How to Think About Marketing and Social Media in 2020 | CNN Interview

– This is all I know, I’m
blindly consumer-centric,and as long as you’re
blindly consumer-centric. . . – What do you mean by that?- All I do is pay attention
to what people are doing,nothing else, nothing else. You can punch me in the face 8,000 times,I’m here to get punched. – He’s a best-selling author,motivational speaker, and marketing guru. – Hustle would be putting all your effortinto achieving the goal at hand,and for me, that means,
making every minute count. – Gary Vaynerchuk, simply Gary Veeto his legions of
followers on socia media,is a consummate communicator,dishing out advice on everythingfrom best business practicesto how to live a happy lifewith a heavy dose of F-bombs. – If she knows, what’s
your fucking problem?- I recently caught up with
the lively New Yorker in Dubaito get to know the man
behind the brand and find outhow he keeps one step
ahead of the competition. What does being a contemporary
communicator mean?- It means that you are
blindly religious around this. It means that you understandwhere people are paying attention,whether that’s Twitch or TikTokor believe it or not,
organic reach on LinkedInor pre-roll on OTT, it’s understandingthat modern television
commercials and modern print adsand modern radio ads are overpriced,outside of the Super Bowl,and it means that, you know,the Facebooks and the Twittersand the Instagrams and the YouTubesand the pre-roll Spotifys
are grossly underpriced,and then are you capable
of creating the creative,the videos, the pictures,
the written wordsthat are contextual to those platforms,not taking a commercial
and putting it on YouTube,to make the agenda successful. – You are a pain in
the ass to the industrywho ought to know all of this. Nothing you are telling
me actually is brand new. This has been around for
time, so what makes youdifferent from the rest of the industry?- I’m all about where is
the media underpriced,where is it overpriced. I would obviously wanna buy underpriced,so for me, social media, not all of them,the current state of
certain media productswithin certain media platforms
is so wildly underpriced,Faceboook, Instagram Stories, LinkedIn,pre-roll YouTube when you tie
it into the Google search. So I’m all about underpriced attention,quite a bit of that is
happening on social media today,in 10 years, it might on
Voice or something else. I’m completely unemotional
of the platform,I’m completely emotional
about consumers‘ attention. I think I have single,I’d literally think that I haveone of the best ideas
for a social network. – Yeah!- You got your perspective. – So you said, I think
30-second spots on TV are bad,I think five-second pictures,eight-second videos on TikTok are good,and I think three-minute-and-19-second
little docuserieson YouTube, Facebook, Instagram are goodbecause they’re being
deployed against placeswhere people are actually watching it. – I love that sentence. I don’t know what else to say,it sounded exactly right. I mean that reality is
it’s like, it’s so funnyI have no interest in holding up the past. I ask people, why is itthat writing with a pen, on
a piece of paper, a message,and then sending it in the mailis heralded as this noble act,but a text is demonized as not
warm or great communication. The reality is it’s the
message, not the medium. And so, for me, I’m just super focused on,if a client gives me $10 million
to make something happen,I want that to be successful,and requires being a day traderof where communication is,not a mutual fund buyer
based on past performance. Striking a platform while
it’s hot matters way morethan if that platform
actually exists in a decade. – You have first mover
advantage, still just. The business is built on the factthat you had first mover advantage. Gary, how do you stay relevant?You scale your own business. How do you avoid becomingthat traditional media agency?- There’s several ways. One, I will never take my company public,that’s how I avoid it. Two, this is all I’ve ever done. You know, in 1996, I
launched one of the firstthree e-commerce wine
businesses in America,and by 1997, I hadone of the most meaningful
email newsletters. I bought Google Ads the day it came out. I started the first long-form YouTube showor one of the five first
long-form YouTube shows in 2006. I invested in Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr,Uber before they became what they were. This is all I know, I’m
blindly consumer-centricand as long as you’re
blindly consumer-centric. . . – What do you mean by that?- All I do is pay attention
to what people are doing,nothing else, nothing
else, I do nothing else,and as long as you do that
and behave towards that,well then, what everybody else does,which is actually try to figure outhow to work in the B-to-B world,how to make margin in the short term,are always vulnerable to that. That is probably the thing
that I’m most confident about,which is that this has been written,and I will continue to
rinse and repeat this modelat 55, at 66, at 77, at 88,and I mean, and here’s the good part,and if I don’t because
I got stale or tiredor complacent, I deserve to lose. – You say you are completely
platform-agnostic. – I am. – You’ve talked about thosein the business of marketing strategiesbeing a full day behind the curve. – Yes. – To remain relevant, you need to be,you know, on the say as
it were, on the money. What’s happening tomorrow, Gary?- I don’t know. See, that’s the beauty of beingcompletely and utterly
day-trading-focused, I don’t know. Look, I clearly see trendsthat make me believe that Voice,you know, Google Home,
Alexa is going to beincredibly powerful as a
front-facing framework,as an operating system. – Cancel anytime,
terms in the Alexa. . . – Yes. – Should I start your free trialand pay I’m Still Standing?- Yes. How dangerous is that?Alexa sent me pizza, that’s powerful. Google, tell me about the election. Think about how powerfulwhat comes out of the Google
Voice is at that moment. So I do see Voice as an interface brewing,but I have no passion, you know,when I get most heralded,people talk about me being
a futurist or a Nostradum,I laugh, I’m like, I’m
none of those things. What I’m very good at iswhen TikTok is happening right now,I’m very loud about it, and I see it,and more importantly, I
make on it, and I test it,and I see the business results. – Does it bother you that the medium,the media, the new media, or platformsthat are, some will say,creating huge anxiety for their users?Does that worry?Are you in the business of
anxiety-inducing contenton platforms that are bad
for the answers out there?- No, I don’t believe that at all. I actually completely
take a different take. First of all, people have
always been consistent,people have always had
anxiety, people are insecure,people are trying to
keep up with the Joneses,people have parents
that create entitlement,which leads to insecurity. If you look at a picture
somebody in beautiful Dubai,and you have FOMO because you don’t,there is far more important
things things going on therethan you following things on Instagram. Magazines were creating anxiety’cause all the models in
it were tall and skinnyfor all the girls that
went through Vogue in 1992. Television creates anxiety with
its actors and movie stars. Everything has the potential
of creating anxiety. – So let’s talk about
how you’re being judgedat the moment. There are those who say,he is wrong, wrong,
wrong, wrong about media,adding, and I quote,we get the gurus we deserve,and you could not inventa more suitable spokesperson
for social media. A big guy in the
traditional media landscapesaid that about you. – Yeah, that’s probably
the most exciting statementthat I could get from somebodywho’s an executive in the ad world. That comes from a gentlemenwho’s never actually run a business. You know, I did marketing to
put food on my family’s tablebecause we were immigrants
from the Soviet Union,and when I joined my family business,that’s how we lived. That gentleman went to business schooland is been an executive his entire lifeat a holding company and has
never had to earn a dollarthat actually means something in merit. He’s only sold reports and
PDFs to other corporations. I’m top on the fieldbecause I’m winning, I’m winning. They know media is the
fastest-growing independent agencyin the history of the industry. I’m winning, that’s why they’re upset. – You are a die-hard Jets fan.
– Yes. – They are not winning.
– They are not. – At present.
What do you do about that?- First of all, I love the way you segue,what am I gonna do about that?I am, since the time I was,since I was seven, I’ve loved them. By the time I was in fourth,maybe by the time I was 10 or 11,I have been saying to anybodythat was willing listen to methat I was gonna buy the New York Jets. So what am I gonna do about it?I’m going to amass the
wealth and the opportunitiesto enable me to buy the Jets
when they’re up for sale,and then I’m gonna win Super Bowls. – I love your style, Gary Vee. There is a green knitted jerseythat, as I understand it, will sit proudlyabove the name of the Jets at the stadium. Why, tell me about that jersey. – I appreciate you bringing this up. I literally don’t like stuff, right?I don’t wanna buy anything
other than the team. I don’t like stuff. But there is one item that rules my soul. When I was seven, I fell
in love with the Jets. All the kids in the
neighborhood had jerseys. I ran into the house,
mom, I need a jersey. My mom laughed at mebecause that’s not what immigrants do,we don’t spend $25 on a football jersey. I would cry and I was sad,I continued to go
outside for the next weeknot wearing a jersey
while everybody else did,you know, it’s the 80s kids,
we went outside every day. And then finally, like
10 or 11 days later,my mom, at night, had
knitted me a Jets jerseywith my name Gary on the back,and my favorite number five,and it’s the single most
important item to me. It represents absolutely
everything about my journeyand about my parents and how
much I appreciate them for,you know, it’s so crazy,with all the great things
that are happening to meprofessionally and personally. – I’ve heard your story
before to a certain extent,you know, the pride that you clearly havein being an American. – Yes. – How does it feel to livein this era in America?Does it worry, are you
proud of the country?- Am I proud of the country,
I’m proud of the country. I’m not proud of all the behaviors. I’m proud of my mother. Do I agree with everything
she does, absolutely not. But, look, I think
whatever your politics are,I believe that anything
that looks like nationalismor us against them is always
massively detrimental. It eliminates so much of the goodthat happens in the human spirit. And so, I very much dislike the toneof demonizing anything from the outside.