The Power of Nostalgia in Advertising

0:00How do you think about creating those moments for your kids, right? in a world where they can probably have everything, meet everyone, have any experience they want. They're not going to be built on the hard times and making it in America. Every story I just told you isn't a story about the struggle, even though they are. They're a story about love. The love of my mom, the love of my sister, I can replicate that for my children. It might be a fancier scene. My son might sit courtside instead of last row, but it's still love. What's going on, everybody? Welcome back to My Social Life. I'm your host, Jacob Kelly.

0:31Today on the podcast, we are joined by Gary Vaynerchuk. Some of you know him as Gary Vee. Some of you might know him as Gina. It's been a matter what you know him as. I'm very excited to have him on the podcast today. Gary, welcome to the show. Thank you for having me. I'm excited to have you. What I want to talk to you about today is a lot of nostalgic things. And so before we kind of get into that, I want you to describe to me what nostalgia feels like to you. But I want to know about it in a very specific context. I know every few years, I don't know when the last time you did this, but you used to drive by your childhood home and just kind of soak in the nostalgia.

1:01So when you're staring at the car window at 53 Tiberi drive, I believe it was in a triplex, the one on the left. What's that feeling when you're looking at your childhood home? I think nostalgia overall. And then specifically when I go to my childhood home and ironically, you brought that up because I haven't done it in a long time. I've been thinking about doing it recently. And when I go garage sailing this spring to do a couple of trash talks, I'm going to try to get to Edison and look at the home. It makes you think about simpler, better times, right? The reason you love your Gremlin or your Spider-Man or your house that you grew up in is it makes you think of simpler, better times.

1:38It's as simple as that. At its best, that's what nostalgia does. Or it might not even be simpler, it's just good times. It might be high school, it might have been complex, but it was when you got your first kiss. It invokes emotion that makes you smile. I've heard you say the 82 to 88, 89 is some of the fondest years of your life. So I kind of want to stick in that pocket for this interview. I know you used to set up signs down Oak Tree Road and Tingley Lane for the lemonade stand. I know you used to specifically set them at a certain height so the drivers would see them. I'm curious what was actually on those signs that attracted the drivers.

2:17You know, it was very smartly intuitive about marketing, even as a young kid. I remember taking note when my mom would drive me to the supermarket or just drive when I would be in the car, I would pay attention to other people's lemonade stand and garage sales signs looking out the window. And I quickly at like seven or eight knew that like you couldn't read them most of the times. I still take note of this by the way. So what the sign would say is it would say 10 cents as big as you could imagine. Like literally the entire sign was like lemonade 10 and I would use black marker like multiple times.

2:57Like I knew how to make it thick and big and simple and at eye level. Like, and I didn't need to put like what time it would be. I would take down a sign. I didn't waste that. I just knew what I was doing. And so like, it's wow, that's a really fun question for me because I haven't answered anything about that ever in my life. So it's a great job by you, Jacob, trying to bring out some different stuff. The signs on my lemonade were very inspired This is me as a theme. I watched as a five and six and seven year old. It took note and then when it's time for me to make my signs, I'm like I'm not gonna make those same mistakes.

3:33My people are gonna be able to read it. And then I brought that skill to the wine store. Before we got a computer with a printer, we used to make the signs on the displays by hand. And so when I was at the register, when there'd be downtime, I would make the sign. Regularly$8.99, on sale for$5.99. and I remember like how different my signs were when I first got to the liquor store versus what my dad had. Like they would take a regular Sharpie and put$5.99. Mine would be like three times the size of the sign. The$5.99 was like bigger than the previous sign itself. Like it was all that. I'm curious another place that you kind of look and watch and then replicate yourself or do better on is with baseball cards.

4:14I know you got into baseball cards at John Adams Middle School, right? In the baseball card club? That's exactly right. John Adams had a baseball card club. I think that was our science teacher. I can't remember exactly what the teacher was, but it was a huge, huge thing for me. Sixth and seventh grade. I would say sixth and seventh grade is when I became, like that's when you, you know, I talk a lot about lemonade, I talk a lot about washing cars, shoveling snow, but that's when there was a maturity to my, like that was a step. And that baseball card club was huge because, you know, that's what communities and that's what a school can really do.

4:48and brought people together. There was multiple kids in that club that I didn't know from other classes, other grades. And I very quickly understood that I was like, I remember very quickly saying like, I know more than these guys. I know more about baseball. I know more about, I've memorized the prices and the price guide. And then that's what I was starting to learn. Like, oh, I can talk my way into, like I could convince them to buy, give me that card for this card. I learned a lot during that era. So when you're at your first baseball card show at the JCC on Oak Tree Road, how do you set your table up there versus how you would set your table up now?

5:26You know, I don't vividly remember the table design. I remember vividly pretty early, and it gets a little blurry, right? Because this is 40 years ago or so. I remember quickly, and I don't think it was that show, but I think quickly I learned how, I definitely am always watching. It's what I do for a living. So I remember not knowing what the fuck I was doing. and I remember knowing what I was doing at the end of that weekend. So I came in super raw, had no idea price tags. I remember, actually now, this is a fun interview. Thank you for being so prepared. I remember not having sticker pricing on my cards.

6:15And I remember looking at the other table, like, oh, they got price tags on it. Like, you know, like, I was like, and like, you know, just like, this is where like not being scared in business, like I just went to a dealer, You remember, these are like 40 or 30 year old men and I'm like 11. I'm like, can I get some stickers? Thank you. You know, like stickering my stuff. It was, you know, but what that all evolved to, back to the liquor store, I'm a merchandiser. I think about end caps. I think about what product goes at the register versus the shelf versus the first end cap versus what do you see when you first walk in.

6:46All of that I learned at baseball card tables and shows and by year two, by eighth grade, I had a meticulous plan of like profit margin, what I wanted to sell. I knew people bought from the middle, not the bottom and the top, that I needed one big thing to catch people's attention because they would have a hundred tables and they're just going to walk by yours if you just have display cases. So I'd always have something fucking crazy. Like, you know, like I'd buy like a stuffed animal and just put it on my table, anything to stop you from walking by. And that's that I recall. So you learned a lot from the lemonade stands.

7:19You learned a lot from the baseball card shows. is I'm curious what you learned from the pig farm. Because if I'm not mistaken, your dad bought a pig farm when you were in the eighth grade and you were shoveling pig shit your eighth grade summer. Yeah, it wasn't a pig farm. It was my dad bought, like we moved to the woods and there was a farm on like, it wasn't like an active farm, but there was like rundown farm stuff. And my dad, you know, this is 1989. So my dad is only, he's 36. And so he's, and he came to America. So that's 89. He came to America in 78. It's only 11 years removed from him being in Russia.

7:51In 1970, USSR, everybody had roosters and pigs and you went to the bazaar. It was clean eating and old school eating. The stuff that's now trendy and expensive. Like farm to table for real real. So he was into that, he thought that was cool. I was like this is the worst, I lost all my friends, we're in the middle of nowhere. And then he gets a pig and then he tells me I have to clean up the pig shit. And I'm like what the fuck? and that was like real hard manual labor like every fucking three days I'd have to go in there it'd be a ton of hay it would all be shit infested I'd have like some bullshit boots on that were like fourth generation pass downs I'd fucking rake it once in a while like you'd go in and like the fucking shit would hit your lip and I'd be like I'm eating fucking pig shit what is my life and like you know but these are all the things that I look back on of like of course I outwork everybody I fucking worked my whole life everything was work work work work work it's what all my parents knew they still had good values and hard work and like nothing that is going on with me is confusing.

8:49It was all built from the scratch. Can you tell about your family trip to Disney World that you took with your mom and your sister? Me and my sister and my mom, my dad didn't go because he was working, took our first family vacation in 85, 86, I was like fifth, my sister was second grade, something like that. This was like us winning the lottery and getting a private plane and a mansion and meeting every select, like going to Disney World, like you have to say McDonald's was like going to like Aspen for a month for our immigrant family. So for Disney World, we stayed in the Holiday Inn. My family didn't have credit cards back then.

9:30My mom ran out of cash by the third day because the Disney tickets were more expensive than she thought. She didn't eat for four days. I ate like a half a sandwich. I remember playing Punch Out in the arcade. I remember being scared to swim. So I was like in the kiddie pool with like two year olds. I remember singing Phil Collins One More Night, the night before we went. And I remember it's like, that's my crew, right? That's 82 to 89. It was me, my mom, my sister. AJ was born in 87, so he wasn't there for the majority. And when he was, he was one and two. My dad worked every minute. I barely saw him.

10:07And so my life was my mom and sister. my childhood as my mom and sister and that was the crown jewel moment of our childhood. We went somewhere and first time I was on a plane that I remembered. Obviously when I immigrated I was on a plane but I didn't recall and like it was just a big deal and I'm just grateful for it. Like again, I had dinner with my sister last night. I had a really nice bottle of wine. We were in a fancy place here in Hudson Yards and I looked at the bill and I was like this is more money than me and this girl, my sister. were spent on for eating out the dinner in our childhood.

10:47Red lobster is only so expensive. And that was about as fancy as we got during those times. And so it's really cool. I'm really grateful for my humble beginnings. And I'm really grateful for you to make this interview be about those early times. I appreciate that. I'll ask you one last question. I want to be over time here. How do you think about creating those moments for your kids, right? in a world where they can probably have everything, meet everyone, have any experience they want. I don't want them, they're not going to be built on the hard times and making it in America. Every story I just told you isn't a story about the struggle and the appreciation and the humility, even though they are.

11:32They're a story about love. the love of my mom, the love of my sister, right? The love we had for each other. I can replicate that for my children. It might be a fancier scene. My son might sit courtside instead of last row, but it's still love. And so I think that parents that go through or people that go through generational changes, I feel like too many of my friends from that era that came up with nothing hold on too much and try to create fake environments for their kids, but you can't replicate it. Things change, but you can hold the true values. And that's what I focus on. I saw the head nod there.

12:10Is someone waiting for you? Yeah, they're here. I will let you go, Gary. Thank you very much. Thank you, my friend. It's been an absolute pleasure. Real pleasure. Wish you well. Take care. Bye-bye.

12:32Thank you.