The answer is, i think, i'm already in my mind, on on social commerce 3.0, which is the macro infrastructure like facebook needs on the tv. The hardware to be able to you know, see a commercial purchase it and have target deliver it because amazon's there amazon's missing one thing: a social platform. You've got your perspective. I just want to be happy.

Don't you want to be happy? Hey gary thanks so much for joining us today, um i'm here with nick uh, who i believe is sitting in a room um full of things that you've actually convinced him to buy pokemon cards to to whine um. But you know really what we're we're here to talk about today is um we'd like to know from you sort of what the future holds um. What are people missing? Um you know at arc. We we cover disruptive innovation um, which i've heard you say is uh.

You think is is just being practical, yes um in your businesses uh, so you know, as as we look at um this this wild year in the digital economy and and sort of look at the the future of the ad space. We have um consumers sitting at home, uh multitasking um, using their connected tvs, while they're on twitter and other platforms um. How do you think of sort of that juggling and and sort of that share uh going forward and and sort of who who loses? Who, who wins out um? What is sort of the future state of that? You know it's interesting question, given the context of who i'm making an assumption of is listening to this. You know as a in perpetuity owner of my own businesses, with the ambition to buy the new york jets football team.

You know i play a very, very, very different game than a lot of the potential listeners of this show. Given the context right - and so so much of my money has been made on my ability to wait, seven years for something to happen versus being held accountable for, what's going to happen in 90 days or max, you know 500 days right, so i could you know. I i i'm going through this very interesting period in my life, where i'm like man, i'm definitely not so so so smart in comparison to all these people. I just have the luxury of knowing how to stay alive, to take advantage of it.

When it happens, i don't think there's a single person listening right now, that is confused, that ott and streaming is 100 doing to cable and network. What cable and internet did to network what cable did to network what network did to radio? This is like i mean every single person in your and my organization and listening to this right now would probably bet the farm, the whole farm, their kids health on a decade from today, things look more a lot more like disney, plus and and netflix and hulu Than they look like abc or cbs or cnn, and so i think the winners are the ones that are in a financial, stable position to be able to invest in streaming and take all that advertising dollars that are never inevitably going to come behind it and the Losers are the ones that are romantic or financially stuck in. You know milking what they have. I mean it's very common sense, fortune, 500, publicly traded company logic versus reality of the speed of innovation.

That's happening with the internet, meaning if you're the ceo of procter gamble and or of you know, of a large media conglomerate. You know um out there, epic, you know or something of that nature where you know you're, not gon na be in this seat. In nine months or 18 months, because you've decided for your family and yourself and you're, striking all your stock options within 24 or 36 months after that day and what you're doing is you're holding your breath and making no investments so that you can maximize your personal Economics, 41 months from now, but if you own the family business of viacom you'd, never do that because you know exactly the consumer has told you what's already happening. So i think the winners are the ones who can or are or are empowered by being historically correct.

You know look at that look at themselves as i'm going to be in this position for six years. So let me do this now. I you know ones that feel that they know how to manage the street to take the punch in the gut on the upfront capital. They're gon na have to deploy quibby's gon na scare, the out of people right.

You know just because you have the right just because you have the macro strategy of streaming is real. That's like me telling everybody who's listening to become an nba basketball player, because it's going to be a billion dollar contract in the future. You have to be good enough to be an nba basketball player, so it's not just deciding to do peacock. How well is nbc gon na execute peacock.

You know it's not just saying that the fragmentation of ott is upon us and the ip within it like tomorrow. The kardashian family can start k and probably do quite well, but they'll have to execute as well as kylie's beauty brand, not as well as a million other things we've seen fail, even though the ingredients are there, they didn't have the cook to cook it yeah. So gary there seems to be. You know two winners in this past year you have the streaming the ott video, but then also you have social media companies and they've really come on in terms of digital ad spend.

So when you look at uh, smaller companies they're going to obviously be you know more aligned with social media. It's just cheaper you're, not going to have a small company being able to go to these streaming services and advertise. You know what's funny, though, like you know, that's actually what excites me the most brother, i if, if ott, is biddable, you're going to find small businesses running commercials on friends, that's a good point, yeah right and like to me, like you know the great luxury of My career at being 44 being young is i've already had real significant chapters in very small smb family liquor store business that i grew quite a bit a very big chapter in silicon valley, where i did a lot of smart, investing and then now really deep in Fortune 500 consumer land and b2b land. You know it's going to be pretty cool, like i think, of gary at 22, knowing that hulu ads are underpriced, running commercials for a one-story liquor store against the wonder years.

That's like the coolest ever right, so yeah, but but to your, but to your point um. I think what you're gon na see is look. I i couldn't be more uncomfortably bullish on ott and social over network and traditional like it. I think the dealt is extreme.

I think common sense is the great missing anecdote of the business world yeah and i think - and i think, reporting and short-term financial arbitrage is why and i see it everywhere - um but yeah. I think those two platforms are going to continue to be huge winners, and i would tell you that this year them winning is not an enigma because of the political year or because of covid. This is the preview, not the anomaly right, and so, if you look at one of these small businesses that want to spend on streaming, ott or social, where is where? Where are you directing those dollars today, where's the best bang for your buck in terms of platform spent if you're a tiny, tiny business, it's linkedin and tick tock, because they are organic? Reach too, you know, so organic is something we don't talk a lot about, but it's absolutely the place where everybody fails. Fortune 50 companies deciding social media stinks because they're running an organic playbook on platforms that don't have organic reach and they haven't even tested media properly or they spend media on it like they're running television, huge elephant in the room for everybody, who's listening right now why People don't think socials, roi, positive, comma, tiny, tiny companies, facebook, it has scale targetability and just ungodly, proven capabilities of driving business results right and so so facebook seems to be far and ahead of other competitors and on the social landscape.

But just let me give you some interesting snap doing incredibly well for app download snap doing incredibly well for app. So the answer is very, very unique. If you're a t-shirt company tick, tock ads are remarkable. If you're, you know the big thing that nobody realizes is the number one.

The number one place to advertise is 60 to 90 year olds on facebook number one. If you have a business that wants to sell the 60 to 90 year olds. Facebook dismantles fox news. Television dismantles it, but yet nobody talks about that.

I mean i would. I think facebook is one of the you know. I'm a humongous advocate of its ad product, but i think it's one of the worst comms companies in the world and forget about the whole like privacy thing in zucks and all the all the stuff that people get to of like hating it i'm going super narrow. It has the killer product in the world if you're, trying to sell to 55 to 90 year olds and every media planner in america buys television because they're incentivized too, because facebook's harder to spend money on meaning you need skills.

You have to do fragmentation. You need a lot of creative iteration, but but facebook's a monster if you're selling retirement homes, caskets um, you know uh products that sell to 55 to 90 year olds, um, obviously tick tock is a monster if you're selling a 15 to 25 instagram and youtube own. The middle snapchat, if you're doing app downloads is really attractive. Linkedin is a monster b2b, but nobody wants to pay the 25 cpms because everybody plays in media math, not in business math um.

You know. Twitter is great for qualitative insight to hypothesis around creative. So i use twitter a lot as a testbed for creative to see consumers actual opinions of so there's a lot. This is real skill and people continue to think of social media as an afterthought, but fortune 500 madison avenue mad men are and women are starting to kind of wake up, but i still think we're 36 months away from where coca-cola is spending 55 of its ad Budget on facebook inc and they will - and you think that's going to come mostly from that linear tv ad spend like that seems to be the biggest bucket.

I do yeah, i think 70 billion, that 70 billion is such garbage. Yeah, like like it, is destroying the biggest brands in the world. Now super bowl is the best deal in advertising every brand. Listening right now or everybody who's got a board seat on a consumer brand.

You should yell at the top of the mountains once you cross. Your t's and eyes on my hyperbole here to do super bowl, because the actual consumption of the ad for what you pay is remarkably cheap right after you go there. Tv couldn't be a worse bet. Now.

Every report shows it's: okay, because nielsen's and miller brown and all these things it's an inside game. All the mmas internally have been built around it. It wait to the activist investors realize how much money is being wasted on marketing. All these activist investors have focused on like flights and printing on both sides of the paper, wait to 3g wakes up and realizes most of their marketing goes in the garbage when they run a tv and as you look over this past year and um, you know You said, as we often find with innovation, things have accelerated during this difficult time, um how how much? How? How how great do you think that impact has been? You said you think, like this is three years i'll.

Tell you why it's been so big it's because decision makers became practitioners during this time, cmos sit in boardrooms and have no idea what's actually going on. There's no cans on keyboards people don't actually know right and agencies are all mainly owned by holding companies who are publicly traded, who are going to keep pushing television propaganda into their clients because they make more margin selling tv than they do on facebook. They're, not incentivized. Their omnicom's interests aren't aligned with fords by the way on the record.

I have no idea if that holding company works with that brand, but you know so so the um, the thing that i've noticed in these nine months is getting a lot of emails and linkedin messages from leaders with things that basically said, i used to think you Were snake oil salesman, but now that i've had time to actually look holy crap? How can i get more educated on this or hey? Can we talk so i think more than anything, it's not even consumer behavior acceleration. It's actually decision makers. Education of that, i think, has serendipitously happened during this era. Do you think this change is permanent? Yes, yeah? If we're talking about what we're talking about which yeah yeah macro business, how do we make things? How does the ecosystem work with media brands opportunities yeah? I think it's permanent, because i think i i think you, the thing that has always worked for me is never betting against the reality of the human being like nobody's going back.

There is no time machines like i'm we're not going to read print at scale. Only hipsters out of ironic behavior will 2029 queens, might read the newspaper as a nichey funny thing, because they're anti-establishment there will be a wave of of and we've seen it already of anti-digital propaganda. So you will see some interesting sub-behaviors occur, but the sheer scale of actual consumption on these 15 platforms youtube facebook, snapchat spotify on audio things of that nature, the cat's out of the bag. I i'm flabbergasted other than being educated, and this is where wall street sometimes gets caught other than the fact that i'm educated, because i'm in it every day, had i not known that it was in agencies vested interest to not allow the advancement of these products, which Are much more complicated to run planning execution, creative media? Had i not been educated on this, i wouldn't be able to understand why coca-cola and bmw and proctor and unilever do what they're doing i wouldn't understand.

Nothing in my brain would be able to put the pieces together because i do know. I understand that it's not in mind share the agency that does media for unilever's interest to do a contemporary execution. Now i'm like, oh, i understand, and that is the great detriment of the iconic brands in the world, which is why you're seeing so much growth on the ankle biter brands on dtc, because they're picking up market share at scale on the back of overvaluations, because there's So much money being printed and yes, their economics aren't true, but the problem is the unilevers, the proctors they go out and you m a these brands and pay enormous amounts of money, often that organ can't fit the body and it becomes a failed m a instead Of just doing what they should be doing, which is completely changing their media and creative strategies gary, i want to talk a bit about the other side of this and that's the content, the content creation. You have all this money flowing into the ecosystems and there are millions of people signing up to be content creators.

You talk to someone who's younger they're, saying i want to be a youtube content creator. How sustainable is that market? How big can it grow? It follows a power law distribution. You have ten percent of the people making ninety percent of the great qual content quality. So, how big is that market going to be as long as the internet is the foundational infrastructure of our society and as long as it doesn't get over regulated? The answer is in perpetuity until it takes all the money out of the ivory towers.

Yeah is is tick tock, though the tick tock really opened my eyes this year in terms of uh democratizing content creation, and i i think of that as a really powerful shift in the market um is it? Is it allowing you know? Is it breaking down barriers for people to create great content? Of course it started with instagram and snapchat. You started to see subtle training wheels be put on content. I would argue in a lot of ways it started with myspace, but which is true but think about this twitter twitter comes along and creates a restriction because of sms protocol and creates a 140 character game which inherently creates a filter, so really worked for a guy. Like me, that is very hot.

Take driven and very kind of like good at that thing, and that's why i grew and other people who were more long-winded really didn't even come onto the platform for a long time because they felt so suppressed by that restriction. Then you had instagram that made everybody a better photographer, literally a filter that literally just one little thing, photos filters and it exploded because it was training wheels to become a better creator. Then snapchat came along stickers ar right made. People bet to your answer: better content.

Creators, tick tock, infuses music, which inherently makes everybody much better, that becomes a bigger training wheel and all of a sudden people can come in so you've seen the last half decade decade even actually become a game where, unlike facebook, which was the dominant player and even To some degree, twitter, even though that had had that restriction, the platforms that have gone on to become the next big player have given people a tool to create, and i think this will eventually lead to things that look like what would adobe look like if adobe Got very light, and was the front end of a social network like where this is all going, is an incredible suite of tools that are very fast and lightweight that allow us to make movies. It feels like right. You would think that youtube youtube is set to put an incredible upfront production product that can really take its platform or the way to innovate and actually become. The next youtube is to be youtube with an incredible ai ml.

You know, or just an incredible execution of tools. This has been one big game of who can bring the most tools to make the best creative or help people that are average, become better or great, better, become great or great to become all time boom boom boom. That's what's happened for the last 10 years. Yeah tick-tock does seem to get a lot of roots from youtube.

It was just built for mobile right. Youtube is built for youtube, and this is what we've seen youtube has done. An incredibly bad job of innovating like youtube. Had all the permission in the world five years ago to come out with something called, why or yt or whatever the hell, they wanted to call it and really build tick tock.

But a lot of people try to defend the fort instead of putting themselves out of business yeah. That's a good point! Um! I want to change tunes here a bit because you do so much um one thing and you you called yourself a hot tick guy. So i want to get your hot take on this topic right here. Um is texting, replacing email we've seen through this okay there we go definitive answer yeah and let me go to where i know you're going to add value, because i don't think the context was you know.

I was a bit of a little i'm having a little fun here, wine text and, oh by the way, anybody who's listening right now, if you want to learn this and make my father very happy, because i built this for him, you should go sign up for Winetext.Com i built wine library in 1996 on the back of email, 90 open rates, no cost texting, does cost, but text and commerce, and i think what we did with wine text. What i did with wine text is really fascinating, because i eliminated friction in a way that is so remarkable so for everybody who's fascinated by what we're actually talking about. You can actually see this in the wild as a preview to what i think is going to happen at scale, go to winetext.com and sign up. Yes, i think email as a sales channel is clearly been established as an incredible and still to this day is an incredible infrastructure.

But i do believe sms texting has the potential to become the establishment in five to ten years, and i've been blown away by the consumer behavior on the back of wine text. Yeah sorry go ahead. What do you think are the limits of of text? What are, what are you finding sort of? Is there? Is there a wall or sort of yeah? What fits best within that realm uh? You know to be very honest with you. I think it's exactly like email, except we created a ui that allows you to reply with how many bottles you want it becomes such limited friction.

You know, i think it's consumed. I start with attention common sense, and attention is why i will buy the new york jets. You know, like you know, i start with the fact that we live in our text sms and i and then i and then what i layer. What i've done well in my 20 years is then, once i understand where the co, where the attention is, i've always been thoughtful enough to bring value to the consumer versus value.

To me, where everybody loses is their content is selfish instead of selfless or at least strategic, where you're bringing value and then you're asking for something in return. You know, i think, where you'll lose, if you have a big sms strategy, is you're going to spam people and they're going to unsubscribe, where you win is when you bring inherent value - and i think you know not only with wine techs - are we bringing 80 wines For 35 bucks, which follows a groupon model that works and because we have the infrastructure to be able to deliver on that promise, and it's only 365 wines a year in a world where we buy tens of thousands, so you're going to get 365 ridiculous deals. We're also very focused on educating people. We have very clear quant that shows that if we only serve these seven wines, we would maximize our margin, but because i want it to be a learning tool and expanding people's palettes.

I'm taking less dollars up front by getting people to explore converts for meters and dessert wines and champagnes, but what that's actually doing is making it a service. That's educating, not just selling, which ltv wise will play out so within even the e-commerce space. You think the limitations or there there really are no limitations for tax, or there are certain types of goods that will sell better. Inherently wine is the perfect example.

Well to your point: if you have a clothing item, you might have some more syntax issues where you got to talk about size and this and there's going to be clearly if you're selling the unit as is and there's no alterations, everything will do well a fork. You know a hat, you know sneakers. If you just reply with you know, you know, if there's a cadence of size yeah, it's i think the prize is going to be so lucrative that people will innovate to eliminate the limitations yeah. And what about? What about platforms? Like slack, do you see them coming into play like what's what's next after a text? Well i mean look, i mean whether it's slack or whatsapp or messenger or other thing.

You know china is advantage of being a communist country which gave those companies the ability to hold off their competition, be vertically integrated and and play politics and good innovation and just scale. That is unheard. I mean i i'm so fascinated by people that don't have context on the chinese market. You know whether it's live streaming or how much an influencer, because i mean when i say things to people like you know, when influencers sold 60 million dollars worth of this one product on one live stream.

They an american business person's brain breaks because they're, if they're not being global about this, so you know, i think i think i think what's i i do think, there's a ton of innovation in the american market. Let me phrase outside of the chinese market around live. I think there's a ton on that um, but it's all the same game, whether you're youtube or spotify or facebook. I believe all three of you all three of those companies are in the same business they're.

They need to show me that they can vertically integrate with retail, i'm shocked that nobody's bought target yet like, like i'm convinced that that facebook or tick tock, or that somebody in content buys buys target. You know, i think walmart going to the tick tock route makes a ton of sense it's what amazon has over everybody. I don't think i'm stunned by the big tech company's lack of understanding that retail is a component of the stack, and so i think, target's a huge target for m a activity from a facebook or an apple or spotify, because i think retail is an actual part Of the macro stack of the biggest companies in the world - and i think you can see that with amazon's leverage, you can see that um, you know with content. Amazon.

Prime, is a leverage point against. You know the video product against selling on its site, walmart's going to need to replicate that facebook's going to find itself. Facebook is incredible in m a around its core strength of attention, but i think they have to integrate hardware and retail to be a full stack monster, and so i'm waiting for the companies in america to wake up to that full stack and we've seen it with Amazon's seen it the most prime whole foods, these are not by accidents. I think bezos continues to outmaneuver his competition.

So how big do you think that opportunity is we we've kind of coined it as social commerce? I think that's what you're touching on here. This idea that mac, but it's matt - you see where i'm going you're, i know where you're going with social commerce live shopping. Cart, it's huge. I think it extends beyond that.

I think think about it. If, if facebook owns target tomorrow and you're in feed and you could buy something, but you could pick it up at the register, if you want you know or all those locations like the answer is, i think i'm already in my mind on on social commerce 3.0, Which is the macro infrastructure like facebook feeds on the tv? The hardware to be able to you know, see a commercial purchase it and have target deliver it because amazon's there amazon's missing one thing: a social platform. So then, who, in your mind, is winning social commerce? 1.0 or 2.0, wherever you're at and or wherever it is the human beings that are arbitraging the platforms, so the shopify's, the shopify droppings yeah, exactly the humans, not the platforms. The platforms are fragmented, somebody's going to m a their way, somebody's going to pull off the bob iger moment.

Bob iger figured out that the ip was the value and he went over paid for lucas and marvel only to be proven to be historically true with disney plus somebody of the amazon google, facebook inc. Snap spotify, i think, is a sneaky competitor to all this because they can add they can add video and boom. Like some of those six people, seven people that have the attention are gon na, add hardware and and social and and retail and win the game. Like apple buying target would make sense, you know you know facebook, facebook, i'm stunned, that facebook hasn't gone there because they have so much to lose against walmart and amazon.

If walmart and amazon buy twitter like there's a lot here and it's gon na go that route, and so so you're saying amazon is already there in a lot of ways: amazon's there. If, if amazon goes and buys twitter, tomorrow, they've completed the loop they're they're in hardware at some level and with voice, and i think they should build - i think all of them should make a television a dumb television, that's just tricked out for no money get in Homes like to me, i'm to me i'm buying a television and and losing i'm doing the i'm doing the razer and video game business where i'm losing money on the television. That's tricked out just to get you into my ios yeah, but then how many players do you see in that ecosystem because it does seem like it has like winner takes most characteristics? Three right: you know how it all plays out at scale right a and a b competing with a distance c. I think q srs help us with that right, mcdonald's, burger, king and there's wendy, and then change thing will come along and chicken sandwiches matter like you know, but like i think i think three feels very right: five, if you're fragmenting it out.

So do you think it's harder to go from the social to the hardware and the other macro pieces like facebook would have to get completely casting based on the ceo? Okay, i mean it's money and testing. It's who has vision. You know it's who has vision. It's like i'm a hundred percent positive.

What i'm saying is right and will play out yeah and that's called vision: that's understanding, consumer, that's understanding, business dynamics and historical trends and pattern, recognition and, and now it it's why it's i've always been. Historically, i used to get booed at south by on my take on bezos versus steve jobs, something about the way jeff has played always made me feel like he saw it the most and i think they're awfully close right. They've got you know, they're awfully close man. They're awfully close, i think they do need the social.

The one piece they're missing is the social component, and i think you know if i'm bezos, i put up a billion dollars for internal creation and just go or i go out and try to buy twitter um. Probably, what about what about uh buying a gaming company, because that seems to be like the new social or the next wave in social? Are these these games? That's easier because you're buying a production company because to amazon's point they have twitch right facebook. When i inquired mixer from microsoft, microsoft by the other way, is the other sneaky one. I've been very impressed with the microsoft ceo.

You know i i've been very bullish on microsoft, um, i think they've been very smart. I think linkedin was a monster, move into the thing that i talk about as that's become more of a social network, and i think they just have to innovate. Um a little bit more. I could see them going into the hardware play heavy with xbox like come out with xbox tv or xtv.

If you don't want to alienate and make it to like somebody's got, ta create the lost leader, television, that's stacked with their ios. That is the game. In a lot of ways where you can do social shopping or video shopping within it, if you have the retail infrastructure again, microsoft launches at x, television goes and buys target and we're watching commercials on x television through their ios like a roku or thing like that Nature and i click a button and targets deliver you see where this is going. It's a subscription for all of your services, correct, there's, no reason not to yeah it's the ultimate subscription at the end of the day and whoever controls the person's face wins, which is why apple's blown it, which is why i've always been down on what cook's done.

They owned this remote control and they didn't layer on top of it and there's really two remote controls this and the television. So everybody who's in that game get a remote control, get to the front of the screen and then build the stack underneath it. That is the game, that is the trillion dollar warfare. So, even with that, i want to write a book called trillion dollar wars with the seven logos we just said and lay out the hypothesis.

I cannot wait to have this video playing in six years, as a split screen of i told you so because it's 100 gon na happen youtube watcher. What's up it's garyvee! First of all, thank you so much. I hope, you're doing super well during these times. I also want to ask you please subscribe, because my commitment and exploration of youtube is about to explode stories, polls, more content, more engagement, more surprise and delight.

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