The Death of Social Media and the Rise of Interest Media

21:14Gary Vaynerchuk:Yeah, Nike's at the top of my list of a big company that I think has fully lost its way running an old playbook. Like, everyone knows the name of the brand. No, no, I mean, well, that's... They have the chance to get back. Well, that's my whole point of everything. Once a brand, always a brand. I mean, by the way, that's an article. That's another cutout. Let's make a note. Once a brand, always a brand. This is my main thesis. This is why I love marketing. Like, this is my whole theory with Crocs. By the way, look what I'm wearing, Reeboks. Nobody wore a pair of fucking Reeboks for 10 years. Nobody wore a pair of Reeboks from 2005 to 2015.

21:54Gary Vaynerchuk:Nobody. Literally people wearing Reeboks from 2005 to 2015 wore it to be ironic.

22:05Gary Vaynerchuk:Peak Nike. Look at Crocs. Red hot. Crocs should be the case study for once a brand, always a brand. Dead, hot, dead. You know? Hot, excuse me, the way it really went was hot, dead. Got hot again three, four years ago. Kind of quiet again.

22:28North Face.

22:30Gary Vaynerchuk:Exactly, I mean there's a million examples. Like, that's exactly right. Champion. Champion was red hot. Then like ice cold. Then became cool again. You know? I'm waiting for Juicy Couture to come back.

22:52What industry kind of company do you feel like? Is it close to maintenance or bar? Is it like you should have been a big department store? Just because they're like kind of in that romance line.

23:04Gary Vaynerchuk:Well, I don't think of department stores that way. I think of it more as brands that need to go. I think you're thinking about it linear. Department stores because they already have the physical location. Notice what I did. I always said Philly cream cheese. I'm saying things that you don't think about need to have physical locations. Or do physical things. Or create festivals. Right? What if Bose headsets had created Coachella? You think that would have worked out?

23:38Gary Vaynerchuk:No, no, I'm saying Coachella. Coachella, as you know. It's as hot as it is. Imagine if Bozo and that. What that would have meant to their brand.

23:50Gary Vaynerchuk:Like, what if, what if Hershey's Candy Company had the best summer carnivals around the country? What if 25 summer carnivals popped up for the month of August outside of the suburbs of Miami and Dallas and New York, here in Jersey? And that was owned by Hershey's. So it's all, in essence, it's Hershey's Park as pop-ups as summer carnivals, but everything's being filmed. Could you imagine how powerful that is?

24:45Gary Vaynerchuk:I believe in it. I think it's, that's right. You know who's another brand to look at? Shark Ninja. while everybody has gone digital, they've opened up super stores, right? Kip, super stores. So like super retail locations. Now that's just one small way to think about it. It's not that everybody needs a store, but everybody needs a physical analog execution. I just gave you Hershey's and Summer Carnivals. I just gave you Bose. What if Bose built Coachella, right? To me, that's what we need to think about. What if Gatorade had started the pickleball league? That's another what if. What if Gatorade started the pickleball league?

25:34Gary Vaynerchuk:I think brands have to go into deeper territory. What if, what if, well, look at Planet Fitness, right? Like we just drove by Planet Fitness. like, you know, what happens if Under Arlots started Equinox? What if they actually own it? I think you're gonna see people blend into Analog more and more. What if Rolex owned this golf course? Right, and now this is a bougie golf course, but it's Rolex. You're gonna start seeing, what if high-end brands owned private clubs like Flybush Club? You know. Yeah, I mean, you see, when I was kind of going that way, that there are, I think, 40 or 50K a year, it's an exclusive membership.

26:30So it's more of a club. It's not just a place to work out. Yeah. So if you see, I was like, all right, I get your area. I'm convinced. Where do I start?

26:41Gary Vaynerchuk:I think it's crawl, run, walk, right? So it's a pop-up. You know, I don't, Philly Cream Cheese, if they agree with me, they do a pop-up bagel execution maybe in the Hamptons. They rent a place for two months. And they do it in July and August and they see what it feels like. Or they do it for like a week during, you know, again, a music festival or something that goes for five days. You know, or you start doing it for these four day weekends at Super Bowl, NBA, All-Star Weekend, you know, ultra music festival. You start doing it around these four or five day events or even a one day event. Maybe they do it as a one day pop up at the Kentucky Derby, right?

27:26Gary Vaynerchuk:And you just get a feel of like is there something there or there? It's a lot easier to do a pop up for a weekend than it is to build a whole store. But if you get three to four events and you feel like there's something there, I think you start really looking at that. This is a very emotional place for me. This is my, this is seven minutes from where I grew up. This was, this was the, this Metro Park. This is the train station that I went to every weekend coming from Boston to come here. My dad would pick me up on Friday nights and I would drive home and then I would work Saturday and then I'd go back to school on Sunday.

28:11I'm in college. College. This is it? You trained in NYC and then up from there?

28:17Gary Vaynerchuk:No, I went to school up in Boston. I would take the regular, not Excelli, because we didn't have money like that. Here, my dad would pick me up in Metro Park. I grew up though, seven, 10 minutes from here. Tingley Lane is 10 minutes from here. Four minutes down. This is literally within 10 minutes where I grew up. So my grandma, we picked her up all the time. She used to come from Queens. Was it Rego specifically? Yeah, it was Rego Park. It was that whole, you know, it's Rego Park 4, so it was right there. Quickly on, Jersey, while we're here, you can go here until pretty much through your 20s.

28:56Where? Jersey.

28:58Gary Vaynerchuk:I lived in Edison from 82 to 89. I moved to Hunterdon County, New Jersey where my parents live now from 90 to 94 then I went to college 94 to 98 I would stay in Hunterdon you know those summers I would work in a store then I came to then in the summer of 98 I moved into my apartment in 99 a couple months into that was in Springfield I was there from 99 to 2000 2003, I moved to Manhattan in 2004. It was part of the location of the store, I thought I saw you touch on this, to appeal to more of the affluent there, Short Hills, and also like the working class to the east. It wasn't a strategy. My dad just had an opportunity to buy a store.

29:49Gary Vaynerchuk:It just worked out that way. His first store was in Clark, which we, not too far from here, that was very blue collar. Springfield was half blue collar, half white collar.

30:06Okay, so back to creative. There's a lot of effort on the brand side.

30:15Gary Vaynerchuk:Both on the brand side and on the entrepreneur creator side, the value is to put out volume creative and see what works. Now, that's not spray and pray. It's not throw against me. You see how we do it? We put time and effort into our content. But we don't notice how on that edit, I don't think that edit that just got posted is as tight and as sharp as the example of one that I saw. I don't think it was done as well. But I didn't put feedback in there and say, hey, change it. I actually want to see how it does. And then do it again. And then maybe the fourth time I'm like, hey, let's go back to that first one.

31:02Gary Vaynerchuk:Let's do it exactly like that. Do that three times. I value the organic reach insight more than my subjective opinion. I value the organic views achieved data and the comments for qualitative, not just quantitative data, more than my subjective, intuitive, and this is where everyone's stuck. Entrepreneurs and creators are insecure about not getting a lot of views. Brands think still like television and this is their only chance to do it. Got it? That's it. They both do the same thing. They do it for different reasons. Creator doesn't want 17 views to show up publicly. Brand thinks they only have one chance.

31:59Gary Vaynerchuk:They still think like it's television. It's fascinating. Like, you still see the subjective views, subjectively dominantly. Oh, no, we can't use green because the CEO doesn't want us to use that. Right, or our main color is this red. So let's not use this other red. As far as subjectivity, leaning into that comment section, keeping an eye there is a lot more. You saw me do it right now. Literally a lot more helpful than what we think. Yeah, I mean, I value what we think. This is where it's nuanced. I value the subjective opinion. I don't value dwelling on it for too long because then it becomes less valuable than just posting it and making another edit.

32:52Gary Vaynerchuk:So it's both, right? It's and. But the subjective opinion, I don't put on a pedestal. And I value the actual results and the insights more than the opinion. So I'm like this, subjective opinion, it's not zero. It's my own barbell, but it's more like a scale. Right, whereas I think the world is.

33:21So, instincts can really work.

33:23Gary Vaynerchuk:And I've... Correct. And that's how you decide who has good instincts. You know, like, we have a read on who's coming up with good ideas and making good edits. We're just, we're in the first era where the art is measurable. It wasn't before. No, it was just whatever the guys in the suits wanted. Yeah, and what the working media dollars did to hide if it was good or bad. Like if you made a video and you were lucky enough that it was a commercial and Honda or McDonald's spent$50 million in media to amplify it and everybody saw it and you know like one could argue oh that's good but was it? Like was there a better video to be made that would have sold more cars or burgers?

34:18Gary Vaynerchuk:The answer is yes. Yeah. I'm sure you get this a lot. When a CEO says, I get where you're coming from, I just don't like it. Maybe not necessarily to you, but when a CEO says that's the creative point to you. What do you do? Well, in social, in social, it costs so little to make it for a CEO. You're like, can we at least post it? And this is where handles and platforms come in.

34:49When did you really start doing it?

34:53Gary Vaynerchuk:Probably a year, 18 months ago. Knew. Once I realized you didn't need followers to get news. You know? That changed everything. That was like the last couple years. That was the last couple years. You had it a lot harder, right? Way harder. Way harder. you had to fight to get into the feed, you know? Yeah. It's like the first mover advantage, but it's also, it's harder to be the first mover or not. Of course. You're creating the tunnel for everybody to ride through. Yeah. It took one F was however many years to get, how many subs? So that Disney and others did it in like a year just because the path was there.

35:38Gary Vaynerchuk:Of course. The consumer behavior had been created, you know? because you're done smartly, you're generally on team. Let's do 100 pieces of creative rather than four-hour meetings for three pieces of work. Generally, obviously, there's nuance. That is correct. Train's opinion, your opinion, my opinion are all valid until they hit the feed and then the views are the views are the views. I subjectively thought that our edit on this was nowhere close to as good as the one that I saw, the views are about to show that I was right. But I still didn't stop it. And I'm Gary Vee, a 20-year veteran who's really done it.

36:28Gary Vaynerchuk:And if I have the humility to say, team, don't shape, right? Think about that. Think about where I'm at. You knew right at first watch. Yeah, yeah. It wasn't sharp, right? Right? The example, it wasn't the same sharpness. That comes from just kind of be around it. Yeah. And then I can do this, right? Which is like, team I'm talking to Matt and Train about my belief that the video that we just posted wasn't gonna do as well as it could've because the transition wasn't as sharp as the example that I saw about this idea. Does everybody agree? Disagree? Let me know.

37:11just that voice memo. I don't know how many people that run companies like you would say that to that team. You know? I feel like you just get a lot of in the tower type even now. That's just having the discussion.

37:29Gary Vaynerchuk:Right, instead of like what the, you mean like just like classic. Or just not saying anything. Right. Yeah, well, you know, this goes to the point to me, I don't live in the tower. I'm in the dirt with you guys, you know? I don't resonate with the tower. I understand that I'm in my point in my career where I could tower in, but I think it's more fun to play backyard football in the mud than it is to eat caviar and champagne in the penthouse. You know, that's just who I am. I don't, by the way, I don't even think that that makes me better than, or I don't think that people should admire me for that.

38:14Gary Vaynerchuk:It just is. Sounds like a lot of this, we're going back to stop and make creative, is you post about this a lot, like good enough versus perfection, right? Good enough to make the next post better versus the insecurity of perfection that almost always fails and then and dies, right? I'm iterative versus delusional.

38:47Gary Vaynerchuk:Oh, I like this acronym of die. Delusional, insecure, entitled. You know, I think when you're delusional, insecure, and entitled, you die. I think we should write an article of like, DIE, why so many creative and marketing executives die. Because they're delusional, insecure, and entitled on how their opinions matter in the creative process. Instead of leaning into humility and curiosity and data and truth and merit. need a vowel in there to make a word out of it. But I think that's why most marketing executives die. Delusion, insecurity, and entitlement. It's so much more fair. It's just measurable.

39:45Gary Vaynerchuk:Like, it wasn't. It wasn't measurable five years ago. It's social changing within social. I don't know if we've written the manifesto that we don't live in social media anymore. We live in interest media. I think we should, you know, social media's dead. Interest media's here. That's the title. Let's go into it. Something like, whomever it is, Nick can say something. Yeah, lack of fear. Like, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's merit. I think that's a huge part of it. 100%. That's not part of it. That's why my content evolved. My early content was about tactics. And then I'm like, why aren't you all doing it?

40:28Gary Vaynerchuk:I'm like, oh shit. There's something real underneath all this. This is that family business vibes that is the warmth. It's really cool that you're in it right now and you can really sense it. And you're also not 22. You've worked in other places so you have context. Right? I always feel worse for the kids that come to Vayner. Yeah, because they don't know. and then they're 24, 25 and they go somewhere else and they're like, what the fuck? The level of taking it for granted is heavy. No, it's very evident right away. Yeah, it's a good level. It's very rare. There's a lot of, you know. Politics and bullshit, yeah.

41:20Gary Vaynerchuk:It's predominantly that. So maybe that's the answer to this which is like a practical step. can take you that maybe it really starts less about the overthinking. Well, I think for a corporation, they're not gonna have Gary Vee, the founder. Like, I can't, that's not practical advice. That might be advice to seek out an environment you might want. You know, an environment most people want can only be found in a founder-led business. Once the founder's out, once she or he is gone, now, the problem with a founder-led business is 80 % of the time, a founder's a psycho. It's even worse than a corporation.

41:56Gary Vaynerchuk:But man, when you find that 20 % founder-led business where you've got a kind-hearted, well-intended leader, whoo! Because even if I was the CEO of GE or Fiji Water, there's a lot of inertia, corporate stuff, public company, board. There's a lot of shit that I wouldn't be able to do that I do now. That is, it's not your baby, you know? It's like... Yeah, and I don't mind. Like, I'm a very passionate guy. I could adopt someone else's baby and treat it as my own. I could run a business that's not mine. My founding business. It's the rules of engagement of a public company, all this stuff that makes it tough.

42:38Gary Vaynerchuk:I mean, you know where I feel it a little bit? Doing business in New York and California. I don't control City Hall. I'm a pretty liberal dude in a lot of ways, but there's a lot of shortcomings. and you know, like people crying about bullshit and then litigation and like, when you're in the company, you're in a shitty spot in some of these states. That's why Travis was able to do what he did, right? Well, yeah, he could fight City Hall. That was a different version. This is more about why people are moving to Florida and Texas. You know, it's not about like they're trying to avoid taxes, though that is part of it.

43:16Gary Vaynerchuk:It's, you know, if somebody complains, If you were like Gary mistreating me right now, it's a headache. For me. You can literally make it up. Like literally our relationship right now. Think about that. In Florida and Texas, they're like, fuck you, prove it. In New York, they're like, you got it. Gary, you're suck. I didn't do anything. You know? It's tough. You touched on something there. As far as what you've talked about a lot, kindness. You can be at a task. Let me go back. because I didn't want to lose it. That's why I put, I can't fix the cultural thing every time, but I can fix the operational process to get to good work.

44:00Gary Vaynerchuk:And the operational process is, you have a revision, post a prior, make the revision, post another handle or platform. Actually, in fact,

44:13Gary Vaynerchuk:team for fun, because we're talking about this right now, Matthew and I, for articles. Let's make that same video revised a little bit harder, a little bit more dynamic, a little bit more similar to the other one. Let's just make three different versions of what we just made and let's post it on some of the platforms or handles. Go a little deeper on the kind of assassin on the court. It's super sweet to your teammates in the lab room or super kind to the fans or whatnot. Is that always sort of in your DNA? I just consider mom, dad. It was just, yeah. I was just, I've always been, I mean, my mom, as early as when I was five, six, seven years old, actively called me golden heart.

45:00Golden hearted boy.

45:01Gary Vaynerchuk:I was just always nice. And I see it. I see it in my son. I'm like, oh, I now know what my mom saw. Like, Xander, at a very early age, four or five years old, had empathy. Like, somebody got hurt, he's playing over here, he would go over. And so it's ingrained, but then you have to refine it. And I think some people start that way. You know what I did well? And again, could be DNA, could be parenting, could be circumstance. I didn't give up on people when I was treated with hate. I think people go into a shell. I think a lot of people start off, not everyone starts off potentially loving and open.

45:38Gary Vaynerchuk:It's what do you do when you're met with adversity, negativity, darkness? I doubled down on love, heart, light. I think a lot of people go into a shell and they protect themselves. This is what I think about insecurity and stuff. I was strong enough to your bullying. I was strong enough to feel bad for you and I'm gonna try to help you make a joke. Be like, yo, come on, versus fight back. Now, that doesn't mean that you're a walkover. Like, I'm not gonna let anyone punk me. you know but on my first reaction to your disrespect I don't feel like you're punking me I want to see if I can give you a little benefit of the doubt in fact I have a business meeting with someone who a year ago at Super Bowl like 13 months ago I didn't I remember the event did not realize it was the same human being that human being punked me so hard in a business dinner 10 years ago downright rude, didn't know the context of the situation as an investor of what I was getting.

46:51Gary Vaynerchuk:I got some advisory shares to help a business. This guy had a dinner just out of nowhere rudely abruptly shits all over me. Says, you brought no value, we gave you fucking shares, fuck you, like very rude. I ate it and calmly 12 people at a dinner, like trying to trash my reputation. I said, I appreciate where you're coming from. You know, chemicals raging. Like wanting to pick up like knife and like let's go. But have the strength to say, hey, I just don't think you know all the details. This founder that you're trying to protect is clearly not educating you on all the things that have been going on.

47:32Gary Vaynerchuk:You're coming from your ivory tower. You're not in the dirt. And this is your judgment on me because I'm an easy target. He apologized to me over a cocktail at the Super Bowl and I did not remember it was him. That, and the interesting part of that story is not only did I address it the way I addressed it, it was such a non-event to me that I didn't even recall it was the human being. It's one thing to have the emotional intelligence strength to be the bigger man. It's another thing to like have it be such a non-event that you don't even recall who it was. Talk about water off of your back, right?

48:14Gary Vaynerchuk:Because there are times I remember people razzing me that I do know. I'm like, I'm going to get you Stan later. You know, anyway. Wow, so like, if I'm someone reading this, and that's not, let's just say that's not who I would have been. You mean the 98 % of the people that are going to read this? Yeah, like how do I get there? By realizing that not everything's about you. It's crazy because I'm so Gary. and yet I think nothing's about me. Do you know what sane that is? Like if anyone on this train has the permission to potentially think something's about them, it's someone who has a lot of notoriety, right?

48:52Gary Vaynerchuk:Has a big platform, has had a lot of impact. I am who I am. People always say to me, Gary, you have no idea how many people you've impacted. I'm like, I sure do. Yet, I have the humility to understand that everyone's actions have nothing to do with it.

49:14That's a tough place for people to want to.

49:16Gary Vaynerchuk:Yeah, I think people that don't have the credibility or any data to support why they should not be humble are not humble. They're two separate. I'm just so grateful. I've been saying it more the last three, four years. It's very challenging to say out loud that your humility is your superpower because by nature you saying it potentially looks to people as how can you be humble if you're saying you're humility? But I don't know. There's that detachment. I'm analyzing myself without being within myself. I'm so grateful for it. I wonder if the whole thing falls apart without my humility. But that doesn't mean that I'm not capable of understanding my impact.

50:03Gary Vaynerchuk:My humility doesn't detach the ability to understand all the skills and all the good and the accolades, I'm aware of them. They're just so not defining of me that I'm able to not let it penetrate me. Which also means that I don't let the failures penetrate me. Did you realize the importance of separating Gary being a child for Gary Vee? Never. I only analyzed it after I realized it. there was never a conscious day of like oh I'm about to get known I you know I say this a lot and I mean it I'm not capable of not being myself and who I really am is a nice person you know that's it hey everybody if you enjoyed this podcast please go back and look at the prior episodes they're loaded I appreciate your attention and thanks for being part of this journey see you later