Elevate NYC 2013 Keynote

um I wake up every morning upset about one core thing in the context of why we're all here today uh from a business standpoint and that is that um that it's 2013 right it's 2013 and 99. 9% of the people in this room right now are marketing their events like it's 2004 the and that to me is it right the only reason I've been successful in my life the reason I was able to build my family business in a 5year period from A3 to $45 million business is not based on my good looks or Charisma it's based on the fact that I understood where the consumer was in 1996 and where they were more importantly going to be in 1998 I launched wine library. com in 1996 it was the second wine website on the internet I paid $155,000 to build the website and we sold $812 in wine in the first year I don't know how many of you in this room have a Soviet father but that did not go over very well 36 months later we sold $4. 5 Million worth of wine that went over a little bit better and so I think what I'm passionate about is that we get stuck in the ways we Market direct mail email marketing print radio television all of which in the last half decade have collapsed in the attention of our consumer right when you look at open rates of email how many people here have done email marketing for any of their businesses or what you do for a living raise your hands high don't [ __ ] me thank you so almost everybody how many people here have been doing it for more than five years raise your hand how are your email open rates compared to the way they were five years ago because there's one thing I know more than anything more than the fact that I know that the sun will come up tomorrow the thing that I know is that marketers ruin everything it's true right how many people here by show hands and no half-ass hands again how many people here signed up for group on Living Social daily candy one of those sites raise your hand great remember 34 years ago how you couldn't wait to get $40 worth of sushi for 20 bucks that it was the greatest thing that ever happened to you well you don't open those emails anymore right you don't care if Groupon offers you a million dooll home for a hundred bucks you're like delete spam unsubscribe cuz they sent you so much stuff that you didn't want at scale right and so I mean Google AdWords such an effective scalable way to Market and they're down 15% this year I mean Google's reporting themselves that clicks on AdWords are down 15% habits are changing we have to in this room understand that the only thing you do I don't care the genre of your conference I don't care if you're an operator if you're B2B and trying to get people whether you're trying to be to see and get people to come to the event I want everybody in this room to understand including myself whether you sell wine or a creative social media agency no matter what you do bismar vbr every person in this room is a Storyteller it is our job to tell our story what our value proposition is to somebody along the path of purchase period it connects every one of us and to be a good Storyteller you actually need the attention of the customer to get an that bat to tell your story the attention of our customers my friends are shifting and they're shifting fast the eyes and ears of the people that we're trying to reach are in a very different place than they were three four even two years ago and that is something we have to reconcile on top of that we have the respect of how to actually storytellin those places way too many of you and I was looking at the hashtag and the tweets before this event and then kind of try to look at what you guys did for a living to create a little context way too many of you and I'm talking a staggering 99% of you are pushing in your social channels you're treating the Facebooks and the Twitter's of the world like it's email marketing you think that works you think that just pushing come to my event sign up for my that is bringing absolutely no value to the end consumer if you do not know how to provide value in your communication you have absolutely no shot of conversion because the world got noisy right we're following so much more stuff we're living through the add effect of our society at scale time at a attention is the only valuable thing in the game right now and you need to figure out how to break everybody's culture and tell your actual Story how many people in this room and remember lying is the devil how many people in this room five or six years ago said the following things to themselves or to somebody else I'm not signing up for Facebook I'll never have a Facebook account that's for kids I'll never need one raise your hand don't lie raise them thank you how many those people that just raised their

hands do have a Facebook account raise them what everybody in the back just got to see is what I think about every day which is that I think about the things that I know that you're going to do that you think you're not right now you're sitting here and you don't think you're going to wear Google Glasses you're sitting here right now and you don't think that you're going to be on Snapchat and I know and so I spend my time trying to figure out how to tell stories on those platforms it's what I've done my whole career and it's what I absolutely implore you to really think about here's what I want you to really stick with if you remember one thing what you think is socially acceptable or proper or the way that it should be has absolutely nothing to do with the way you should be running your business just because you don't think it's great that people are in their phone 20 hours a day or just because when you go out with your boyfriend to or husband or wife spouse to a dinner and you see a couple over there and you're like look how sad that is they're on the phones the whole time just cuz you believe that and just because you don't like it and because you're scared that your kids are watching YouTube for four and a half hours a day just because you don't like that doesn't mean that that's the way you're supposed to Market your business you're supposed to flip it understand that's the reality of the marketplace the quickest way to go out of business is to be romantic about how you make your money and I highly implore all of you to figure out that it is 2013 if you are not as an event marketer in full pledge effort of Storytelling on Facebook Twitter Pinterest and Instagram at this moment you are borderline not relevant to what's about to happen in the next 24 months that's period That's the fact that do you think you're Direct Mail who here can't wait to leave this conference run to their mailbox and open up and go through their direct mail carefully who here loves navigating through the internet and clicking on banner ads we're Marketing in a way that we would never act like that as a customer but we're just set in the ways that we've always story told and how we spend our money email some of the old school people how many people here had email in 1998 1997 just raise your hands lot awesome do you guys remember how we read email back in the late '90s we loved email there was a movie called you've got mail right like I mean I remember sending so many emails in '95 and 6 because I literally thought they would eventually charge for it because I was like holy crap I'm never going to send a letter which I never have I mean how is the post office going to stay in business they're going to charge for this email stuff that I mean do you remember when you used to get email in the late 90s you literally read every word you opened it went through it carefully I mean this is what we lived through and so now we just don't do that now we don't click banner ads my first Banner ad campaign for anybody here do banner ads in their career raise your hands just curious so for the few of you my banner check this out my banner ad clickthrough in 1997 was 41% now 01 is awesome it's true now that we've established that it's kind of silly that we're thinking and not realizing that every time you throw an event you're sitting with a huge value of content right now this is being recorded this is value you know for bis bash or vry I mean this chop this up that one 3 second comment I made chop that up and put that into Facebook because videos over 10 seconds don't work on Facebook or take a still shot from that last great talk and put a quote from her and make that a Pinterest pin that actually gets shared that links back to these two companies that's what I'm talking about my friends how do you actually natively storytellers that people are actually using and we have to respect the psychology of why somebody's on Pinterest versus them being on Facebook see most people the 99% you think of social networks as distribution for awareness for something else you think that you're going to Tweet out a link and you're going to post a link on Facebook and it's going to link back to your page where you sign them up for your event right you think of it as distribution I think of those platforms as platforms to natively to bring awareness it is a substantial difference and what it does is it forces me to actually bring value on those channels instead of thinking of them as Impressions that is the shift more importantly I also realized that social networks are the first platforms ever that are actually a two-way conversation and it's not just push right I mean we used to sell emails to we used to sent four million emails to Wine customers and get four emails back it wasn't what you did right we sent you an email you went and bought the wine now you send a tweet to 10 people four can possibly

return and ask a question about it it's a far more two-way conversation Twitter let's talk about it for two seconds I was looking at a lot of the accounts that we using the hashtag we mentioning this event when I looked at eight different accounts of those eight people 95% of the tweets they've sent in the last week have been full broadcasting tweets and they've had about one or two up to 5% of actually replying to people on Twitter is the cocktail party of our society and it's about listening and not talking if you go look at my Twitter account which is Gary ve you will see that when you hit all because the way Twitter you land and you just see what I broadcast but up there you can toggle and say all you will see that 90% of my tweets are responding to people I'm searching wine or business terms and jumping into conversations and now I've gotten big enough that a lot of stuff comes to me and I just answer I bring value we are not bringing value enough in our networks and so what you need to be thinking about is how do you storytellin the platforms that matter to bring value to your actual consumer how do you make a tweet that brings awareness to your event but isn't pushing your event and the reason I named my new book jab jab right hook is because it symbolizes to me give give and then ask I basically want to live a life of guilting people into doing the things that I want them to do and I mean that and it's important to understand I truly believe and most comfortable it's my own DNA that if I give first that if I pay forward first I have a dramatically better chance to convert and when we Market our events we are not giving first we need to give them free content we need to answer their questions we as organizers need to jump on Ustream or spr cast for an hour and answer questions about it we need to help promote the people that are our event not just pay them to use their Equity to drive people to the event we need to be events that build up personalities because that's a way for you to save dollars instead of paying for personalities we need to understand this very important statement I really need you to leave with this every person in this room and every event in this room is a media company and if you don't understand that you have no chance of being relevant going forward this is a very substantial statement and I want to say it again both your events and you as individuals are now thrusted into competing as media companies and if you are not putting out content engaging with the end consumer you were going to have a very difficult time to break through in an extremely noisy world and that's that and that's what's happening and so I have clients Fortune 500 clients they're spending billions of dollars on billboards right here's a classic example of what how I think about this when you guys leave this conference I know a lot of people probably New Yorkers but if you're not and if you happen to drive especially outside the city do me a favor remember this talk and think of this one point when you're driving look at five people driving by you right just drive look at five people I've been doing this at scale now for about six months I'm going to tell you a couple things number one Oprah is right it is dangerous out there I've literally for the first time in 20 years I'm now driving with two hands because let me tell you this three sl4 out of every five people are actually looking at their phone while they're driving right so my friends Billboards which sell on Impressions which when you used to drive you might have saw people aren't looking at Billboards anymore they're not even looking at the [ __ ] road anymore there's a bus stop ad right by my office I couldn't get my phone out quick enough to take this picture there was a gi. Joe the movie The Rock good-looking dude diesel big poster right they probably paid about $8,000 for it a lot of traffic in New York City used in 1997 in 20 three you would have saw that you were walking to the office you saw it every single person I was walking the other way all 12 people were doing this and so they didn't see that and they didn't see your banner ad and they deleted your bulk email promoting your event and on and on and so I implore you to start taking these channels seriously Instagram got 50 million users in 1. six years right and 15 months and 18 I mean 50 million users in a snap right these platforms Vine 15 million users right in 90 days we're at scale at the internet we're at scale we're just starting we're grossly underestimating it and what we want to do is we want to shout and push and tell people about our thing and what we need to do is listen and think and then convert that listening which is what is I like to call consumer insights a funny thing happens when you really

understand what people think about your events or the events that they want to go to right if you are not searching the key terms in your business on Twitter event what I did you know those things at night where they go hashtags of events you know competitive events if you're not searching and understanding the sentiment and the feedback the authentic feedback that they're giving not when you give them a little thing at the end of the conference and say how is it everybody's always over indexing no the way they really think on Facebook and Twitter when they you know act like themselves not through a form if you're not understanding that feedback and if you're not paying attention to that feedback you're missing out on so much data of how to make your product and service better and so that's what I spend all my time on how do I storytellin the actual year that it is in the way that we actually do things how many people here watch television don't answer yet mainly on their time either on demand DVR HBO on the go outside live sports in Sunday night because it's got its own little thing outside those things how many people in this room Don't Lie No half-ass Hands watch TV on their time raise your hand okay weird Everybody how many of you in 2013 have fast forwarded every single commercial raise your hand weird almost everybody meanwhile the clients I work with collectively are going to spend 90 billion trying to tell you a story that in 2006 you would have saw and heard and understood and made a decision about that you no longer consume and even if they're lucky to get the commercial to air in your face how many people here watch television with at least one other electronic device a phone a laptop or an iPad raise it good everybody two give it to me two a phone and either a laptop or an iPad raise your hands raise them high front row look back I just want you to understand keep them up raise them high we're talking about let let's just quantify this my friends 85% of this room watches television with two other screens to distract them so even if a commercial comes to tell you to buy something you know that when you're watching The Bachelorette and you take out your phone and you're like holy [ __ ] I can't believe she did that you're not paying attention to the actual commercial just out of curiosity how many people here watch television with three screens phone laptop and iPad raise your hand all right I'm going to need to talk to the 11 of you got some issues let's connect after this and it's going to get worse and worse when the Beatles had long hair that was a bad thing that was Rogue right everybody thinks Snapchat's about sex thing Snapchat about sexting is old white people writing stories about Snapchat is a communication funnel that for those N9 seconds while you're holding it you actually have to pay attention which is why it's important and once it evolves the way Facebook evolved and becomes older there'll be an opportunity for you can you figure out how to tell a story in an 8sec picture with text over it that disappears can you give them a value proposition of why they should come can you be smart enough in marketing that know that Snapchat works that you can screenshoot it and if they screenshoot it that gives $10 off at the door are you smart do you get it because I promise you the people that aren't smart that don't get it they get put out of business and much better business people and much better organizations and much richer people than you have been putting out of business in the last 10 years because they refused to play like the year that we're actually in don't be that person don't let that happen I hope you have a good day