To me, television commercials were profound for 50 years. My big thing is, why are we continuing to put yesterday on a pedestal and tomorrow on a pedestal? People would rather spend money on potential metaverse and AI stuff and commercials instead of actually focusing on today? Today is how you're actually going to build your brand. And today, perfect creative and media execution across the 10 platforms that are referred to as social media sites is disproportionately the opportunity. Social media is just a slang term for the current state of where the attention of consumers are and we need to understand how to be good at it today's title.

So we are going to get straight into to the question. So today's title that we set was building Businesses through social and uh, we know you're a massive Advocates um for social channels and so I think the one to start this off because we've got so many marketeers in the room is when they are approaching marketing or your observations. What are the most common mistakes or learnings you think with that approach to marketing and social? So we're just going to go there. right from the top straight in.

look: I Think everybody in this room, whether you work at an agency, whether you're on the brand side, you know I would argue and this is you know, a tough way to start the conversation. But I would argue that we are in a very nascent State on marketing and social I Believe that most large organizations call it the Fortune 50 000. You know, big companies, um, that less than one percent of them actually take social marketing serious? I Think they're checking the box I Think the entire industry of advertising has it upside down. Um, everybody's creating brand positioning than a TBC and then pushing down into digital and social predominantly with matching luggage to match what they came up with in a board room without any understanding of the platform nuances, the the opportunities to be using the creative tools that the platforms like yourselves and your competitors have created to make content.

They are completely missing the understanding of what social can do when it comes to winning on relevance. They're obsessed with the notion of scale and awareness. When most brands of that size have plenty of awareness, they're not losing an awareness, they're losing on relevance and consideration. What does that all mean? It means what everyone's missing is actually respecting the platforms you have CMOS and CEOs around the world talking about how social media needs to be regulated by governments because it's so powerful and then when it comes to them using it to Market it's like the fourth thing on their list and they post like happy Tuesday Oh, and and with the mix also between paid yeah and organic? Um, how what examples have you got Or how do you see your recommendations on getting them to work together and get them to work well and also just thinking about the the rise of creators and the role that they're now playing.

well creators are in the complete opposite of what I just said. They don't even know any better than to use these things properly and then grow. Creators don't know about programmatic banner ads, Creators don't know about planning upfront television buys, Creators don't know about buying Billboards Creators don't know about mixed modeling mixes and Millard Brown case studies And and so they're They're The rise of them is obvious because they know how to use these platforms. And by the way, I am not overtly in love with social media.

On the record, I'm in love with consumer attention. It just happens to be on social media right now. obviously I'm sure this is not news for anyone. being who I am and what I do and living in the United States I Am unlimited bombarded over the last month of like what it what do you think about if Tick Tock expand what's gonna happen if Tick Tock gets banned.

My answer to that is like that's above my pay grade I have no idea what you know China and Russia and America are doing with themselves. But but it began. all that attention just goes somewhere else and so like to me, we're not out of business. If tick tock, we're not out of business.

If every social media disappears, attention goes somewhere. It was on the radio back in the day, then it went to television. Now it's on the Internet. The current state of the Internet.

is social media. The Metaverse may happen One day. this company has it its way. then plenty of people will be living in.

you know, Horizon and Oculus You know I Think that's an inevitable outcome I Think the question really is timing is that three years from now is that 13 years from now? But this is all about attention and what creators understand is the attention sits on these platforms. And to remind everybody the attention is free, the attention is free, and it's more free than ever. Now because you and your competitors and the other platforms now reward quality creative to get more organic reach because your job and your competitor's job is to keep people on your platform. so it's better to give people what they actually want versus the alternative so it's becoming more important.

Meanwhile, the ad products continue to be grossly underpriced because unlike the rest of the ad world that creates artificial floors of cost television, print, radio, websites, digital, most of you and your competitors add product is based on supply and demand. So for example, not because I love you so much at Meta, but because I love being right I've been yelling for seven weeks, 10 weeks, 14 weeks about Facebook reels being grossly underpriced because they are because they're incredibly underpriced because there's a stunning amount of attention on Facebook reels, but a misunderstanding of it from the Creator and the brand you ecosystem of how much attention's there. Thus, there's not enough content being put on it against the demand. Thus, everyone who's doing it gets more awareness over time that will be figured out.

it will neutralize. and then you see what always happens in every platform. The organic reach is only a function of supply and demand. Now it's a bigger function of the quality of the content which is a huge opportunity for all of us.

And then the ad products on top of it are incredibly underpriced. And in the post iOS 14.5 world with tagging and you know, cooking now the creative becomes even a bigger variable because the best practice now is when on Creative see that there's an indicator that there's interest and then post produce that asset into a performance ad and run media against it So the playbooks will continue to change and ebb and flow, but creators understand it. What do I Think about the organic media I'm you and the competitive landscape I Think the far majority of it is underpriced. The problem is the creative industry that we live in doesn't know how to make creative at an appropriate price.

The ad world is broken creatives, too expensive and so brands that are Fortune 500 Brands can't take advantage of the social platforms because of creative. Aor doesn't know how to make volume creative at a cost that's efficient against the distribution that's in front of us. and that's the elephant in the room. And how do you think the agency should be thinking about that? And by not ripping off their clients anymore and we need to put our process.

Is that correct? You don't you? You don't have a price. You don't have a price. That's the best thing about you. You don't have a price.

You're not television. You're not print. You're more like Google. You don't have a price.

You have a tiny entry. 10 cents. Five cents. whatever the impression is.

But like you don't have a price. Unfortunately, the holding company creative Agencies have a price. It's called a ton of money for people to sit in a room and bounce ideas off each other. I said I Was going to ask two questions.

but but you know, the energy of this talk is not pointing fingers or anxiety. it's opportunity. The reason the world sits in this Bizarro landscape where big Brands would rather m a small Brands into their organizations, then do. the work that the small brands are doing is completely predicated on the disconnect between the agency and brand ecosystem.

And it doesn't have to be that way. It just doesn't have to be that way. And I think um, I Think the industry needs to step up. The ad industry needs to step up.

We need to provide more value to our clients. You know. I'm aware that there's only five or six holding companies, and it's in essence I'm not happily within each other I Get that, but it's not sustainable or it's going to be a problem in a 10, 15, 20 year window. And I understand that the executives that run those companies don't care.

They're going to be retired by then, so that's fine. But there's a reason companies go out of business and this is what it looks like You can't spend seven million dollars a year in Creative fees to get one video a year for television and they get matching luggage for social in 2023. makes no sense. This is very important I Don't think people are bad I don't think they're even I don't even think people are ill intended I Just think the great I think the advertising industry has to look itself in the face and say, do we have our clients best interests in mind or do we have our best interest in mind Programmatic black boxes that are just sitting with tons of margin for our media agency is not in the best interest of our clients buying badinventory on dot coms running media that doesn't understand the creative that's being run on it and having those two separated.

These are not real smart things to do in 2023. And and honestly, I've talked a lot about the platforms that I've talked a lot about the agency. But at the end of the day, the person's fault in this entire ecosystem is the brands. There's the ones that write the check and so that to me is the most fascinating part.

Like you know you, you get what you pay for and you know to me. I Think the things that bring me passion and interest and drive me and make me want to do this this morning is to create a dialogue that's missing I did this in the wine business. wine was overpriced when I got into it premium wine in America was overpriced and it didn't need to be that way and people didn't like the conversation but it ended up being true and it helped the consumer I really struggle with the advertising industry I don't think the brands are in a good spot I think they're losing market share and I think they're going to continue to lose market share unless they adjust to the title of this which is social media is just a slang term for the current state of where the attention of consumers are and we need to understand how to be good at it. and I think everyone in this room knows the far majority of big businesses are not good at it, they're just not I think it works great that you're so honest in the approach and even though I'm sure some of us have sat here being slightly thinking wow, what have I done with my career and where am I going well because I think because to that point I just really want to make Clarity in this because what you didn't? You know back to 20 years Like 15 years ago it was different.

Five years ago. Like it's different to me. It's not about like oh, we wasted our time I Mean television commercials were profound for 50 years? Very Roi Positive. My big thing is, why are we continuing to put yesterday on a pedestal and tomorrow on a pedestal? People would rather spend money on potential metaverse and AI stuff and commercials instead of actually focusing on today is what's interesting.

Today is how you're actually going to build your brand. And today, perfect creative and media execution across the 10 platforms that are referred to as social media sites is disproportionately the opportunity disproportionately well. we've done anyway and I would love, um to open it up. You know we've got marketeers and we've got agencies in the room so it's really great to have some questions.

Uh, for Gary who wants to raise their hands and we've got some mites that we will pass around There we go. We've got a couple. We've got one here and one there and one there. Okay, uh we talk.

Thank you. Nice to meet you. being a big fan thank you. What's your name? Alex Alex Nice to meet you.

Yep, likewise. Um, well I think what are you saying about the traditional Addies model? I I Completely yeah. I'm on the front side now with new technology like you know. generative Ai and stuff GC like brand favorite thing that it's our own hands I Do I think the big elephant in the room that no one's talking about is copyright and trademark of where this is like we're the most Progressive We like to think and Vayner and we are absolutely not prepared to use AI Creative for clients because we don't know the source and we don't want the liability.

So I think there's a lot to figure out of. What's I mean the amount of litigation that's about to happen against Open AI is going to be pretty profound. The biggest companies in the world that have their IPs sitting on the internet are not interested in somebody selling it to the people they're selling it to. We went through that with Google and this is way more intense than what happened with Google And so I think that.

um I Definitely think there'll be a day for that. but I think there's going to be a half decade of clarity of what is allowed and not allowed that. I think at the Big Brand levels. I Think entrepreneurs are doing it now.

Small businesses direct to Consumer brands that use your platform's property properly. They're already using AI Art right now for their ads. so I think you know we're gonna have to navigate through this, but it's a big exciting technology which means it's also scary to a lot of people. Um, and you know I'm excited about it.

I'm genuinely think it's some of the most profound Tech I've ever seen and it's just starting and it gets smarter so it's going to be big league stuff. but I think as far as advertising I think for the biggest agencies and the biggest brands, there's going to be some proper hesitation here until we get some legal clarity. Sure. So you gotta explore the first question.

what's your name? my name is Cynthia So nice to meet you. nice to meet you. So you kind of stole. The question that I had was which type of technology that excites you for the future of advertising.

But my second question is more about your kind of long-lost middle child being there three and whether or not this is kind of your play for tomorrow or today. So you just mentioned Banner 3 is our play for today. Beta 3 is one of the Vaynerx holding companies. It's a Bain and McKinsey Consulting type of company for really.

At first it started for Nfts because I'm extremely enthusiastic about web3, but it's really now morphed given the market conditions. and you know it's a, you know, anytime. it reminded me so much of Internet 96. The hyperbole outpaces the reality and so and then this one had greed in it.

people selling and so right now Vayner 3 spends a lot of time on AI spends a lot of time on even things that are a little bit more mundane QR Codes I think are still continuously under utilize and misunderstood. Uh AR VR Um, and what we're really doing there is actually what we just talked about. It's not our bet on tomorrow. it's our service to our biggest clients to not waste money on tomorrow.

So our positioning for Vayner 3 is, we are really about this life. Let us come in and educate your decision makers that write checks so that they don't waste money like it's you know? Listen, I'm pretty darn bullish on the long-term metaverse, but if a brand spends two million dollars to do a metaverse execution right now and expects consumers there, they're in big trouble and so we're doing a ton of education and Consulting occasional execution. Uh, specifically in AR and QR code. Um, But for example, we have a lot of clients who are paying us who we were.

The people that told them the legal issues with AI and they stopped doing something that could have, you know and I always get proud of that. Like one of the things you felt for me in the first 20 minutes of this talk is I Think it is a requirement of a human being to be passionate and proud of what they sell. And and that's my biggest issue with the ad world that when Alex is on the brand side, he can speak that way. but when he was on the agency side, it was harder and he had to figure out how to balance that because you that's not judgment, that's empathy.

When you're on the when you're selling something that you're not completely convinced is right, but your family's lifestyle is built on it. You're paying off your debt because of it. like I Don't cast judgment I deploy compassion to that. but I do have deep passion and conviction that you need to believe in what you sell.

So you can imagine for me, when we're selling a three hundred thousand dollar four month retaining Consulting product to teach a Big Brand about Ai And we start with legal realities and they stop a campaign that's about to be done by a creative agency that just for the adage headline I'm very proud that they just saved themselves the potential of a seven million dollar lawsuit by our 300 Kakamanian dollars. I Believe in that and so I'm really excited about Vayner Three and a lot of it is based on. hey, have you fully thought this through? Are you actually thoughtful? Back to happy Tuesday As opposed that a lot of you laugh too. The reason I use that as a reference is the reason Vayner's winning.

The way we're winning is we do creative on social with substantial strategy I laughed watching Brands Take great social media in-house and not creative in-house creative aor. You just have to hire one creative director and one strategist and you now have replicated Creative Aor. Social is hard. These social in-house agencies are a great thesis, but in reality, it's one of the hardest things to do in the world right now to understand the platforms and the culture of every one of these platforms.

Like dude I'm sitting in New York spending 10 hours educating myself about lying in Japan like on a monthly basis I Mean this is complex. So um, Vayner3 is not our play for tomorrow. It's to mitigate the risk for our clients today. Foreign you talk about.

You know the attention span moved up through the whole digital era and now it's right now. the attention is on Social. Uh, we're building a brand. Uh, which is a Cape Cod What it does is it provides in-app social consumer experiences like through a GPS legendary.

So with news feeds, uh, any social component, right? So technically, yeah, you know. as I said, uh, you know consumer apps that is intrinsically social harvested in these days, right? So I just want to understand your perspective on, you know, having centralized social medias already, you know? Top Notch Uh, the attention is already laid out there. but now there are a lot of companies who are trying to bring in Social Ego for example, bringing that social component I Follow you. You call me as tradies, right? So how do you think this whole digital evolution is happening and that you think as the world moves forward, the attention span also values to Illusions apps where in-app groups you know engagements could happen anymore I I Do think to you what you're referring to that there's possibility of that as a collective taking a percentage of that attention, but none of the individual ones will be able to have the network effects to create the real consumer behavior that is associated with it.

So to your point, an API that creates news feeds within every app in the world, depending on the nature of the app, will have different levels of success. Uber Having a news feed? How much people use that or not I Don't know a sports app? Having a news feed makes a lot of sense because you have an affinity around a hobby and you you could see that no different. You know when I hear your pitch and my brain I'm like oh, that's cool because I think the opportunity there is to actually go after message boards I mean message boards continue to be real around affinities and so I've read it became so substantial. So we we are tribal.

That's what everything that's going on in the world is about. And so micro tribes within apps that have the functions of news feeds is a really clever thesis. My belief system is the biggest elephant in the news feed game is a decentralized social network is definitely a fascinating thing to think about, right? The complaints that people have of your company Tick Tock and others. You could see a hypothesis of the consumer being fascinated by the concept of a social network that's decentralized and you know they're naive.

It's scary to me how many people think Mark sits behind some sort of like Wizard of Oz thing and pulls the algorithm. The naivete of the consumer is fascinating. Um, but I You believe in that naivete? There is some ideological Intrigue by the concept of that. Um, but yeah.

I I Think there will always be fragmentations. There's there's people who still watch commercials. There's people that still see print ads. There's people that still listen to radios.

My point isn't that nobody's watching them. My point is that they're expensive. My point is that nobody's not watching them. My point is like, is it the best use of your eight million dollars to buy six million dollars of media of a television commercial and then spend two million dollars to produce a 30-second spot? That's my argument.

What will that eight million dollars look like if you did it? More contemporary? So I think to that same point. I'm sure there's tons of opportunity for micro communities at scale and attention being fragmented to those places. I Think that might become your defense. Okay, we'll do that.

You got it. So we loved having you here I Think that was in 2020. We Did an interview um with you and Dan and one of the real talk gems that you dropped on us was this idea of being practitioners. Yes, right.

And so you just kind of spoke about it in the comment before. The question to you is as we have seen more Brands more companies I'm sitting next to my friend here from Sk2g go in housing right? Yes. Kind of take some of that on. Do you think that's helped in terms of where the either producing better work or better understanding of either the platforms and the respect that it deserves Wondering where the progress it hasn't materialized to My Hope You know what has happened is it's saved some dollars.

This was the Great Miss of the Creative Agency Aor. They so underperformed in doing social creative and it was so overpriced often hidden in the Creative Aor fee that it led to your friend and others to decide to take it in-house The problem is your friend and others continue to not take the platform as serious as brand positioning and television and push down. And what's even scarier is the strength of agencies is the fact that they see a lot of things now in-house is only focused on their brand. the truth of the matter.

and I say this with all respect. The level of strategic thinking about the creative and the platform nuances is absolutely not there on the in-housing I I Watch all of it. And and I because you can see the output. You know when you really are a practitioner, it takes you 30 seconds to audit people's social and you can absolutely have a quick sense of what they're up to and do the other.

There are brands in this room that don't have a URL linked to their Instagram account. Do you know how insane that is? So um, I I think it's helped in saving them money where they were getting ripped off. So I love in-house for that. But I think they're doing it just as badly as their creative aor was.

I Really I genuinely do. and it's mainly because they don't have enough resources. They hire one or two good people and like I have 33 full-time employees on my brand. There are 33 full-time employees that work on Garyvee's content.

What else do you want me to say? There's not a brand in here that has that many people in their in-house team and when they do like, it gets real efficient, inefficient real fast. I Looked at one so we created a Consulting product to consult in-house teams because back to like being proud of the dot like I don't want to on in-house teams By the way, I Think every brand in the world should do everything in-house but you have to be able to do it right. So we started seeing the trend and we said, you know what, let's start a Consulting product because we really do know this. This is the one thing we will stand on.

This is what we know. Let's create a Consulting product and we're not trying to convince people to unwind their in-house and work with us. We'll try to make you better. And so we've really taken those meetings over the last two years.

even We when we're fortunate enough to find people that know what to do, they don't have the resources and the politics are absurd, right? You know, like like when you're the head of social media inside of iconic brand like his, the lead creative decision maker is looking at you as like some third tier like you know, like not. You know, people are cut, you know, But that's the truth. Like they're not thinking that that and I think that's where brand is being built. brand is being built in Social But nobody wants to open up Pandora's Box because we all want to go to the south of France in eight weeks and look at each other and Make Pretend We're good at something I Mean do you know that these creative, like cheap creative officers think they're famous? Do you know about this everyone? This is like this is like the wildest thing I've ever seen in my life.

Creative Officers of Creative Agencies and Advertising I Think they're famous. There's not a single normal human being on Earth that has ever heard of one. Chief Creative Officer in Advertising. Oh yeah, I think We had a couple sat there together.

No, it's a couple by the way. Sorry, it's awesome. Um so I'm from Mala We are the fastest growing music sharing producing platform in the world. Well, and um, my question is more also on what she was kind of hinting on.

Yep, it's getting like quality content comes basically as a product. What is that product ideation look like for you? Um, just like. Not the point of like okay, it's scheduled or is it like programmatic or kind of like how does this disperse from hey got an idea I Want to make sure I understand the question one more time I Want to really grasp it? Sure. So in terms of quality content, quality content.

Got it? Um, how does your ideation process? Got it? I got it. So here's how I see the world. a brand has a brand positioning. We have to respect that work has been done.

You have to have some sort of point of view. respect. Next, and most importantly and the biggest issue I have with advertising. The next thing in our framework is what's the business objective I mean I've said plenty very direct things here.

I'm going to say another one. Most agencies don't actually care about trying to make, especially on the creative side. They want to do the creative idea they have. They don't care about driving the business.

So the framework for me doing social brand building and building businesses is what's the brand stand for? What's the business objective. The next thing we do is we create 40 to 50 consumer segmentations Not three, right? 40 to 50 consumer segmentations 18 to 22 year old males living in Bangladesh that are into Esports 21 to 27 year old females in Tokyo making 200 000 a year, 40 to 45 year old moms in Malaysia who have an affinity towards High fashion real specific consumer cohorts with real teeth. Okay, next on that is called pack Platforms and culture. Like do you actually understand what the platforms are doing next? Which platforms are you creating for? You've now gone the whole way down.

Now it's we're gonna pick Instagram and Facebook and Twitter And for me, every brand that's in this room should be on all of them. But this is back to allocation more to their dollars. Go so they can't but they should. but they'd rather spend eight million dollars on a TV spot.

So you lay out the platforms, then you go to work. So now you create a framework. Now your creative and strategy team are ready to work. Now you start posting against the framework, right? You know what consumer you're going after.

You know what you're trying to achieve in business. You know how the platforms work. So you know Facebook Reels is underpriced right now. You know that green screen headline Creative is over indexing on Tick Tock You know.

So you start making now. the work really begins. After you make you have a person your strategy team called the PCS a post creative strategist. Her and his job is to look at all the qualitative feedback.

you have your analytics and media team look at the Quant feedback and you start making your machine smart like a half pregnant. AI The team gets smart through the work. You start looking at the proxies. When you've got a retail brand that sells in retail stores, you're running the media against, hold out clusters to prove that you're actually driving incremental growth.

If you have a DTC brand or an app, it's a piece of cake. You're just looking at the black and white data. when the creative goes viral or over indexes its Norm It becomes the brief for more efficient and effective work. So now the virality based on the consumer sentiment and intent and truth becomes a proxy to your brief.

not a strategist sitting in an office going on Reddit for four hours writing a brief. Then you do that forever and ever and ever. your cohorts are an accordion. As you start getting affirmation that something's not working, you actually eliminate Malaysian Moms 40 45 because you aren't finding Affinity your creative team hasn't hit the mark.

On the flip side, while marketing to Indonesia Gamers 13 to 15, you realize it's actually the female Gamers 13 to 15 that are even more interested in the intent and you create a new cohort to go there to double down on the truth of the consumer not The Audacity Of The Boardroom That's how I do it? Was there A second question I knew that was in the same space as I've been on that little rant just for the room. Think about how fundamentally different that is than 99 of the execution of social media marketing in our industry. That's how big the opportunity is. I agree Hi, my name is thank you I am just asking questions about the left field please conversation please.

Um I changed for your four and a half years ago from the secondary school teacher and then I went to my very long journey actually with Meta and I'm now currently with Microsoft Um, two weeks ago I was speaking at Stanford about that journey and about the education system and that intersection with technology. and I guess my fear for the future is that we really don't understand the opportunities with technology and Innovation and how to educate the masses. Um, so I just like your thoughts on that, I'm actually the reverse of that. I've never been more optimistic for the first time ever.

Smart parents aren't forcing their kids to go to Stanford So I understand what you're saying I Actually think we're in an inflection point. We are truly truly in the pre-dawn of parents around the world finally not putting University on a mandatory pedestal which is creating a level of curiosity and a level of thoughtfulness and a level of self-awareness and a level of actually auditing children that is going to lead to incredible happiness for children and much better education. Not how education is sold. We also are demonizing AI at education levels at scale so hard and so fast that there's going to be an over correction and understanding that what AI is actually doing is forcing our children to critically think and input instead of memorize and figure out the system.

I Think that higher education is a new phenomenon as a business as a business I Think education is the most important thing in the world I Think the greatest thing that Meta ever did was accelerate and be one of the companies at the Forefront of the world talking to each other which has led to profound education. I'm aware that currently we are focused on all the bad things that humans are about and we're blaming the platforms for human behavior. That's a different thing. On the flip side, we have never lived in the world.

A better education. When you start a sentence with big fan you and I would have never known each other. 50 years ago we have connected humans. There's so much Beauty to this.

You know many people are married happily forever because of these. Technologies You know many people here are more educated than they could have ever been because these Technologies I've never been more bullish on education. because I think we're about to tear down over the next 50 years. the way education has been packaged, weaponized, sold, and have extracted an enormous amount of happiness out of society.

I'm going back to your previous conversation, please. Sure. Um, so a key thing that brands are after is reach. Yes, and that's something I mean I Believe in it the most I Believe in it the most.

Um, when we're looking at reach and cost per week, we're getting that very efficiently on a TV platform. No, you're not at the beginning. at least what we're thinking. I Think because there's a third party verified solution to it.

That's right. Yeah, it means that you've believed in the proxy. Yeah, you've bought into, You've bought into the Grp. You're not getting efficient reaching television.

You're too smart for that. You're getting potential reach. You're not getting actualized reach. How do we conquer that by using your common sense? No, you know we're having true dialogue here.

How do we counter it? The smart people in our industry, which is rampant, start to actually think for themselves and not be robotic about something they know is not true. Do you know many people can explain a Grp? In this industry, You're not getting reach. It's not being consumed. It's a tree falling in the forest right now.

You're not getting reach. You're getting potential reach. The problem is, there's too much margin in it for the people selling you that reach. But we need a report to tell us that I Know that's why you're losing market share because you believe a report versus the truth.

But that's not. That's not because we're stupid, it's because it goes back to the thing I said about Alex. It's because it's the currency that drives your business. People's bonuses are attached to those reports.

You know we have eliminated Humanity from corporations I believe there is a Nirvana Called companies will just hire smart people and trust them to do the thing that they want them to do that does not exist today. we are not getting I Refute to the last breath I have that we're getting Reach on television in 2023. we are getting reported reach. We're getting potential reach and deep down I Think everyone knows it.

and by the way, digital is no better. like like programmatic banner ads. and by the way, news feeds too like you know I don't look when I get 47 million views I'm like I got 14 probably you know, like you know, like. but the difference is every time I hold out cluster and suffocate I still do direct mail and television and outdoor for the my family liquor store, business and many other things every time I hold every activity to accountable business results.

Traditional media shits the bed and social media Done Right dominates right? That's the part that people haven't figured out of this conversation. There's so many people, you're a comfortable business. Results are what sales because I Do media and creative together I Didn't trick you into separating. It really fun to be in the agency world when you've got media and creative separated and they each blame each other within a holding company.

Oh, that was funny, right? This industry needs a reality moment. You know very honestly. I'll probably be out of it sooner than later. Like I Really don't give a I Just want to be historically correct I could care less if any of you become clients or we I Really just don't care I Just want to be right because it feels better.

You know we're not getting we're not and we're not getting it in programmatic. And if you, if you, if we started to actually want accountability, we have to bring Media and Creative back under one house and hold people accountable to our business results. At the end of the year, the Separation of Media and Creative destroyed this industry. It made nobody accountable to nothing.

and what this industry is built on is headlines and magazines and reports that are completely full of this company was built on. Datalogics report that was the biggest bunch of of all time, but it allowed companies to start buying Facebook because that report was like okay, well trust this. everything was row as that to its ass and it wasn't true. But the industry accepted it and so it became the industries.

Nielsen Ratings for Social That's fine because at least this was a better use of dollars. but we're just not doing the right things. You know, no television is not efficient reach. It's a waste of money.

Thank you. You're welcome. We got one more question we've got Walmart here. Unconscious attack GoPro hi Gary my name's Eric I welcome our mastering platforms here in Mata I really is a straight point question.

how do you think about attention and messaging and how should Brands think about it? It's a really interesting one. It was funny when you were talking about um and he's got 15 on Instagram I almost jumped in and said and I crush on WhatsApp um I think about messaging a lot but I think you know this since it's what you do. There's so much trepidation for Brands to get in there because it's a private place right? AI is going to be interest like you know when I tell you I'm desperate to get in there man if I can mark it in WhatsApp I would do it every hour on the day because the attention is insane right? The text I don't know if you know the startup Community um which is a text platform you know I have two three hundred thousand people that you know have given me their cell phone number that I text on community I get like 94 conversion rates on certain things when I do the Creative right? There's no I I'm OG for you youngsters in here I Used to do email marketing in 1996. how many people here actually have been close to email marketing in their careers? Just raise your hands nice.

Get ready! 1997. a hundred thousand people on my dad's wine newsletter that I'm asked because I crushed 92 open rates. That's impossible Now that's what can happen in text when we find a way to get in there. But I'm too empathetic that consumers in 1996 the reason I had those open rates were people were just like so happy about everything.

right? Like, like email hadn't been ruined yet. right? You know now consumers are cynical private I mean I don't have to sit. You know we've been through it in this company. I've been through it In this industry.

we've all been through it so people are hesitant to let us in there. you know I think I've been thinking a lot about this I think WhatsApp should take a page out of Twitter desktop pre mobile ad product which was if you remember Twitter's ad product in like 2008 or nine. I Know there's some youngsters in here, but let me give you some history lesson. It was mainly a lot of desktop consumption and on the right side they had 10 trending topics and then above that they added a an ad product called sponsored Trend or tweet right and so you could buy that spot and it was a monster.

I Was back to when everyone's like, what is social media like I was buying that image and it was expensive, but the attention was so absurd I think a very simplistic, very lightweight. what's that product that had a little tiny Banner at the top with one. you know where the copy from The Advertiser was all linkable and you could. you'd have to just buy the whole network later.

You'll figure out how to make it all contextual. I think could be interesting similar to The Tick Tock ad. When you open the app and it takes over the whole thing, the world is struggling back to actual reach. which is why Super Bowl is you know it's funny.

Meanwhile, Comma and complete opposite, the Super Bowl ads. the best ad in advertising. Every single company in America should clamor to spend seven million dollars for 30 seconds in Super Bowl because you have a hundred million human beings actually watching with intent for 30 seconds and even the best day on Meta and the best day on Instagram and Facebook and snap and Tick Tock and all of them come out I could never get a hundred million people assuming 30 full seconds for less than seven million dollars. and I'm as good at buying modern comms, planning and spending media across the board as they come.

and our organization is and you could never do it. So that's the best ad I think WhatsApp Putting that at the top at scale globally because one of the most interesting apps ad products in the world. If you think of global Brands you think about like the World Cup gets incredible amount of time like if I woke up tomorrow and Peter Chun or Mar or somebody from my team was like did you see what WhatsApp did and I clicked the TechCrunch article and it's there's a new ad that's a tiny thin Banner at the top of your messaging on WhatsApp and it's on everybody's WhatsApp around the globe I am calling Proctor Nike Pepsi like in two seconds saying we need to understand this now because in that first little window of the first six months to 12 months, first three months to six months, everyone's gonna pay attention to it and then it becomes a creative variable game. If you're a brand that knows how to write the copy that's compelling for someone to click, it will work.

If you're not, you'll waste the money. Super Bowl is the best ad buy, but all the creative eighty percent of it is a showcase for the Ad Agency not an objective to drive the business and thus it becomes a waste of money because they spend 3 million on an actor, They spent 2 million on some fancy director. They paid some production company to make it. The creative agency got incremental fee to sit in a room and pontificate.

And so I'm really struggling with creative agencies. as you can tell because and by the way, let me tell you on the record: I have a curveball for you. Do you know why I'm struggling with creative agencies? Because I interviewed so many senior creatives and they're so damn unhappy it breaks my heart. This is not making fun of.

This is deep compassion and empathy to what's happening. The most creative people in our industry are getting their souls sucked dry by sitting around for nine months debating with each other to put out a piece of vanilla video on a television set that nobody on Earth is watching. That's a shitty existence if you're creative. So um, that's what I think about.

Final Final question: Okay, besides, yes, um, I'm a big fan. thank you somebody. Also a little bit critical. yes and yeah, equal parts genius and something else if I which is something else if you may, yes sir, so do you in that case, then refuse the independent eye tracking research that shows attention levels not only but traditional channels like our home, but it eat all the independent uh, each individual ad format that's in in platforms like meta and YouTube and Tick Tock and all of the others.

and um, so you don't believe any of that independency? I'm guessing. And the sad part is, you also don't believe any of the peer-reviewed evidence-based studies that have been done around econometric monument that show the value of no I respect that. Here's my thought on that. I Don't think anything is absolute I Really don't I think that this industry has accepted the Counterpoint as absolute.

That's one number two. I think I think eye tracking is very fragmented. There's some platforms that have really strong technology. There's other platforms that have kind of middle of the road technology that then also rely on a little bit on surveying and justifies it a little bit different.

Um, my biggest argument Gavin is like I I think there's a lot of ways to make a lot of things successful, you know I grew up in the alcohol business I So I'm always a little more interested in the sector you're in and I'm always watching. There's a lot that can be done. there's there's I Absolutely believe that there is sales that come out of traditional executions. My big passion point is, but at what cost compared to the alternative? So I I don't I've seen plenty of reports that have matched the actual business results and I feel calm and excited about that every day of the week.

My problem is whether it's Nielsen or whether it's eye tracking or whether it's data logic, which is how the New World Order got its start. There's just an extraordinary amount of reporting and justification that doesn't match the three-year window of the business results. and there. And of course, there's other variables.

Let's call it Spate of spade. A lot of the companies that think they're marketers and branding are actually sales organizations. Your brands in the US are heavily predicated by what the distributors in the local market are doing to. So it's not just marketing that could affect business.

So to your point, I speak with enormous conviction and passion and deep belief. And there is no question at times subconsciously I can probably go even too extreme. It's because the entire Market has gone too extreme in the other direction, which is completely in the face of like real vulnerabilities that we need to talk about. So it's not that I refute.

but I I will say I really struggle with reporting. Overall it there's just a lot of fake proxies. and what's even scarier to me is how few people can speak to it when you're trying to have a conversation of understanding why they spend all their money on it. So back to eye tracking.

The thing that got me into a decent position was I knew nothing. So I was scared to sound like an idiot. So I went and studied everything and so like to me. I'm always still meeting with every tracking and every traditional metric and I think my biggest struggle is there's a lot of vulnerabilities in them.

We have to use them as proxies. all of them at the end of the day. but I think it's just a ways of working that the industry really needs to challenge itself. So you know.

I I think it's a really thoughtful question I Do I really genuinely don't like absolutes I think the world is absolutely gray, not black and white I Just think we have to take a step back as an industry and realize we've accepted all this stuff that has unequivocal data that says it's vulnerable. So I think that's where the energy is coming from. All right. Thank you, thank you sir! Great last question.

Well I know there was lots of hands still bobbing up but I'm afraid we are at time. uh Gary just want to say a huge thank you. Uh, not only of passion comes across and uh, and you know some of the points you're making. quite bold and direct which I think sometimes we all need to be reminded of.

But the bit that I also really like is you're incredibly compassionate as well. so you have a lot of acknowledgments. Can I say something that I think will capture this all. The gentleman came up to me four or five years ago at Can and started to berate me in the middle of the battle like you don't care about this industry, my father grew up in it.

You don't care about the work that just really really aggressive and when he was done I looked at him and said mate because he had an Australian accent I said I said hey I said I said I'm the only one fighting for this industry and what I was trying to get across to him and then we got into a really nice conversation actually was we're vulnerable. This is not fun for me to sit up here and I don't I don't enjoy this the way I think people think I'm I Love this industry. I'm of this industry I've met so many wonderful people that we compete with that we work with that I really think we need this combo and we just don't have it going on at all. We really don't and I and I I will say this to the meta employees: it is your responsibility to be more forthright with the agency and the brands.

I mean that I've been very genuinely perturbed by the concessions that this platform has been willing to do for the industry and undermine their own product for. Revenue We can do better I I Understand that you don't think they may understand and I'm very empathetic to you thinking they don't care. It's not going to matter anyway because it's not in their best interest financially. I respect that.

but I I beg all of you to take the higher moral ground and speak your actual truth versus compromising what's going to get the sale done very much. I Love that you say you like to be right my husband or sister said about me so uh Cheers Everyone Have a wonderful weekend! Thank you thank you thank you very much.