Social Data Week Keynote

so I just want to say one thing thank you uh Jillian one Jillian can you read so Jillian I just want you to know that I know it was humming along but I'm scheduled for 2m and I'm here on time Jillian tweeted social Daya week was moving right along but Gary ve running late derailed the passing of the torch now I know that this was running 15 minutes ahead which is incredible you guys are crushing it but I just want to take I don't want to lose any brand Equity that anybody thinks that I was running late or that I think I'm so cool to be late for something I would never do that and so I just wanted to make that public statement to start this talk and you know what's interesting

that's probably like you actually did me a humongous favor so I'm going to hug it out with you afterwards because really what just happened is actually what I think about when I think about this whole world which is my friends we have more than enough data for the rest of our lives right like big data is awesome and I'm all in I hear about data every day I think about it all the time it's how I built wine library. com I launched an e-commerce wine business in 1996 my advantage was the fact that I used data my advantage was that I innovated and did things before everybody else my advantage was the fact that I bought the keyword wine on Google for 5 cents for nine and a half months before anybody bid me up because nobody inck liquor wine retail knew what they were doing so I've always done this right my advantages was fast moving collecting the data and responding my entire relevance to this space why Robert had those nice things to say about me is predicated on one thing it's a site called sis. com how many Nerds in the crowd remember sam. com just raise your hands I'm curious so for the nine

of you remember sam. com was really the first Twitter search engine and I was nobody in Tech in 2007 when I jumped on Twitter I had started this wine video blog show called Wine Library TV to expand my business again me innovating jumping on YouTube a couple months after it launched and wanted to reach more audience so I jumped on semi. com let me just give you my normal day in 2007 come into the wine store that to give you context because I know a lot of you don't know me I had just run for five years and taken from a three to a $45 million business right so it's a real business we made it you know it was my family business and I shifted into coming in the morning spending an hour looking at the numbers making sure everything was set for the day and then prepping for my wine show taping it

airing it getting it online and then spending between 4:00 7 to 11 hours a day on semi. com when Twitter did not have that many users and searching people saying red wine pin Noir Bordeaux and jumping into every conversation and creating context right and so back then it was like who is this guy they' look at my profile they'd click on the link which took him to my show and that was my Gateway and my Gateway was very important I wasn't acting like what I call the 19y year old dude just cuz somebody said drinking red wine tonight I wasn't saying oh buy it from wine library. com I asked them which wine right I wasn't trying to close on the first tweet and I think that's where a lot of people get in trouble and so

that's what I did and I did that every day for two years all the time until there was some sort of scale of relevance and it gets me to my main point which is this you can have data for days and everybody does I run a social media agency now and we have 25 Fortune 500 companies we have data we have tons of access to data I've teamed up with these guys data I have data now on all my users which I'm using very effectively I have an amazing database I teamed up with these guys I have a full database of everybody who's ever tweeted at me in the last two years a personal CRM to my 999,000 followers right that's how close I am um you know and I have them all and I have the 200,000 that really care and have engaged with me and it's perfectly organized and we have it structured and have they ever mentioned the book and how many times have I dm'd with them and everything gorgeous

clean perfect but now what I took the entire month of August off for the most part to spend some time with the kids but I was engaging off of that data set I had to put in the work data is phenomenal and it's important and a lot of people here understand it way better than I do and understand how to structure it but we have to understand as our data and as we're getting better at it and as compan companies like Zinga and Groupon and living social and many others have figured out angles and ways to run the data efficiently cost spends what's your acquisition versus all these great things that you can do I would say that data where we are today is an amazing place for hunting I would say

we've mapped I would even make the argument that we've mapped hunting for new customers but the real game is farming the real game isn't hunting we're going to be able to acquire users get them we have the data on them they're putting it out for us we can get to them but now what how do you actually bring them value to me this whole sector and this whole mindset is not about can we get it or how do we get it far majority of you know it I just walk through that nerd room there's plenty of nerds out there they get it we can get the data we can get it clean to a place of execution but I implore everybody in this room collectively to understand what to do with it next because you could be the best at Gathering it but if you don't teach and educate your consumers or the people that are activating against that data to know what to do with it you've lost you can create the greatest tool of all time but if people don't know how to use it you've lost and so I promise you people have built things that in theory are probably in some ways better than a fork or a spoon or a screwdriver a hammer and all these things but unless you know how to storytelling to them what to do with it those things weren't able to win and so what I'm passionate about what I'm spending a lot of time on is what do we actually do with it once we have it and now you get into the part that a lot of people my best friends all my MIT nerds don't like talking about the humanity of all this right fine you've got it to a certain point but now we have to act

human on top of the data and so that's what I do I acted human with that tweet right now it was there for me right and to do something with and I did it to create context for everybody in this room but more importantly I really wanted to make sure she knew that I wasn't late because that one person and I'm being serious it's kind of funny you know what's so funny everybody thinks scale is sexy and I'm obsessed with things that aren't scalable that's where the magic is scale is a commodity everybody can play that game it's the unscalable where all the money the magic the upside is right now and so it might not be scalable for me to leave this conference right now and look at the hashtag and see all of you that talked about this talk and then reply to you wink thank you say hello say oh I'm glad you got to see me speak for the first time or what's up or this that and the other thing but that's exactly what I'm going to do unless I have an emergency or something else right not scalable but it's the effort That Matters from 2006 to 20 10 2011 I answered every single tweet and every single email it's literally what I did for a living and then the math beat me it became unscalable I had children I started to build another

business which is taking up a lot of my time but the effort of that and the infrastructure it came about me building what Seth Goden would call A tribe and building relationships with people that care about what you talk about every time something happens for example here's a good story my sister had her first child so I was out of the pocket for two days because that was an important family event somebody during that time tweeted Gary ve you really sold out I used to be able to tweet you and you'd answer me in a minute I've tweeted you three times the last two days you haven't replied to me hash jerk me even though my listen this is what loving the unscalable does me even though my sister has a baby and I'm spending a lot of time I'm paying attention to everything I'm just not responding I'm trying to save seconds I saw that tweet before I could get in there and the Tweet was 12 minutes old 700 of my fans dismantled that human being hey [ __ ] face his sister had a child and all things that look like that what I think people are grossly

underestimating especially in the context of this conversation where there's a lot of technical thinking efficiency great stuff because by the way it's all EQ and IQ that's what the whole world's about it's never the guys the world is gray there's no black and white right and so like you have a whole world that I hate because I'm in the agency world now where everybody thinks it's about creative like you have a great idea and you win some award in France and that's going to make it happen and then that's horeshit and then you've got this world where I can get more around it because it's so quantifiable evidence right you do the right thing with the data and it ends a result and it's just math and math is pure right but the problem is there's a comma after that moment and that's where the humanity and the other side come in

and so we need to be thinking about is we can lead the horses to the well we can build the best products we can have the cleanest data but they have to act on it right like a basketball is perfect right but if you can't put it in the hoop it didn't do much for you and that's really important for us to always remember because all of us are vulnerable to how people act our data all of us and so what we need to start understanding is the world we really live in and in a world where data is really clean and great and very noisy people are getting pounded more efficiently I am thrilled that now most of the advertisement that I see is wine Centric or about the New York Jets or about Lionel Richie you know I'm happy he's underrated I'm happy that they know my interest I prefer it I don't like going to espn. com and seeing a whiskey ad I don't drink whiskey I know I'm an 18 to 40y old dude but I don't [ __ ] drink at ESPN right I get it so I'm glad that it's getting more targeted and this that and the other thing but the fact of the matter is there's a ton of noise we're living in an add culture the way to break through and get to somebody comes at this speed how do you get to them so yes you can get to the data you can lead me as a business or an Advertiser an entrepreneur to that moment you could get me there but then I have to know what to say right data is an amazing gateway to attention

is the Holy Grail of selling a story but not knowing what story to tell in the context of that moment is why most people fail and more importantly even if they're good at that part we have to understand that we are now in a living and breathing 247 365 Society where we need to H deliver value to people in many different ways at all times and so what do we do with our data you know because you can give me data that my customer it's their birthday right I could know it's their birthday but what do I do next do I send them an email with free shipping on [ __ ] that day hey it's your birthday Johnny free shipping on us free shipping's become a commodity right I mean things are moving we have to evolve right 1999 I did free shipping for wine library. com it was the first time I did it to this day it's one of the top 10 selling days in the history of my company back then we were a $4 million company now we're $6 million Company still top 10 day you know why supply and demand nobody was

really doing it this was pre- Amazon Prime people were buying wine that day like the wine had the Cure inside of the bottles right me living in this thank you economy that I kind of live in the gray one guy ordered like 30 cases and in the notes it said I'm thank you for doing this Wine Library I'm buying this wine for my daughter's wedding me you know like it was so busy I didn't sleep for two days and we were a small company so I was packing orders serendipitously I got that order with that gift note so I stepped away went in my office and I called him and I said Jim thank you so much for ordering 20 30 cases of wine I mean that's a lot this is for your daughter's wedding this is amazing I said I'd like to send you a nice bottle of champagne in addition on me tell me where I can send it right this is where you guys think the story ends gets way

better he goes oh no no Gary my daughter is 12 I said what he said yeah my daughter's 12 years old but this deal is so sick I'm going to put this wine and keep in the seller until their wedding day now all of us here us cynical Shoppers we don't buy [ __ ] unless it has free shipping right because the game changed the great work that a lot of people and a lot of companies in this company are doing is going to make data incredible and it's going to give marketers and entrepreneurs an ability to drive even new experiences better

experiences but then marketers ruin every and it's going to become a commodity once people understand and so what we need to understand is this there is a two-prong attack to all this so building great tools is great but we need to learn from the companies and I'll give you a good one a great company for a lot of the tech companies in here because I'm trying to talk to different groups in here is a company like buddy media right like they have forget about the fact they had a big exit their product was dramatically behind their story and even more importantly behind their service and there's a lot to learn from that and I think we should really think about that which was we could build great tools we could do all these things but to me the game is the execution what do you do with that point of purchase of that moment in time that date that event and we have to start really having that argument I ironically today is such an interesting day for me this has been my whole game for about two years now I'm pounding this conversation of IQ and EQ I'm an EQ guy I want all my business in my life based on I understand people and customers so what you know like that's who I am right I failed right like I'm but I built an e-commerce business and a very special day happened let me tell you a quick story about 2001 one of my developers comes in he goes Gary listen real quick he said um if we change the

add to cart button to Orange we're going to get a 22% increase in sales and I looked him and I said get out of my office nerd stick to what you know and he goes I thought you'd say that he goes I've been AB testing it behind your back and I said get the [ __ ] out of my office and he left this is a true story he left that's what I said but he was my boy he knew I was kind of joking I think I went in the bathroom washed my face looked myself directly in the mirror and said the thing that you're great at is about to become more koneti because there's another way to do it and from that moment on I always respected data and other things as part of the equation not the only part the problem is in the world that I live in you know with the agency side especially being Tech and social you've got this world that Valu use this stuff so much it's the game you guys laugh at the creatives it's silly that you think like this is math you can't beat us right over here they think like nerds like who gives a [ __ ] it's all about like the pizzazz right like that's fine but like it's going to take a long time to change and the Magic's in the middle and we have to respect it it's ironic today that I just came from a bean creative conference and drove up town and now I'm here it's really my two worlds that I have a lot of passion for and I think the people in this room that can you know I'll use a funny reference that can like C cross over you know political lines to the other side and understand the marriage of these two phenomenons that are the end result of proper storytelling in 2014 will win we have to respect the data but creative but most important the third part the part that I personally this little sliver in between the context of the room that you're in the thing that I have a lot of passion for and what I do for a living is I'm trying to storytellers actually are and customers are actually in their mobile devices on social networks and so what I know is that Facebook Twitter Tumblr Pinterest Instagram they're all very different what I know is that way too many people in the world right now think of social networks as distribution that you're doing something and you go to Facebook and do a status update to drive people towards it that you tweet out a link make an animated gift on Tumblr if you're really smart but still you have a link towards it and what I have a lot of passion for is actually storytelling within it that Facebook and Twitter and Pinterest and Vine are places to actually tell a story and that as you guys know the metrics are actually happening there on that platform in those confines and so what we have to do and what you need to be thinking about from a data standpoint is how to position the people that use your product to know how to tell a better story in the context meaning that you are going to act very differently in a boardroom meeting than you are at home with your spouse than you are with your best Boys on a fun weekend you're going to act very differently in all those places yet you're still the same person and all these platforms need that kind of thinking and awareness and emotional data to understand not just black and white data thank you I'm sorry how muching zero