literally went back to my old biology textbook and looked at the seven rules of life and sure enough it fits every one of them. - And that's how you-- - You nourish the system, emotions are the metabolism of it and so I structured it like a term paper and you know the publisher, once Michael came on board we actually turned it into a book as opposed to an academic paper. - And so, what do they get out of this? As I'm thinking about so many people that follow this, care about social media, things of that nature, what do they get out of this that they don't get from my books, other books or what's the complement, where's the cross-section, what's the punchline and then we'll go into the--? - Yeah, it's totally complementary. It's a little bit more of a macro view. It's almost like-- - The thesis? - It's the thesis. It's really like if you want to build, we agree on so many things. If you want to build a career you have to nourish it, you have to feed it. If you want to build a brand you have to set a set of values and match those with the right people and so it's really about at a macro-level patterns that exist in nature and how those patterns are dealt with whether they are viruses or diseases-- - And you talk through it? - I do. - Case studies? - It's from my personal experience. The book starts off with my father and Morgan Freeman are best friends and we grew up in a very poor place in Mississippi and for 26 years of my life I watched them fight the Confederate flag. - Right. - And so the book starts off with a moment when Dylan Roof, who I just went on I guess he was now competent to serve as an adult or as a mentally stable person, but when he went into the church in Charleston, South Carolina and massacred nine people. - Yes. - And then suddenly overnight, after those images of him with the Confederate flag hit social media, overnight we all viewed the Confederate flag maybe as a symbol of hatred and racism and overnight Amazon took it down, eBay took it down, the state capital started taking down, the hashtag #takeitdown, the woman Bree climbed up the flagpole and became a meme. - Yep. - So I looked at that moment, I was like, "Well, what happened? " Right? What is it that causes almost an immunological response and in immunology it's key to recognize something as bad before it can fix it. And so a lot of the book talks about how do you teach your body or this system, this social organism, to recognize the bad or recognize the good and then eliminate it using your own immunology. Because if you think about it cellular, it's 1. 3 billion cells. The only way an idea spreads is if one of those cell spreads it to the other. - Absolutely, uh-huh. - So it's like how do we have the responsibility to be a citizen within this and to keep bad ideas down and good ideas and to learn how to ferret them? And so, it's a macro-level but you can take away from it how to grow a content business, real business. The metaphors continue-- - Play out. - They play out and writing the book was really an experience 'cause we, literally, a year and half ago said okay now we're gonna put a punctuation mark, we're gonna write this book together and the stories just unfolded. - Sure. - You know, whether it was the world moved and once we looked in that lens, it made sense. People's reaction to it has been stunning. Very few people have it in their hands. It's only been out a week and half now although we had great sales success in the first month going into it pre-sales but people's feedback to me is really meaningful right now because-- - Like you're best friend from high school and your aunt or-- - No, it's like the woman who worked on the trailer who got the book a month early who I've never met before but worked on the book trailer and she came up to me the other day said, "I've read this book twice and "I look at the world differently now. " - That's good. - And that's a pretty meaningful response. - That's an accomplishment. - That's all I can ask for. - So I'm really happy about it. - Congrats. - And you live in Iceland now. - I do. I live in Iceland. - There's also that. - In Reykjavik. - We'll get to that in a minute. - Yeah. - Dunk, it's time for you to say something. - [DRock] Hold on. - [Dunk] Hi. - Uh-oh, you're keeping this part in. - [DRock] Yeah. - Okay. This is why I can't wear these kind of sweaters. - [DRock] Yeah, this sweater sucks. - Yeah, sorry. - [DRock] It's okay. - Alright. - [Dunk] First question. - Go ahead.

- Hey Gary. I'm wondering what you think of Snapchat and their recent way of selling their Spectacles, the glasses with the vending machine and how you think that plays in their marketing strategy? Thanks so much. - Oliver, Snapchat Spectacles. - I think they're kind of brilliant. I think they took something that Google spent so much time and energy on but effectively was pretty nerdy and they made it cool. - Yep. - Pop-up stores and vending machines are social media worthy. - The distribution's been crazy. - Yeah, exactly and if you only have a small amount of them then make it special. - That's right. - So I saw a bunch on social media last night about a store in New York that just popped up. - Yep. - Yeah, I think it's cool. - I think it's a big play. I think it could be maybe the saving grace move to their IPO. - Sure. - If you think about what Instagram's replication of a lot of their functionality has done it's created a scenario where there's little more skeptics talking about Snapchat's growth. - Sure. - A lot of people talking about their decline. - Instagram sucks out the oxygen out of the room with stories. - So it becomes Snap and to play, to me what's most interesting is Snapchat is the first social network that feels like a brand. - Mhmmm. - You know, Snapchat feels as much to me as Under Armour and Soul Cycle-- - Yep. - as it does Facebook or Instagram and that crossover from just utility social network to overall brand I feel like this captured that moment and if they can pull that all the way through well then they really have something. - And they really made it where you are the media, right? - 100%. - And so that was part of this exciting brand and then the filters and the tools and the creativity-- - And then you think about the live. All they have to do is add an update that allows that be live streaming and now all of a sudden you got a whole thing. I'm pretty bullish on it. It's early, I do agree that they've made it cool what was $1500 and not cool from Google, three years ago so we'll see. Evan, from me from afar, continues to deploy LA brand behavior in a San Francisco, Silicon Valley world in a very good way. - Yep and they also making big steps to be a media company. So you saw where they stopped rev sharing and started buying content now as a Netflix would do-- - The garden walls of the internet are popping up. - Yeah. - Let's keep it going. - [Dunk] Next question is from John.

- John. - What's going on, Gary? This is John Max here. I had a question for you. Was driving and listening to "Thank You Economy" and at the end of the book you talk about how you would wish the self, the book with self-destruct by 2015 because marketers would have ruined the thank you economy. Looking back do you think that we still live in a thank you economy? And if not, what kind of economy do we live in now? Thank you. - I'll take a little bit of this because I'll help you. The "Thank You Economy"'s premise is pretty simple which is can we scale one-on-one behavior? What's depth verse width, right? You think of influencers a place that you and I both played. You can have a million followers but if you said go by this book, both you and I know that somebody with 72,000 followers could sell more books, depth. It didn't play out the way wanted because I had optimism in a place where I shouldn't which is the punchline is businesses don't get a fuck. - No (laughs). - It is unbelievable how much people don't understand why my whole world has worked. My little thing works because I just want to go deep. deliver value and it works every time and the person who scaled the thank you economy the best in my opinion is Taylor Swift and that's why she's winning. She understands-- - We talk about her in the book actually. - That's great, so great segue perfect I'm glad we can pass the baton. - Buy the book. - Do some kind of scary thing there, by the way. Edit. I think Taylor understands that going to somebody's wedding randomly may cost her 45 minutes and not have in an ROI positive game but it does because the pickup, the amplification, dropping a pop-up shop for these glasses for Snapchat in the Grand Canyon is not ROI positive until everybody talks about it through this kind of infrastructure and then it does. Thank you economy has a lot of DNA ties to this and to your question the reason it didn't play out the way I'd hoped or inspired is companies are short-term, I'm long-term and people that are thinking in 20 and 30 and 40 year terms are thinking about LTV and lifetime value and then do things that don't have value in the short term. The reality is 99% of the players don't play that way. - You and I have been in the same business and I think had the same values. It's remarkably frustrating when you try to convince a brand to do what you're talk about, to go deep and actually attach yourself to a set of values or people that have those values. I would say make the content that matters, put it in front of people it matters to from voices that matter to them at a time that matters. It's like very simple and they never get it. And they only want the top 1% of people and it's like their trophy bag. And they're like well I got Demi Lovato to tweet about it. It's like, well, that really doesn't mean anything. - Right, Demi. - No, it is not, I don't. - I'm kidding, I'm kidding. - She's a mass media artist but if I'm making a purchase decision than I want something that's closer to me. I want something that I trust and feel some sense of shared values with and these big macro brands but Taylor she kinda over came that by these personal experiences. - She understood it. - Yep. - She understands there's an amplification, scaling the unscalable. - Just this weekend she's singing Thanksgiving songs with Todrick Hall who's, you know, a self-made YouTuber who-- - She gets it. She understands where the attention is. She deploys unscalable behavior in it which then means it gets amplified. - Yep. - What's his name again one more time? - [Dunk] John. - John. John, all of what you heard in that book is still an opportunity today as it was six years ago when I wrote it. Let's move on. - [Dunk] Next question is from CK. - [Dunk] Yep. - Who used some good emojis.

(crowd cheering) - Hey Gary! It's CK here. Presenter, photographer from Sheffield, UK. My question for you how mindful are you of differentiation when it comes to personal branding? There's a million and one entrepreneurs out there, not all of them swear like a judge, like you do. Not all of them wear trainers like you and cool jeans. So my question, not all of them want to buy the Jets. So how conscious are you, Gary, of your unique selling point when creating your brand? Epic, you're a hero. Next time you're in London I want to do a photo shoot for ya. Let's hear it for Gary! (crowd cheers) - CK, I'll answer that in a minute. From what you've seen Oliver, what, you've worked with a lot of influencers. You've got a lot of great connections in Hollywood. You knew the influencers were coming, you knew the old school, you knew the new school. How do you see that? Do you think that people are being thoughtful of their differentiations? - Yeah, absolutely. I mean look, you know, the really smart ones understand the idea of authenticity, right? And understand and so I remember sitting down with a bunch of celebrities when Facebook pages were really scary to them and whether or not it was gonna be, me the actress or me the actor or me you know the guy that hung out with you at high school, I didn't really know what persona to do or what to present. - And people still, a lot of people right here are like should I have a business page? - Sure. - Should I have my personal page? I have a job but I also want to be known as the funny, vulgar, juggler but I'm a lawyer by day. Everybody's in this Clark Kent/Superman issue on Facebook and social in general. - I always profess that you could have two lives. You could have this public persona that could be safe to do this and then you have a private existence here which is important because we are all stepping onto a public stage now and there are things that should be kept public and things that are private and I think we're all always in a constant collision course with that. Few too many drinks and a Twitter account you can pretty much fuck up your life. - I agree with you and here's my point or people forget like BP dumped all the oil in the world in to the and people forget. It's amazing what, I don't think anybody's talking about like all these actors and actresses and athletes have so many mistakes and issues. America is quite forgiving. What we're not forgiving about is the cover-up. - The hypocrisy. - That's right. - People don't like hypocrisy. - It is a death blow, blow. - In Iceland, we overthrew the government in a 24 hour period, and a long-standing system of government there because we had a Prime Minister who really didn't break the law but was a hypocrite. - That's right. - And nobody likes a hypocrite. - I'm familiar with that story and you're right. From my standpoint, here's where I've been thoughtful, seven years ago I decided that there was something inside of me and the new mediums were in my favor, that good things were about to happen and I better just be me all the way through. - Yep. - A level of transparency and authenticity that was extreme because I made the assumption that it was gonna really work out and that everybody on Earth would know who I was. I still knew I wanted to be a businessman. I didn't want to be an actor. - You're getting close. - But I knew that, I made a video seven or eight years, you should edit this in that said that technology was gonna be hip hop. That we were in this 1985 hip hop moment. Serious, hip hop '85 is equal to tech web 2. 0 2008. That Zucks and Kevin Rose and all these people, these were people that were gonna, look I basically think I said in the video or I said it elsewhere that tech founders were gonna marry supermodels and like Evan Spiegel's doing that. - That is absolutely happening. - And so I knew that then, I thought that would happen to me and so I've been conscious of the following which is you guys really know my shit. Now that being said, I have a counterpoint. There is very little content on my family in the world. - Yeah, I noticed you mentioned that in your last-- - Xander, my little guy, I don't think anybody even knows what he looks like. I don't think there's one piece of content. So you gotta pick and choose what's important to you. - Yep. - For Lizzie and I, it's important the kids don't have that exposure and they choose, I think Misha's gonna choose. I think she's gonna be a YouTube kid star. (Olivers laughs) We need to let them choose but you're in full control. - You're the dad-anger. - Exactly, I can't wait to be a dad-anger. I'm gonna negotiate good deals. Alright, let's move it on. - [Dunk] Next question is from Miguel.

- Miguel. - Hey Gary, my name is Miguel Ogas. For some context, I work in a full-time ministry. I run a network of churches for my lead pastor where I'm traveling about twice a month and you have inspired me to give my wife my laptop computer so I do all of my business full-time through the phone. I believe everything you're saying about the future of the cell phone so I just want to figure out how to do it right. So my question to you is this, what are some tips, tricks, apps, any type of hustle advice you can give to somebody who wants to run a network, run a business completely 100% through the phone no longer using a laptop? Thank you for all you do. Appreciate you. - Have you seen the Google phone? - The Pixel? - The Pixel. - I haven't seen it. - It's amazing. - Do you have it? - I have two of them, yeah. - And so what? Have you made the jump to phone only? - 100%. - You have no laptop? You have one-- - I rarely use, I have a laptop which I'm like if I have to download a bunch of, like right now I'm downloading a bunch of photos. - Google has such a great suite of products-- - It's amazing. - they made, I assume, Doc and Mail and Calendar-- - It's amazing. It's like intuitive and smart and it's like you'll have an appointment and it's like, "Would you like to add this to your contact book? " It's like improving itself the whole time. - Such a miss by Microsoft. I thought two years ago-- - I had that phone, I loved that phone. - I thought Microsoft, when it was when it's dead in cell phone world, I thought they should have come out with the Microsoft phone that was built to be you know the business engine that it sounds Google has executed. From my standpoint, there's only one smart hack. I can talk all about everything. Different apps, here's the reason it works for me: anything that isn't great on the phone you scale through another human being. If you're able to afford an admin which or use some AI assistance and things of that nature, I don't write, as my team will tell you, I don't write any... My emails are one word or like an emoji. I do so little actual work that if you're working in Excel sheets and Word and PowerPoint and these things it may be a little trickier. As somebody who doesn't, as somebody who has like the team send "Here's the proposal. Can you approve it? " and as soon as I get it I write approved and they're like you didn't open it. We can see that I said approved, mother fucker. You know? And so, I think you have to know yourself but I think the human element of having an admin or somebody else to close the shortcoming but I think living in a mobile only environment. - Sometimes I add a few words because I'm the same way. I'm like, "Thank you, approved. Good. " - Yeah. - "Great. " And they're like, "I just wrote a treatise. " I'm like, "Well, maybe you can slim it down a little bit. " - It's the biggest inside joke here. People write seven paragraphs and I write back the thumbs up emoji. And they're like, fuck. - It's like can I get a little more feedback here. - Something! - Something. I worked on this. Alright, let's move it. - [Dunk] Last one. - [Dunk] From Cory. - Cory.

- Gary, what's going on? It's Captain Cory from CaptCory. tv and the Captain's Vlog on YouTube. I'm in the back of the airplane because it's more quiet but I got a couple questions for you. First off, Gary aside for your incredible interpersonal skills, what would you say is the most important leadership quality that you deploy amongst those that you lead? And the second part of that question, what are two important leadership qualities that we as young leaders can develop that'll make us more effective as leaders and have a greater influence and make a bigger difference amongst those? Appreciate all you do. Love the show. I'm not watching as much any more 'cause I'm grinding and hustling but love it. Love what you do, man. If you ever need a ride too, man, let me know. - That's good. That's my big thesis by the way, Oliver. Unlike a lot of people, I actually want my audience of people to decline-- - Sure. - because I want to inspire people to actually go do. - Right. - The amount of reading all our books, watching all our stuff, that's fine and I like that. - Yep. My tagline's always been I get shit done. Just get it done. - You've been a successful leader in your companies, what's the biggest thing that has really worked for you? - I think being humanistic which is a word that I don't think many people, especially in this country, use. But there's a real value to putting humans first. And it sounds so trite but there's a real value to having empathy and putting humans first and looking at them from a perspective that you can say, how do I help you grow? What is both this sympathy parts and the nourishment parts that are going to help you realize your potential as a person? And I've started seven companies now and made a lot of mistakes. Human resources is the hardest thing to do at scaling a company because I always make the joke they are neither a resource nor human, human resources. And so-- - That's why the head of mine is called Chief Heart Officer, Claude. Claude is the number two person in this company and everybody knows it. It is the foundation at Vayner because we sell people. - Yep, exactly and so, I mean you're in a service business, in a content business so that makes sense and so I think taking a lens of humanism has been the biggest gift for me. It's one of the reasons I moved to Iceland. You have a humanistic society that doesn't punish people for their weaknesses. - I like that. - You have no poverty, you have no homelessness. You have reform instead of prison. Big, important things especially coming from a place like Mississippi where I was born. You look at that and that's a place where people are not treated like humans. There are systems in place. I remember with American Express we made a movie called "Spent" about payday lenders in America. Talk about your audience and the pains. That's $1 trillion business in America that is parasitic. - Yep. - It adds no value to the system whatsoever. In Iceland, a human right is to be able to access your money. - Sure. - Here we have the basic principles of our economy are inaccessible in my hometown to 80% of the people have to go to a payday lender and a check cashing place and spend a percentage of their income just to take just to be able to spend their money. That is not humanistic. That is counter to anything that will help a system grow and evolve. - I couldn't agree more with the human-- - Not to rant about payday lenders but fuck-- - but it's a valid point and I think from my standpoint it's listening and it's self-awareness. I think the biggest mistake charismatic CEOs make is they try to fake the funk and act like they know everything. - Mhmmm. - I always feel like I think I know everything and lot of you leave comments about ego. Only 'cause I stay in my lane. There's a very narrow world where I'm very good. I tend to never go out of it. You notice how I have social media and business people on the show. This is not a healthcare expert. We're not talking about hair dying activities. This is not, nobody's gonna be on the show talking about how to raise cattle because I'm not gonna put myself in a position where I do not know what the fuck I am talking about. - Right. - And so being all-in on what you know and then being very empathetic and listening and deploying humility against the things you don't know. People pick up on that real, real fast. Because when you come across somebody that works for you that does know the thing that your bullshitting about and you bullshit it, you just lost a winner. - Yep. - You've It's about building that trusted relationship at every level of all of this. - I got to get the hell out of here. I like your pants. - Thank you. - Question of the day. - Yep. - And by the way, great meeting you. I want you guys to actually hear this. This is actually, we actually deployed what we believe in. One minute, I promise. We've done a CNBC thing together once. We know about each other because we've been running in circles-- - Sure. - He sends an email, we're busy as shit and the answer was yes. - Yep. - I know how this feels. You know, I know this has an audience. I knew it could help. I felt very comfortable to pay forward and create opportunity for the exposure 'cause it's a smart thing to do. - Thank you. - Anyway, question of the day. You get to ask any question. There'll be a thousand answers between YouTube and Facebook might give you some consumer insights or whatever you're up to or whatever you want. Ask the question of the day. - Question of the day, hmmm... - You could ask what your favorite color is. You can go very escapism. - No, that's not what I want to ask. I want to do something thoughtful. - Good. - I know because this whole book was about the most inspirational person in my life that changed my life the most was my science teacher who saw me as this remarkably disruptive kid and took me out of high school and put me in a research lab. That's I know all this shit about biology. So who is the most influential person in your life and why? There you go. Thank you, buddy. It's great seeing you. - Good luck to you. Really good to see you. - Thank you.