How to Capture Consumer's Attention In an Ever Changing World

0:28You think the attention's going away from the screen, announcement. I know several years ago, a lot of you bought 12 books of 12 and a half to get the NFT, the book games NFT. I also know that a lot of people have dropped off on their journey with VFriends, which is a massive mistake because what we're doing on Burn Island and what we're doing on base with book games is remarkable. So you need to go to VEEFriends, VFriends.com slash old books. Go to VFriends.com slash old books with an S. You will go to that landing page and we will help you explain if you are trying to figure out where your NFTs are, how to bring them over to the website, and how to start activating them so that you can start using them for all the incredible exchanges and draws and raffles and experiences that we're doing for people that actually own the book games.

1:17So please go to vfriends.com slash old books where you can start your journey on reactivating your book games journey. When I think about social media, I'm far less emotional about it I think than the rest of the world. I think it's a heavy term for a lot of people. People are very passionate about it whether pro or con. To me it just really represents the current state of where consumers attention is. And so the way I navigate it was the same way I navigated building my father's liquor store. When I built my father's liquor store from three to$60 million in business, I ran newspaper ads and did radio and did direct mail.

2:04And then in the late 90s, very quickly, I realized the internet was here and that became email marketing and Google AdWords. So to me, the way I think everyone in here needs to navigate social media is, well, if you're a B2B company in here and you're not posting three or four times a day on LinkedIn to extract the value of awareness and lead generation and consideration and brand building, then you're leaving opportunity on the table when the cost of awareness is almost zero. That's up to you. You know, to me, I'm not overly emotional if people are making TikToks or YouTube shorts or engaging on Twitter or posting on LinkedIn.

2:50I just think it's a wasted opportunity of growing your business. So what I spend my time on is reverse engineering where consumer attention is and trying to fill those pipes that the attention is in with content that is compelling. Designing a postcard for direct mail in 1997 is exactly the same thing I'm doing except I'm trying to make a video that will get organic reach on TikTok. But it's still the same game, which is I want to get in front of you, whether in a small setting like this or in the landscape of the internet. And I want to say something that's compelling enough to you that it creates a relationship, which then may be monetizable, which may not be monetizable, and both are fine.

3:35But, you know, I'm fascinated by the naivete and the underestimation of social media, brand building and sales done by the businesses around the world. And it continues to be an opportunity because it's underestimated by the biggest brands in the world. Thank you. Hey everybody, I hope you're enjoying the podcast right now. Make sure you follow the podcast. That's why I'm interrupting. Let's keep going on this show, but follow the podcast. It'll make my mom super happy. And you mentioned how you create content to fill up those pipelines. Influencers took on the world five, six years ago. Right now we have a creator economy where it's fueled by TikTok because obviously that's where creators kind of have an ecosystem.

4:21How do you feel between producing content as a business versus creators producing content and consumers getting on board now? I like them both. My biggest strategy in life is never let somebody else have more leverage than you have. So I prefer every business here left and was better at making their own content, not relying on an influencer. Comma, my second favorite thing in business is to buy underpriced attention. it. There's a staggering amount of influencers that are very underpriced when you do a brand deal with them because they create the content and the distribution and create the consideration and relevance.

5:03So the answer to the question is 1A and 1B. 1A, if you put me in the court, first of all, my answer to everything is both and and. So it's not one or the other. I'm very much and in both mindset. However, if somebody said, please pick one, the answer is very simple. You have to be good at it because the second you're at the mercy of someone else, you're at the mercy of someone else. Clear. I'll also say, just to add a nuance, if you yourself are good at it, you then have the ability to judge if an influencer is doing a good job at it. The biggest mistake that most people make is they're outsourcing marketing at a time where the world is commoditizing most things because of the speed of technology except the ability to be a communicator.

5:54You know, and so a lot of our businesses in here are dramatically more commoditized than they were 30 years ago. It's just the way the world's working. Globalization, technology are just commoditizing things in a way that is very profound. And what that's gonna leave with is whomever is communicating best is gonna grow because the product and services are just not distinguishable enough. So are you a fan of in-housing marketing? I mean, we have a couple of agencies and services in the crowd. So I just want to make sure they understand their future potential. Look, I think, you know, I think anybody who's capable of doing anything at a better cost should do that.

6:35You know, what we've seen in in-housing in the last decade in agency land from my perspective is people have in-house the wrong thing. People have decided to in-house social media because they don't think it's serious. Meanwhile, it's much harder than doing print or commercials. In-housing your creative agency is a piece of cake. You hire a strategist and a head creative and you don't need to pay a creative agency record. In-housing social is hard. Social is hard. You know, like, it's really hard for social media to be a driver of business. which is why so many people don't take it seriously. They don't realize its impact and then number two, every time they've done it, it hasn't worked because they haven't really allocated a lot of money or energy towards it and they had no idea how to judge it and most people aren't good at it.

7:24So, you know, I think in housing, whether that continues or not, is kind of irrelevant because if you're good at what you do, there will always be a market for it. I think where agencies have to be careful in general is a lot of agencies are not providing enough ROI to the cost that brands are paying them. I really believe that. And I think that's something we all have to look ourselves in the mirror and say, is this something that they can't replace internally for less costs? And if they can, they will. And they should. Is there no concern about the talent pool being a bit stale once you do some in-housing?

8:07versus kind of getting some more fresh ideas? I think it's the biggest vulnerability of being in-house. When I come up with strategies, I'm looking at 800 different businesses across many different industries and we spend a billion dollars in media. You know, good luck. Go spend a billion dollars in media to like get a sense. We pump out thousands of pieces of creative a day and have quantum call feedback against that. That's going to make us sharper than somebody who's posting for the same company every day, of course, on the flip side, they have better intent. An employee for a company is going to care more than an agency cares about a third-party client.

8:48So there's pros and cons, like everything in life. I think the bigger issue is both in-house and outside agencies, we have not gotten to the more complicated conversation around social media marketing, which is most of it's not strategic. It's just not. most people don't understand the creative variables. Most people do not understand the platform nuances. Most people don't understand the creative variables that actually drive consideration. People are just posting shit. And that's why bosses are struggling with it. They don't fully know because they don't deem themselves an expert, but they can tell in their stomach, in their intuition, that their internal and external people aren't there.

9:35Do you know what I mean? They can smell that it's just like, why did we post that? And most times people don't have a good answer. There's not a single thing that I've ever posted in my life that there isn't a specific reason why. And I think we do not have enough thoughtfulness in marketing, period. I would say that's the biggest issue with branding and marketing overall. I don't think this is a social media phenomenon. I think billboards are a problem. I think print ads are a problem. and I think commercials are the biggest problem. I think people are just making videos they want to make. And so I think there's a lot of work to do in advertising.

10:13Hey everybody, hope you're enjoying the podcast right now. Make sure you follow the podcast. That's why I'm interrupting. Let's keep going on this show but follow the podcast. It'll make my mom super happy. So we spoke a lot about the current and a bit about the past. What are the three things that probably none of us in the room have looked into as headlights in the space that you think that we should pay attention to? This is tough because I'm a big fan. I'm not, you know, it's funny. I'm a humongous fan of today. I really dislike yesterday. I think almost everyone puts yesterday on a pedestal.

10:50I think there's a small percentage of putting tomorrow on a pedestal, which I also dislike. You know, a lot of times people think I'm ahead. I'm not really ahead. It's just that I spend so much time talking about today in a world that's almost completely built on yesterday. And so I struggle, you know, the metaverse last year. Everyone's like, metaverse, metaverse. I'm like, there's like seven people in the metaverse out of eight billion. Like, you know, that's not interesting. So tomorrow, what I would say about tomorrow is you have no shot at being successful at tomorrow if you're not successful at today.

11:24So it's gonna be very hard for me to get you excited about AR filters and the metaverse when it's time and AI-oriented creative if you haven't made a commitment to social media marketing properly in 2023. Making the jump from television commercials or conference booths or whatever you're doing to jumping to the world that's in front of us is very challenging. It's like running a marathon without ever training for it. And so I think a lot of businesses on the precipice of being disturbed and disrupted and have no clue about it. Very similar to the way that network television completely underestimated streaming, much like the entire transportation industry, grossly underestimated Uber.

12:12Yeah, I just, the retail sector really underestimated the internet in the early 2000s. I think most businesses are dramatically more compromised than they think. I don't care what exclusive deals you have, what partnerships you have, how long you've been in business. technology is coming at such an aggressive rate. I just, I'm surprised people aren't taking it more seriously. So that's the first chapter of marketing, which is about today. So that's a good summary on that front. Tell us about your point of view when it comes down to kids and screens. It's three years ago when we met with half of the folks in the room, kids and screen was a big topic.

12:50And I think most of us are parents here, at least pet parents, maybe no screens there. But what are your thoughts about kids and screens three years later? My point of view on this has not changed. I believe that parents should parent.

13:08That was the same answer three years ago, so I don't know why I have to stop. And I'll tell you for the people that weren't there or remember the conversation, and I didn't, you know, like, I just don't understand why parents continue to blame technology instead of themselves. If you're worried about screens, don't let your kids have screens. Right. You know, this concept that parents are just reinforcing a major issue in our society, which is a complete and utter lack of accountability. If you don't like TikTok, take it off your kids. You know, iPad. If you don't want them to be on screens, take it away.

13:50The issue is not screens. The issue is hypocrisy. you can't talk about screens all day and say how shitty they are and then when you have your friend over and the kids are making noise you throw the ipad at them so i think you know i think what's happening in the world is we are getting better and better and better and better at pointing fingers it's the government's fault it's this religion's fault it's this tech company's fault it's this app's fault it's this influencer's fault we've gotten so good at blaming absolutely everything but ourselves that we're starting to hit a tipping point because one of the things is we've got the reason people are so unhappy is because they're judging everyone we're all judging each other which is actually just a tell that means you're judging yourself we're just in this perpetual thing and so you know i think screens are incredibly positive and incredibly negative the same way i feel about everything um i think religion is that way i think government is that way.

14:53I think society is that way. It's a boring thing to watch people blame screens. I think we have to start the beginning of a new chapter in modern society. I think it's time to start blaming ourselves. And the second you blame yourself, well, then you can start controlling the outcome you want. But blaming screens, but then not enforcing it in your own home when you have 100 % control because you're worried about your child being mad at you for a little while seems soft. There we have it. Alright, you mentioned a bit about the metaverse. Not to mention, I apologize, one last thing. What world do you think your children are going to be living in?

15:40Screens are going to be amateur hour. Yeah. If the metaverse is right, which I think it's very hard to see a world of why it would not be right. Because I would argue we live in the metaverse now. How many hours are you spending looking at a screen? Seven.

15:56So, you know, like, where do you think this is going? I would be flabbergasted if in 60 years people aren't living in a ready player one world. It would make no sense to me. Other than vacationing out of it. But like, technology only goes in one direction. We're not gonna ride horses down the highway. It's not happening. You know, nobody's giving up their phone in this room. You might do it for a week to make a political statement. But you're not giving it up. So, that's how I say it. And does that feed into, I know you're big on culture, specifically on business culture, but also social culture, in terms of your ecosystem.

16:41Talk to us about, if you don't mind, talk to us about that and how you think the culture impact will have on businesses in the room. knowing that ultimately it's all about the street? Yeah, I mean, look, I think, you know, it's funny, I was a very poor student, which was very weird for immigrants in the U.S. at the time I was growing up, but there was always one class I was really good at, which was history. And I never really understood until I got older, and I was like, oh, I'm using it as pattern recognition. You know, I don't think people realize how far the world comes in short periods of time.

17:16It may be long for us because we get to hang out for 80 to 100 years but the iPhone's 15 years old. Like 16 years ago, we all walked around Earth and did not have the internet in our hand. It's like two seconds ago. Right? The internet, I went through my entire childhood, all of it, into high school. Never was on the internet. Not once. You know, so, So, you know, I think how is it gonna affect it? It's gonna affect it massively. I don't think people understand how profound the changes in our world are. You've got people who are more attached to communities on the internet than they are attached to religions or countries.

18:01This is a profound shift in human, and by the way, that's good. Like, that's what always happens. The world always evolves. Like, I mean, we're in a country that's like four seconds old. We're like literally in a country that is, I'm older than. Like, you know, I just, you know, I think people are really fascinating to me. They think that the world will never change in the moment they're in. They take no history into account. Like, think about 40 years ago. Nothing on earth feels like it's similar to what was going on because of the landscape of the internet. Well, think about what 40 years from now is gonna look like now that the internet and blockchain exists.

18:46These are humongous. We have decentralized servers. Servers at scale that can run the world the way the internet does that nobody owns. Do you know how profound that is? But people would rather get caught up in the value of a single NFT and make a decision about the entire Web3 movement based on greed. You know? So speaking of NFTs. Yes. VFriends. Yes. speak to us if you don't mind about that you know two years ago 18 months ago whatever it is now like I saw the NFT thing coming it was like okay this is going to happen people are doing it now and I did the same thing I did with the internet in 97 when I launched my dad's liquor store online I did the same thing I did in 2005-06 when I saw Web 2.0 coming I realized I had to be involved I had to do something for me to understand it because I'm not capable of learning by listening.

19:45I'm not going to study it. I have to live it. So I'm like, okay, I'm going to do an NFT project. And then what happened was what? And so where I defaulted into there was similar to what I've done for the last 15 years, which is how do I provide value? If I provide the most value, well, then everything I want will happen. And so the first thing I thought was, well, I don't want it to just be an NFT. I want to use the smart contract. So if I sell an NFT collectible, I want it to also have real world value. So with VFriends, what I did was, if you bought the NFT, you got a ticket to three years of a conference called VCon.

20:23And it's become a big deal. It's like a big conference. And it's very valuable to the people that get the tickets for it. So that was good. On the intellectual property, I wanted to create something that meant something to me. So I created a universe, VFriends, of almost 300 different characters. And to make it make sense to people, I would say it's a mix between Sesame Street and Pokemon. Right? It's these characters, patient panda, accountable ant. The things that I care about, what I just talked to you about with screens and parents, I signed a kid's book deal with HarperCollins, and I'm gonna tell the story about accountable ant, which is this aunt that understands that the things that aren't working for him are his fault which I think would be very good to teach seven year olds and so with VFriends I'm excited over the next 30 to 40 to 50 years I'd like to give it a real try and see if I can create an intellectual property that hopefully before I die is in the same sentences of things like Marvel or Lucas or Disney and obviously I'm not naive and I'm not unaware that those are some of the biggest IPs that have ever been created.

21:39But for me, I'm going to try to do that for the next 50 years and see where my talents take me. So VFriends is my intellectual property of characters that I hope bring a balanced point of view on humanity, which is things like it's important to rest and not have anxiety, but it's also important to understand that if you're going to achieve something meaningful, Hard work is part of the equation. Right now, the world doesn't understand how to have both of those things be true. I think it's very easy for those things to be true. And so I'm going to use my universe, hopefully, to bring the world back to the middle as it keeps wanting to pull away on opposite directions.

22:23I didn't know how deep the VFriends thing went, so that's pretty interesting to know, and I'm sure the audience as well. So if an NFT doesn't have a tangible utility, do you think that's not going to fly, or that's not going to have a purpose? I think 1 % will fly. An Andy Warhol painting has no tangible value. It's a thing. But why is it$400 ,000 versus this for a dollar? Collecting is real. You know, a sneaker 40 years ago was not worth anything. Today, a first Michael Jordan in good shape sneaker is worth a lot of money. Sports cards and football stickers. You know, Mo Salah's rookie card is worth money because people want it.

23:05People collect. And that's a very big economy. It's a trillion dollar economy. It's a trillion dollar economy. People collect things. So I think a very small percentage, 1 % of all the NFTs that have been made in the last seven years could go on to be incredible collectibles. But, you know, that's the way most things are in collectibles. 1 % of comic books that have been made for the last 70 years are very, very valuable. Most are not. 1 % of trading cards, 1 % of art. And that makes sense. I think that will be big and that will be a trillion dollar business. Today, our kids buy things on Fortnite and 2K and Madden and Roblox and Mike, right?

23:49Bless you. They buy digital collectibles to express themselves. The same reason somebody buys a Rolex and a fancy car. There's the car and there's the watch, but then there's the expression that comes along with owning it. Digital will scale that. So I think that'll be a big thing. Collectibles. I think the next big thing is gonna be tangible utility. Many years ago when you first saw a QR code you were like okay it's a squiggly thing. Today when you get on the airplane you have a QR code. It is a utility. We don't use a piece of paper like a lot of us grew up. It is a QR code. one day we will have NFT readers and NFTs will replace it because NFTs are a tangible item that can also be transferred.

24:38It might be a collectible. You know, to celebrate a 50th year of being in existence, you may issue on Emirates a collectible flight card for a full year and then maybe that artist in 20 years becomes famous and then that tangible thing that sits in your Apple wallet now, all of a sudden it becomes a collectible. So there'll be reasons because then that company can also get the royalties on the sale. So there's a lot of logic to why it will be something. Receipts from luxury goods. If I go to the mall and buy a$20 ,000 handbag and they give me a paper receipt, that goes in the garbage. That doesn't mean anything.

25:17If they gave me an NFT receipt that was done by a meaningful artist, maybe that means something. It's going to create things that we can't think of right now. I just gave you a couple.

25:30I went to the World Cup in Qatar, right? But that little paper thing that got me in, that's somewhere in my shelf now, I already lost it. Where is it, right? Whereas if my ticket was an NFT, somebody could bid on it right now as a collectible. So I think we'll see use cases in the next decade and I think we'll see more and more. Plus it's a smart contract. Just to really put in everyone's mind, title insurance, deeds. There's a lot of things that NFTs, today we think of NFTs as one thing. But again, for the OGs in here, in 1997, we thought of websites meaning one thing. It was like a one-page flyer, right?

26:11They evolved. NFTs right now are like silly collectibles to most people, I understand. But I think over the next 20 years, they'll evolve into something that all of us will interact with day to day. First, I'm a huge fan. I was the first one to sign up today. Thank you. Thank you for signing up last year. Thank you. Thank you for being here and giving us your time. Just a quick question about our kids. Yes. Because like 90 % of what the kids are learning at school is going to be done by AI in a much easier way. You're very nice. Okay, 99%. So my question is how can we direct them into things that you think AI is not?

26:50because for me the future is going to be AI and human doing things together. So what part on the human side can we push our kids? So I think the first thing we have, my point, one man's point of view, and I love talking in general, never one-on-one. Giving someone advice on how to parent their child is the worst. One-on-one. Macro, there's clearly themes. A couple things. Right now, schools across the world are banning chat GPT. What can we do? We can push against the schools and have a meaningful conversation. Here's what I mean by that. Schools are banning chat GPT because they don't understand it.

27:31Right? They're banning it because they think it's cheating or it's undermining what they're selling. They're selling memorization of commodity of information. Schools are selling for our children to memorize information that is commodity because it's at the fingertips of our phones. Meanwhile, chat GPT and AI is about to teach the world the value of critical thinking. Chat GPT sucks if you don't input thoughtful, critical thinking. So we have this moment in time right now where we can literally teach children how to critically think. The singular thing that actually matters when we get older. Yet, we're just watching, and as a matter of fact, most parents are cheering the banning of chat GPT because they fear new things, they're lazy to look into it, or they're just not thoughtful enough to realize what the fuck is going on.

28:38So I think a couple things. One, it's gonna be hard for maybe us to, you know, for you to find all the parents in the school to convince the school enough, that's gonna be hard. But what you do at home is not hard. And it's no different than screens. If a child feels from a parent, when the school is saying no to something, that they come home and you're saying yes to it, and you're teaching them, while you're learning yourself, by the way, of how to use these tools, it's invigorating because most kids, you know, it's really funny. I believe schools, if you really look at it, Most kids start off not fully wanting to conform and then they're just beating down into it.