PRWeek Conference: A Roadmap to Integration with Gary Vaynerchuk

a lot of my early Investments Facebook Twitter and uh Tumblr had started becoming big and I was really trying to decide what I wanted to do with my career in 2011 I took over in September kind of being the CEO of the agency we were 29 people and in the last uh four years I grew up from 30 people to now we're almost 600 people so I think what happened in that period of time was a couple of other things which was you I have a feeling a lot of people here don't know who I am I grew up in a liquor store in New Jersey and grew my dad's liquor business from a three to a $70 million business in 5 years using Ecom email marketing Google AdWords and banner ads so I'd been the byproduct of not having a lot of money in a small family business deploying it against the Arbitrage of where the market thought media should go versus where I thought it should go and felt the actual selling of stuff results of it so when I got into the agency world I think what has been our disproportionate Advantage is I truly want to sell the product I really I'm not too worried about um our own margin cuz I'm land grabbing uh I'm not too worried about Awards because I think that's a proxy to get more talent and more clients and I feel like I'm good at that um I just really wanted to sell stuff because I thought that would give us the best air cover uh to actually keep business and grow business a funny thing happens we've all we're all in the game right you sit in these rooms and everybody's high-fiving themselves for great modeling media mix results and neel's health results and everybody's high-fiving I came from a pure business background where like the sales were the sales I would literally sit in these meetings and everybody's like everything's great like the PR Company would walk in and say we got 887 trillion impressions for this you know placement and then you know somebody else would come in and say this was the greatest lift the roas and everything was so great and then you know I'm just kind of really was naive eyes I would say real quick I kind of read the brief coming into this isn't our business down 29% and then everybody be like yeah but there must be something I'm like yes you're quantifying the wrong [ __ ] so how do you quantify the right [ __ ] I like that you're coming along for this ride um I think you quantify it and I think this is you know it's funny I think you do it a lot of my clients who either were fans of my work or were excited to work with us a lot of our Junior clients or sometimes a senior client cuz I came from high levels cuz I had a lot of relationships they would always be perplexed by our meetings in 2011 12 and 13 specifically I think and even now they're always like man you like the meeting would end they'd be my Rabbi in this situation and they would say man you really don't have to make your work so quantifiable so I think the way you measure the right stuff is you actually force your client you suffocate the conversation into putting everything on the line and justifying the spend now that's hard I come from it was easy right and I owned the liquor store it was easy I'd run Direct Mail I'd see the customer count go up I'd run Banner you know I just Quantified everything because I had the full funnel when you know we have Pepsi we have Unilever when we have these kind of clients it's kind of hard they're selling at a big box stores there's a lot of other media running at the same time you don't have the feedback loop you can't you know connect the dots I find it fascinating that right now if you asked me who our happiest clients were at Vayner media they're all the clients in Ecom because they can quantify our success black and white there is just no debate I think what you try to do is create tests or controlled environments a lot of my cpg clients I ask them can you give me uh we have major alcohol Brands I know because I come from the alcohol industry that the state of Pennsylvania is a liquor controlled State the state sells everything I always say to them hey let me run my stuff just in Pennsylvania you've got your Baseline sales then we can actually see if that's what works so I'm always the one in the room you know it's funny I bet most people in this room and I have empathy for why you think this think that social media is still struggling to find its Roi and things of that nature I actually think it's you know for me in the world that I live in it's the most black and white place if you allow a environment to justify it I think a lot of times people think that I'm Rogue with my ideas and I feel like I'm the most practical person ever the only North Star I have is create absolutely no debate if the things that you're doing are driving the business what you have to do is you have to get the client to tell you the truth of what the business is and then you've got to try to reverse engineer and sell it and the only thing I try to follow is people's attention and if you're in this room right now and you don't realize that people's attention isn't a phone and disproportionately within social networks of that phone well then you're just not paying attention and interesting if you look at China and the massive social networks and mobile apps there they are much more closely linked to e-commerce I think so and that's why the investment there has grown because there is no debate we're in the US we're in a world where everybody is justifying everything on reports and everybody here knows that everybody in this room is capable of reverse engineering a report to justify the spend so we're playing in an inside [ __ ] game the end so how do and by the way let's make this point 50% of this room just looked me dead in the face and shook their heads yes that in itself needs to be debated on what the [ __ ] is going on right we know I mean people know but they're playing with in the confines of the game and I have empathy for that you've got bosses you got numbers to hit you got your own you got rent college loans I get it but that doesn't that's a separate conversation to what actually drives business do you find that your clients are set up to give you the data so you can even prove those numbers though is there a problem with a lot of client systems are not set up themselves so the agencies could be doing so much more in real time if they were getting quicker data instead of data like 3 months down the line which has been 100% yes but I'll go to I'll go it further I think a lot of our clients and I'm not mad at them either I have empathy for their they're playing the same damn game actually don't want everything to be black and white because it's not in their vested interest that they live in a corporate environment where they've invested into going through a certain path they know the check boxes they have to hit for their own interest and they run through that path and I respect that machine creates that environment I used to be mad at them but I'm like oh no no this is the company's fault for creating that environment so you know listen it's complicated but for me what kind of gives me the energy I'm projecting right now is there needs to be two separate conversations not one Blended one which really breaks down into let's recognize why we do certain things but then let's also have a totally separate conversation to the ROI of what these things are doing I mean it is so much easier for me to justify the ROI of digital Behavior than traditional behavior and it's not even close and so I sit around in rooms where L'Oreal is a client of ours and they're completely mixed up on why this isn't working and then a company that I wrote the first investment check into called Birchbox was has got from zero to 400 million in revenue and does all their behavior through a Pinterest Facebook and Instagram environment and can quantify every damn scent including what you're seeing now happening in marketing which is Uber and Airbnb and all these startups now have a lot of money and they're starting to do some traditional media because they've saturated digital and they're curious and they're all my homies from that world cuz that's where I came from are calling me and they're like hey Gary can you tell me how we need to quantify television I go I have no [ __ ] idea it's some grp horeshit I don't know and so you know like there's you know it's a very for me it's super funny because I literally live two separate lives I live Vayner media's life where we have big clients who've accepted traditional metrics as the kpis while they don't match their actual business results and then I have my startup culture world with all my startups where everything has to be quantifiable and none of the tradition stuff they can wrap their head around it is literally Bizarro world so you think in a funny way advertising has had a measurement system over the years that everyone's bought into so it's kind of worked because everybody bought into it but it's actually not that based on reality of course like of course that's how Awards have any value in this industry because it's a proxy that you can leverage against it's Insanity when you come to it in fresh eyes it's insanity so do these uh terms like advertising media digital PR do they actually mean anything anymore I mean of course they do I mean listen on the flip side I understand the energy I'm bringing to the table like I believe in all this stuff I believe in marketing and sales and branding and I believe in it with all my heart I just feel that the way we're quantifying the results is backwards I mean of course a great video that somebody sees and changes their emotion makes them want to buy things like of course but how many people in this room actually watch a commercial is really fascinating I mean here's a funny Twitter data point everybody spends money on Sports advertising cuz people watch sports my friends once and for all there's a very big difference between watching television and consuming television commercials nobody's saying everybody's stopping and wa watching break people are going to watch Breaking Bad the second a commercial this smart of an audience goes on in your household you directly grab your phone and you pick up on your work or you talk about LeBron's awesome dunk you definitely not watching some Jeep drive up a [ __ ] mountain and that's just as true of live sports appointment to view events as it is of something otherwise you watch it on catch up the SEC guys let me tell you about my

biggest mistake professionally so far I wrote a in 2009 it was called crush it kind of put me on the map it talked about social media if you go to the acknowledgements of that book I think my entire family and one random human being Travis calenic Travis is the CEO of uber and one of my best friends I passed on investing in Uber you heard about the good ones let me tell you about the bad ones Uber I passed on investing in Uber twice he begged me the second time at $4 million valuation it's at a $60 billion valuation the normal $50,000 check that I write that if I would have written to that investment would be worth $196 million okay now let's talk about this it sucks but when Uber came to New York Travis hit me up I was out of town so he went to go see my brother AJ took the first Uber ride in New York City he is Rider zero he tested it when he tested it hit me he ordered it in Vayner media's old office when we were 20 people and he went downstairs and there it was and it hit me holy crap Uber doesn't sell Transportation Uber sells time my friends Uber sells time in the 24-hour 365 day world that we now all live in has become dramatically more valuable because I'm not a kid I grew up in a time where the world did stop the work time at 6 7 8 I was a work AOL I worked till 9:00 right like I grew up in that environment now it's 24/7 as you guys know clients this you get an email at 11:00 p. m. plenty of people expect you to reply at 11:01 especially if they know you go to sleep at midnight right like we are on right we are on so time has become dramatically more valuable do you know what advertising does in our society right now the way it's structured it steals your time it takes the one thing you care about now more than your besides health and money time is the only thing you got guys care about and it is now stealing your time you went to espn. com to read an article you didn't come there for a pop-up ad for Samsung to force you to watch a video for 30 seconds you went to watch a kid fall off a tree on YouTube you didn't come for that 50 15c pre-roll for Nissan right this is not what we came for advertising as it's structured now steals your time it worked in 1972 when you sat on your goddamn ass and you didn't have a remote control and happy days was rolling through and you saw the popcorn ad that's fine but as soon as the remote control came that started the process of Technology shifting away from consumption and that's the game technology is now moving so quickly that it's starting to give us back what we want when TAA was invented that was a problem for the commercial it's now playing itself out that's just the way it's going to be and so that's it and now I mean I've been talking about this for three years I'm like wait to the operating systems block your ads well here we are finally ios's update it's bad if you're buying on the banner exchange it's bad and it's great for the end consumer so we're going to have to reinvent what advertising means and what I think advertising needs to mean to really be effective is it needs to bring you value and value comes in the form of entertainment utility it comes in a lot of different forms but the mechanisms the days of I want to read this magazine I'm going to turn the page to finish my article oh wait a minute here's a makeup ad I got to go around it that stole my second that second used to mean Jack [ __ ] that second matters now let me show you how by show of hands how many people in this room we've got to go honest now how many people in this room are now upset when another human being calls them raise your hand hold it high real quick I just want to see this raise it higher I want everybody to see this look around everybody hold it keep it hold it my man six 60% of this room is actually upset when anytime a human being calls them think about that is unbelievable when I asked this question two and a half years ago most people didn't understand what I was referring to like a couple people raise their hands everybody else would look at them you know calling somebody that was just a normal way we communicated what we've all figured out in this room is why are you connect why are you tring to communicate with me on your time this is my time you stole something of value for me while you tried to sell me your [ __ ] so the people in this room would probably say that

actually the future of advertising is PR because a PR relationship is a bin relationship where the person has made a conscious decision to access that content or to engage with that brand Etc what do you think of that would I mean I think PR has its own set of challenges because I think in general where we consume our media from is changing right and you know I think of I think in the world of social media and by the way real quick I on social media Just for kicks and Giggles I truly believe that social media is a slang term for the current state of the internet I mean there's nothing social media about Pinterest these are media content platforms Twitter is probably the closest thing to an actual social media platform right but Twitter and Facebook if you Google it right now were both referred to Web 2. 0 sites we always a word to kind of sum things up it's just the current state of the internet and the current state of the internet is there's massive fragmentation and media you know media Publications as we traditionally knew them are getting are being competed with human beings with micromedia cont you know sites and so the long tale of PR is the challenge how do you really get the value plus there's so many human individuals now that can create awareness so I think PR's challenge is like everybody's challenge which is it's getting spread wide I have not I mean look I think PR I think everything's great I by the way I think the Super Bowl commercial ad is massively underpriced I think a probably worth $25 million because every human being in America is going to see it whether they see it that day or the week before on YouTube now the creative is the variable if you're going to be successful but there's there I have no heart to like new I mean as a matter of fact when my clients call me and say Gary great news we're going 50% digital I usually get even more scared because I know what that means is Banner pre-roll video pre-roll on YouTube buying [ __ ] on the exchange where they don't even know where that creative shows up it's the bottom left hand corner of some [ __ ] Manan website that's running a Facebook Arbitrage media back end like it's to me it's just show me where the attention is and so if PR is placed in a place that everybody's reading and it brings positive brand Equity to that brand that's great I just think it's a you know I think P the P my PR friends I always I made the joke already I think we have to have solid metrics there you can't take credit for the monthly traffic of a website and quantify your article 16 links deep on that website as how many Impressions that article got and there's a lot of that practice just like in social media there's a lot of practice of somebody getting a tweet from a celebrity and quantifying that 14 million people saw it how about zero the fact that Twitter's got such a fire hose problem that nobody's consuming anything on that platform as much as they used to because they didn't create an algorithm and that created their vulnerability because time matters so much to us that we'd rather just scream through it than actually unfollow somebody how about that CU it's time again yes sir I'm going to open it out to the audience so think up your questions last one for me when you started doing your Facebook consultancy for clients was a very different environment these channels change every week you can construct a strategy in Facebook or change gold post is pretty primarily paid now what are you advising your clients you mean like every other media platform in the world well I don't know I mean well yes you do know here changed it no but no I mean you I don't mean it changes which I agree with I mean everybody got so emotional that you have to pay for Facebook right they flipped the rug from underneath us it used to be organic everything is pay to play and more importantly it's effective so while people still recog iled with their feelings the best executors and practitioners disproportionately took value of the underpriced Marketplace that it created as far as changing the goal post and things of that nature so did TV at first you used to do sponsorship at Sullivan Show was brought to you by Lincoln Town Car then somebody came up with the model of the 302 ad and the market moved we're in the beginning they're changing tough luck like the Market's hard nobody gives a [ __ ] about you like the end like nobody like you know how pissed I am that social media came along I had digital figured out I built a big ass business on it I loved SEO like I was all about banner retargeting I followed your asses until you gave up and bought wine for free I mean I did it I had it was good like you know fun it was for me with YouTube was 4 months old when I started Wine Library TV tons of people were watching me like I loved it like this is exhausting I'm pissed like [ __ ] now we have like really we have animated [ __ ] selfie things like rainbows are coming out of my mouth I get it like you've got to keep up with this [ __ ] 24/7 I'm getting old turned 40 in November I'm pissed but nobody cares like sorry [ __ ] Poland Springs nobody cares that the world is moving that's what's going to happen and it's our job to figure out how to bring value to those people to do what we want them to do and that's just the market that look some dude bought 8,000 horses before the car was invented he lost right like the market moved on him the price of a horse declined and so and so to sit around and be upset that innovation's moving and you wish it was the way it was is fine you're more than welcome it's just uh it's a proxy to losing good lesson GL Poland Springs didn't play spons all right who's got some questions for G are you hiring always yes please my whole crew is sitting right behind you can start it now one at the back there good I know it's always at the Fest Corner this is why you need to watch the Ask Gary V show thank you for to PL thanks for your Insight very very entertaining question for about Facebook yes just open-ended question what is

your view of Facebook now I think Facebook right this minute is one of the single best ad products in the last 20 years of marketing followup the people using Facebook seem to be getting older great they have more money thank you you're welcome and I'll give you more so we're not just entertaining don't forget Facebook owns Instagram and now we're deploying that logic there I mean this is why zux is so smart he's always tried to buy attention it's why I offered three billion for Snapchat imagine we're sitting in a room right now and Facebook owned Facebook Twitter and Snapchat they'd own the ENT ecosystem 13 to 70 right and so Facebook's incredible I mean we're like 70 year olds 60 year olds 50-year-olds and 50 60 and 70 are paying attention so carefully to their feed they're converting at a scary rate right 30 and 40 are still very much there converting at ridiculous scale what's even scarier if you're an actual practitioner you realize that 21 to 25 is converting like crazy they might not be there 16 times a day like they used to but you only need them to check once you watch Friends 87 times right you watched it once we got the commercial in front of you good so I mean I I think it's stunningly good I think Instagram in 2016 will probably be the best alltime ad product ever because while people debate the ROI and is anybody over 40 on it and all these dumb things we always do or while media buying agencies try to quantify if they can make enough money against their spons you know against their Vig with their client and so if they can't they won't recommend it while that's all happening there's going to be ungodly amounts of attention on Instagram ads that are going to convert because it's early and the supply and demand curve is disproportionately valuable yeah questions isn't there a danger with Facebook I mean because people take all their opinions from it now none of this stuff is checked I've see people in Europe taking opinions about the Refugee crisis are totally wrong let's talk about that let's I think that's a great question or in the old days we took our opinion from three old white men that owned all the media companies and told you what to think there's two options you think of it from the undereducated masses or you take it from the educated puppets of the billionaires that drove the agenda that they wanted down your mouth point question let hey he all right hi so you mentioned how popup ads and all that steal our time so what are views on um Native ads

like the listicles and BuzzFeed where you know like a kitty litter company cats I think that um it's a great question I think that it has the same slide as everything look I think Facebook I think social media ads are going to disproportionately get worse they're going to get more expensive because more people going to realize they work we're going to tune them out more as we become adjusted to that behavior right so I think a lot of the BuzzFeed type stuff at first did really well CU it was really native in the beginning the brand was really integrated two or three years ago like in the list at a picture of it and it was newish and they did better now we're so used to everything saying 18 weird things that happened on Thursday that we're tuning out the 18 and the 12s and the 9es as much as we you know loved them 3 years ago as a collective data set plus the brands are not integrated as well because BuzzFeed scaled and now 13 funny things that happen at home is like brought to you by tide in a little box and it's not really integrated so they've scaled which is disproportionately brought less value in my opinion to the brand I think it's still a great option I think there's value there I think you got to push it creatively to get there um but it's all the same game I have no heart for anything I know 360 videoos coming I know virtual reality is coming I know we have contact lenses that allow us to record everything like there's a plenty of technology and Innovation coming I just think it's important that we always audit where the actual attention really is and then reverse engineer if the price is disproportionately valuable at that moment and then you just look for those moments so I think you know two years ago it was massively bullish today I still think that it's better than a crapload I mean do you know how much money is being bought programmatic where nobody knows where that shows up and nobody's consuming it so like those digital dollars I feel fine in a buzzfeed world but compared to a Facebook targeted where I can Target a 29-year-old woman who has two kids who I know buys toothpaste get the hell out of here right I mean Facebook is like FSI 4. 0 if you want to go conversion it's it and it doesn't kill your brand because you actually can mark it it's better than search because those are just blue letters it does nothing for your brand but here you can go visual pictures or video and listen the re if they keep the dislike button is such a smart proxy to where they're going which is they just want their data to be smarter and smarter they tweak everything predicate if they see a dip in user Behavior not using it they analyze it to the cows come home and adjust the product cuz they've been smart enough to realize the only thing they have is their users their entire business is that so they will disproportionately try to bring you value and they will stop ads if it doesn't bring you don't buy a placement in Viacom and then the ad shows up the commercial and they say you know what that's a shitty ad we're not going to charge you for running that or we're going to stop it they just take the money CU they don't care about the audience there's no proxy there whereas Facebook's stuck into that they know that Gary St bro influence c um you've always been a disruptor and um it's amazing how fast you've grown Vayner media um from sort of your own I remember when early days you were on like a stepso in New York just sort of spouting out you were thinking he not much has changed um what do you think though as you're earning all this business and your agency is growing so rapidly what is it that you're bringing from a big perspective of disruption that's um gaining you all this clients and traction we're proving that we're selling stuff it's so crazy like every single time I hear you've always been known as a disruptor literally when you said that in my mind it said out of practicality I just think I truly believe in the entire ecosystem of agency world I truly believe that I'm the single most practical is the other agency dead then no I mean there's nothing is dead or alive you know it's not that it's dead anybody who doesn't bring value should die right and so I think what's going to happen is if somebody if somebody's romantic about what should be done if somebody is romantic about a television 30 second spot they're going to create themselves of vulnerability as data continues to prove out it's lack of Roi right and so but a 30-second commercial be tremendous of course it can I think what's going to happen is the market is going to continue to push itself look you can't have an environment where method does all its proper digital work and starts really getting on the radar of Unilever and J& J and saying wait they laughed Proctor and Gamble laughed at Dollar Shave Club until they didn't and So eventually this stuff plays itself out right like everybody made fun of me in 1996 for launching an e-commerce wine business in the wine world this kid is going to do this yeah people are going to buy wine on the worldwide web right like nobody's going to do that and some of you remember this won't raise your hand for this some of you thought it was a fad like the internet this thing is 20 years old this is new and so and then everybody Justified that it was a fad because Wall Street played its game and overvalued everything so when it crumbled I was like C told you meanwhile Amazon was becoming the single most important retailer so I think that the reason it's working for us is I'm not scared to get fired at all I run I usually so look at all the advantages I have in building my business model you guys know this world better than I do my first year on 99% of my clients is a loss I massively overd deliver on the scope because I'm trying to build lifetime value so right off the bat I'm winning I don't have some person telling me to dictate at a holding company that I have to run on 21 points right I have to look at myself and know what I'm up to so I disproportionally over bring value we really know what we're talking about on this subject matter you know why cuz the CEO is the best practitioner at it in the whole [ __ ] company that helps when it stems from the top nobody can sneak around and shoot hyperbole that isn't true that's important and then because I need them to last for two to three years to make a business model work for me in a world where I lose if they fire me after one year I disproportionately pressure them into quantifying my work because once I prove that when they start to do you know what starts happening when real smart people actually get it and understand that we're selling stuff do you understand what happens to the questions they start asking all their other partners do you know how silly the conversation becomes how fast that becomes silly when they know my stuff selling and they have no idea what the hell your stuff's doing thank you thanks for yeah good to see you say well thank you