I'd Much rather have a piece of content go viral on Tick Tock today than have Good Morning America mention it. It's not even close. Where people get screwed up is they think these platforms skew Young When they don't, the amount of consumption on Tick Tock for example, from 30 to 55 is staggering. You know when every time we in this organization and every organization that looks like yours and mine puts up how many Impressions the article gets, nobody believes the slide that says that we got three billion impressions? Nobody believes that I Don't believe anybody's comms plan here would be the same if this was their family business and their livelihood required it. And that's how I do comms marketing I do it as if my business requires it because they do because I own all my own businesses and I'm petrified to lose. Is the traditional press release dead? You know what? What do you think on that topic about how we get our news and stories out there? I Don't love thinking about things as dead because there's probably some people right now still getting around the world on a horse. Um, but I do like to think about things in our is the value they are against the time and resources, energy and monies we spend. It's inconceivable to me. and I'm seeing I'm seeing on my screen a lot of the back of the heads uh I'd be thrilled if you guys turned around and waved I'd love to see the faces. Um, in fact guys, let's just do that. everyone turn your chairs, face the camera. I can be the voice. let's switch thank you Gary I Like this, it's much more real. So when I see all these beautiful faces, it's inconceivable to me. Inconceivable that, um, that anybody here thinks a press release is extraordinarily effective in 2023, right? It's a nice to have, but the person that should be doing the press release. you know, maybe it's eight seconds of a senior person to just quadruple check, but that should be the intern's job. Thank you. We got a lot of interesting faces around the room, so not asking you to write our business plan. although maybe I am right. what do you think we should be looking for? So opportunities that you think a Communications Group such as ours is there something we're ignoring? Like if you were building you've already built it. But your comms team like what might it look like? Well I think you know and maybe the team now that I'm seeing the faces. maybe you can head not or shake your head or thumbs up like first. Let's let's put it this way. How much do does the comms team think that who they're trying to reach is more B2B than B to C Would you argue It's more B to b or more B to C Shaq What do you think? So let's go Hands up for B2c in the room. This is mostly a B2c room. Yeah, so the most the focus of this corporate group is B2c right? So if it's B to C like you can imagine how the the press release immediately makes me smile as a conversation. if we're B2c, um, if it's B to C all of B2c consumption is moving by the nanosecond to social media or connective TV right? So you know when you think of that or podcasting like everything, everything is still the same truth. It's audio, written, word and video. It's the distribution that's changed on all of us. Everybody here would much rather get a top all top 10 podcasts to mention. whenever you want the world to know then Top 10 Z100 Morning Zoo Drive like the world's changed and so we have to change with it I'd Much rather have a piece of content go viral on Tick Tock today than have Good Morning America mention it. It's not even close if I'm trying to get Mass awareness. Where people get screwed up is they think these platforms skew Young When they don't, the amount of consumption on Tick Tock For example, from 30 to 55 is staggering actual consumption, not potential reach. grps Impressions all these things that people trade on, they're not real. You know when every time we in this organization and every organization that looks like yours and mine puts up how many Impressions the article gets, Nobody believes the slide that says that we got three billion impressions. Nobody believes that. That's why everyone's smiling. You didn't get to be a billion Impressions You did some math around the websites that mentioned it and decided that was going to justify it. I Don't believe anybody's comms plan here would be the same if this was their family business and their livelihood required it. And that's how I do comms marketing I do it as if my business requires it because they do because I own all my own businesses and I'm petrified to lose and so I don't buy into yesterday. I Focus on today. The problem of with businesses of scale is they think today is the future. The only times there's meetings where people say things like yeah, yeah, like you know, tick tock's emerging. We'll get to that when it's you know, next year or the year, like what, what it is, the actual thing. And so as a comms team, more creative output against the incredible amounts of stories that this organization has to tell. and you have incredible dining wine, you know emotional stories, utility stories, value stories. by the way, you have to fragment them. I'll give you a great example if I'm on this team. If I was on this team, I would raise my hand and say can I do the LinkedIn creative on this team because I know that I can do unlimited smart content targeting CFOs to show them why working with us would save their company money and CFOs care about that And so I would be educated on all the different things that we did that could be thoughtful for B2B travel and I would make clever video written word infographic content and I would run media against CFOs a fortune 5000 companies and I would give us accounts. Love that confidence. A lot of Smiles in this room Gary Loving this. Um You probably don't remember. You see a lot of folks like me in hotel lobbies but something I Remember from 2018 we talked you asked me about occupancy and I think I said at the time the hotel I was in and that market was currently running at 82 and I was excited about the 18 thing. That's what you said, you've got a great memory you said well F that What about the A-Team what are you doing so right? Because when you live in a comms mindset like I do which is day trading attention your your calmsing every hour on every day. This isn't about what are we doing in 37 days which that is as well. Something on my mind this is do we have the capacity at 4 15 pm to do creative things on Social to fill up the 18 get incredible news PR Happy retention, better lifetime value from current clients, trial from new clients who've been loyal to our competitors. Um, there's just it's it's an asset. And and if you're smart, I'm a businessman so that there be no confusion. I'm not looking to undermine our core product I'm not looking to create expectations of the consumer to like I don't have to book with them I'll just wait to 4 15 to get the free room. This is much more clever than that, but yes, I remember Admittedly, as you can tell, Excellent. So we have lots of Brands We've got another one yesterday, so you have a favorite. Obviously we've got the high-end ones because you are a high roller. so I'm sure you have the Ritz we've got Saint Regis Marriott Courtyard we got the whole portfolio. You have one hotel where you're like I Love that place. You know what's funny about me when you, um, when you bring that up that I like a lot is I I Went to Green Bay Wisconsin this weekend to watch my um, my favorite Jets play right? and we were talking about you know, like because we were driving back to Chicago and we were talking about um, hotels because a bunch of my friends were staying um, at the courtyard and we we loved the one in Indianapolis um and so I was talking about how I like that and like and I was staying at the same Regis and so it was like they were making fun of me for being bougie. But what's really, really interesting is if you ask me out of your Brands what which one first when I travel I actually don't even know where I stay because most of my travel for the majority of my career has been because I publicly speak a lot and as you can imagine, the organizations are putting you up often in where the event is or things that nature. So I have like literally run the gamut. However, I will say Aloft has been like a brand that I actually like have some weirdly awesome Affinity towards um you know I'm I'm just kind of going off the top of my head I think that's in your that's in your I didn't up Yeah, it's one of us Yeah, um and so uh yeah. so I I like that brand a lot I really do cool. We couldn't let you go today without talking about the Super Bowl Okay, when you started out, obviously you know back in the day, did you ever think I think last year I think you had more Super Bowl ads than any other agency in addition to the Peanuts campaign on social investment. Did you ever really think that you'd be doing Super Bowl ads? Yeah I did I don't know if you remember back when you discover it. We met very early on. My thesis is attention Arbitrage You know I would write press releases tomorrow if I believed people were consuming them at enough scale against how much we spend against it. Hence why I said again, you should still do them I just think the cost associated with making them should drive down dramatically. And of course there should be a few minutes of you know the senior the Super Bowl I think is the most underpriced attention in marketing. You get 150 million Americans actually consuming your spot. The issue with Super Bowl Why it doesn't work for a lot of people is creative agencies use it as a showcase for their talents, not trying to drive the business for their clients. They use it as a proxy to get new clients. And so you get all these horseshit ads like the Andy Warhol Burger King ad of like three years ago that made no sense other than the Creative Agency was trying to be super clever and they sold less Burgers because of it, right? So yeah, that that's a problem but the media is fantastic and and so yes, I did think we would do Super Why ads I did know that it would take us a long time because I knew that you know still to the state 13 years in even though we've done the most Super Bowl spots even though we're the creative aor of Pepsi and and Budweiser and you're like all these things I'm very aware because of me and because where we grew up, people still look at us as social media. which is amazing because I also think that social media is about to be viewed like television I Think very quickly I'm sure when I look at the faces in this room. I Know all of you know because you've been through it in your careers. If I'm getting this right, Social media on a yearly by yearly by yearly basis has taken up more oxygen in the boardroom. I Mean 13 years ago, it was an afterthought of an afterthought of an afterthought. Now most Fortune 500 companies still blow it. They still make it the matching luggage to the brand campaign that they do on television. the biggest misstep in marketing that they come up with a subjective one-line sentence of what the brand stands for in a room run TBC and then do digital matching luggage. But if you know what's happening on Social, you know that it is the infrastructure to consideration in our universe. It's why politicians get elected, It's why people make consumer decisions. And so I'm starting to sense for the first time in the last decade and a half that big brands are starting to understand their disrespect or lack of skill within. social is starting to become an issue. and I'm excited about it because I really believe in it I do believe that the Internet is doing to television what television did to the radio. and I think now that streaming has eaten up all of Television it's left people with no choice. I mean the thought of running a television commercial is asinine to me. The call back to cost It's not that I Don't think people consume a television commercial. Of course they get some. but paying the fee for a creative a award that just sits around and Ponders ideas and then you decide you like it and then you pay a production company to make it and then you pay that level of media for potential reach that isn't actually being consumed. That's a really good way to waste money in 2023. Cool. Love the point. Do you have a thing called see a Brand when you're walking around or streaming whatever you're doing and thank? God I Wish Venomedia had those guys as a client I could really help them I could help him knock the out of whatever they're doing. No because I'm not I'm not passionate about the brands I'm passionate about the casting of the executives that are actually in genuine belief that we should be consumer-centric not bonus Boardroom Centric got it. So for me, it's not Brands it's teammates that want to actually do it right. like like I'm very empathetic. Like every human that I'm looking at right now needs to care about their family. That's exactly right. And so if the corporate structure is we are mmm or MMA or the way we reward or what you need to accomplish are these rules. You Must follow those rules. You're not in the business of getting fired. I'm looking for organizations that are changing the rules right? that that are trying to make them about business results based on marketing. And to me that is exciting because otherwise if you're not based on if you're not trying to get business results based on marketing, you either have a bad business or you become vulnerable to some of the things that I'm sure some of the brands in this building are vulnerable to, which is you're paying toll booths to get you customers Google Middleware companies that give you referrals that you pay huge fees to because you're not marketing well enough and the reason we don't Market Well enough is we don't win on consideration enough. Shaq We don't win on consideration because we don't win on relevance. Look at the faces here for me to get you to buy this or to book a hotel room or to buy this. Can you imagine trying to make one piece of video? Get everyone in this room to give a about that. That's insane. This is about context and relevance, which requires a level of creative output and a media strategy that is wildly different than what most companies do. And that's the battleground of comms now. Oh I Love that. I'm going to switch gear. just got a quick thumb one then I've got a another one about one of your other books. Um, you talk a lot about the Jets so you and your brother apparently haven't missed a game. One of my colleagues in the room earlier asked me said you know what if Mr Marriott asked Gary to come to a meeting but it was joined at Jets game. never. you think he'd come, you wouldn't come for Mr Marriott not only for Mr Marriott Miss Mary it's not even in the ball game. I've missed weddings, funerals, birthdays I Do Not miss Jet games I am. Think about the most religious person you've ever known, whatever their religion is, and whatever they need to do. Friday Shabbat Sunday Church. whatever that is, that person is not even in the universe to my religion of the Jets I have not missed watching a play of a New York Jets game since 1982. I've watched them all. so how are you looking for that acquisition purchase deal? How long is it going to take? I've been waiting a while my friend. My great professional ambition is Chase to try to buy them if I can just get it done before I die I'd be very happy Hey very cool. Um you talk a lot about diff about about it's more about you know never never give up tenacity. It doesn't matter how old you are, but I think you talk about some of the Gen Z Folks need to have a little bit more patience. Yes, you also talk about you know people like myself into their 40s now. although I think when I saw the article you wrote it said in their 70s you'd encourage folks to be start in businesses I Think you said just because you're 75, you still got 15 good years in you. go start a business. So I don't want any of the uh, it was. Yes, it was less about start a business. It's more like when I Look at this room I'm like man, do they really realize how young they are because I don't think they do because it's not the way the propaganda of age has been sold to us over the last hundred years. I Don't believe this room including you Shaq because you're getting up there brother I Don't believe that you know anybody in this room really has a good enough grasp of how much time they actually have I think that you know when I Look everybody. knock on wood. Obviously horrific things happen or tragic things happen. but knock on wood everybody I'm looking at 40. 40 more years. That's for me and you. Shack like there's some youngsters like 50 50 60. like that is a lot of time and so you know I Don't think people fight for joy and happiness enough. They're They're based on fear. They're based on the financial obligations. the theoretical emotional obligations they've made them for themselves for their spouses and their children. And you know I really do believe being the best version of yourself requires a level of strategic selfishness which is grounded in if I'm really happy I can make everybody I love happier and if I'm really happy, you know everything clicks and you know it's funny because I'm such an entrepreneur but my relationship with money is very weird. You know, you know like I really I don't like what it does to people I think it confuses people I don't think people have a good relationship with money or time and you know I'm very fortunate. The thing I love. You know I was a six-year-old Who Sold lemonade and shoveled driveways like I love it I love the game of business but for a lot of people, they don't love what they do, but it they're doing it because it's it's paying for their lifestyle and you know I I You know I'm very fortunate that I have so many people consuming my content that I want to use that for good and I like talking about real things and I think one of the most real things on earth is people are dramatically younger than they think they have so much time to expand their interests, their capabilities, the professional ambitions you know I'm passionate about it I want to talk about it I think the world has gotten very good at selling fear and Hate and I want to sell practical optimism I'm not delusional I'm a very practical operator. This is not like the secret, like sit at home and pray that you'll be a professional skier that doesn't work. But what does work is, hey, if you love skiing, believe it or not, try to make some skiing videos on Tick Tock and see what the world does with it. You'll never believe what can happen. and I know it to be true because at this point 15 years into this journey, my hundreds of thousands of emails from people that have taken one piece of content, done it and something good has happened. Whether it's as simple as hey Gary we really got into the garage sale stuff that you were telling us. our family likes it. we have a lot of fun on Saturdays but we made eight thousand dollars on the side and now we can afford this Disney trip thank you all the way to I thought it was crazy but I was really down in the dumps and I was an executive making 300K a year and I started making YouTube videos and tick tocks around Star Trek because you told me to make it around the thing I love the most and I'm a Trekkie and oh my God you know I now between affiliate merch sales and sponsorship make 200 000 a year and I just quit my job that I hated and I can you know not making as much yet but I'm 87 000 times happier. have more time to be with my kids and by next year I bet you I make 300 000 a year. That's profound. That is a profound, profound life change. And so yes I push it I push it on my own employees I want people to be happier because the net of that is a good thing. Very cool. We got a couple of folks in the room. most have been with this company a little while, but some of the new guys or Young Folks you know, starting out on their careers, what advice might you give to them? Die on your own sword and let me explain what I mean by that. There's a lot of youngsters in here who fundamentally and by the way, a lot of OG gangsters in here that do not believe in what you're doing with your time and money to create the outcome you want. but they keep their mouth shuts in the meetings because they are being protective of their professional careers. and I understand that you're not going to be able to communicate your points of view the way I am because I own my own business I don't have a board I'm not a publicly traded company so when I lose stuff or bad things happen I look in the mirror and say don't do that again for you, There's more ramifications I respect that. However, that doesn't mean that you are not able to very respectfully to your leaders and managers. very cordially, very charmingly able to communicate your disagreement or different point of view on what you should be doing from a com standpoint. The reason I say die in your own Sword is the following: I Believe the next decade will be the most significant decade of the last two decades, which one of the two most significant Decades of comms changing because of Technology It really stinks to lose your job or not progress in your career because you weren't articulating things you believed in that ended up becoming true and you got no credit for it because you played defense and the culture of the company made you not say it not your own belief system so you missed out on the opportunity because of that. That is devastating. So please find a way to cordially communicate your personal opinions. You're allowed to be wrong. I'm wrong. People are wrong, but you've got to share your actual thoughts. Head nodding in a corporate environment for the sake of head nodding is always a bad strategy. Thank you I Got a couple of quick fies and then we'll wrap this thing up. So um, is there a brain? A brand? Obviously not not. Don't include us, but is that one brand out there you really admire? I'm sure it's one of your clients. it's you know it's not. Uh, meaning I'm very happy with what our clients do I Actually spend very little time looking at what other clients do because the industry of marketing is completely based on its own self. Everything is about headlines and awards and reporting. So the creative industry is super. Not interesting to me right? It's so I care about consumer. The reason I have one to call out is it's the only client in the last three years that I after a couple of meetings I told them not to hire us because they didn't meet us which was extremely upsetting to my new business team. they're still mad about it. Um, and that was Chipotle I think Chipotle is a brand that understands that Marketing in 2023 requires doing things of the moment. And as all of you know, we're slow in companies like this because we have too much process, our partners are slow, We're slow and speed is the killer. So I have a lot of respect for how they Market they understand that context and timing is everything and they do very very well in building a small internal team and having a framework that isn't based on Creative aor or overpaying for and I respect it. Okay I'm gonna go back to my TV days. So when I finally leave Marriott in about 26 years, I'm going to start my own TV company and I'm going to produce Gary Venicek the movie. who do you think I should cast to play you? Come on I would say it, you know and hopefully at that point you'll have like three different actors you know to play out the whole thing. and so whomever are the most attractive three men at the time that kind of somewhat look like me but are just much better looking versions would feel right Shaq would feel absolutely right. Everything I do is based on consumer reaction. So the reason I need faces is when I say something I need to get a sense of did it land faces are the great I mean it's unbelievable Why I think I have a big public speaking career. It's because I focus on the front row and I completely bounce off of them the entire time and those seven people completely dictate how good or not good my keynote's gonna be and so like even when I go to some sort of conferences that all of you know like the whole room's too dark and you can't see I actually ask for them to put up the light I would argue that this is what I want to say in my final minute try to do more stuff for actual consumers. It's really in our subconscious. it's in my own agency. All 2000 people globally I can see it every day. A lot of it's within the B2B or the way it's been done. Give all your thoughts to responding to the actual consumer. these Brands Shack when I look at them and now I just I Just clicked on the website so there's a lot of Brands right when I look at that I genuinely believe that the holding Co should be putting out somewhere in the ballpark of 200 to 500 pieces of creative a day across social. think about that number like and I'm and I'm not hyperbolizing here I genuinely believe that that Ritz Carlton and the W and JW Marriott like and I think about how Global you are on a bad day I'm even trying to. It's funny I just felt myself lowballing the number because I didn't want people to think I was hyperbolizing and get laughed out of the room on a bad day. This organization should be putting out 200 to 500 individual different pieces of creative globally across. LinkedIn Tick Tock Facebook reels Instagram Twitter a day. We all know that we're not even in the realm of that. and like every other time in the last 15 years, I will be historically correct about this statement over the next five years. So The faster you can figure out how to drive down the cost of Creative internally and with your partners, you will become a calm Supernova if you can do that and I know that's hard, but it's worth the debate for these leaders and yourself. We love that! Thank you so much I'm going to come and see you in New York soon. Cheers me Thank you Thank you. Appreciate it buddy! Cheers Foreign.

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