Tools & Strategies To Unleash Your Creativity

0:00Creativity is a challenge. One of the reasons I find that I'm good at creativity is because I spend the majority of my time listening But if you're not spending like an hour reading like the comments going into reddit Google trends You need to stay curious because the curiosity will trigger the things you'll make another thing to give a lot of thought to You know if you're finding yourself like fuck it goes right into I got to go listen And so search and social is profoundly strong tick tock and Instagram searching. I really like looking at Google trends Those are some other things on my mind great so team I really I just appreciate you all being in here I just want to honestly spend some time make myself available for any maybe potential Q &A maybe touch on some important points but I think you know a lot of things that are on my mind is using this as an opportunity to really create clarity for anybody individually in here and really start to like think through some of the things that I want to speak to the whole company on and like in all hearts and so it's always fun to like, you know, for me the most important stuff is for me to stay close and you know, it's hard when you have 2 ,000 employees and ways on a different time schedule than I am when he's in Singapore and as you can imagine, it's challenging on the flip side.

1:16I'm sure you've heard it or maybe you've heard it or maybe you're like Abby and you've been around long enough to know it. Like I have a knack for staying close and it's because of reps like this and I have many different versions of meetings like this. Plus, it's what I do for a living so I'm trying to pay attention. The themes I'm seeing from my perspective is, and I'm sure you've been feeling it already because I've been pushing it a little bit, but when I say you've been feeling it because I've been pushing it a little bit, let me give you some insight to how I think. I'll see something like, hmm, I'll literally be on a flight from a client meeting at like 10.30 at night, go look at 29 accounts, look at the content, and say to myself, I wonder if I went to every creator and asked them, why'd you make this?

1:57what the answer would be. And it doesn't come from like a cynical or like negative, like I'm the, you know, it comes like, do I think, like when I see it, I've been doing it for so long and I feel like I've been doing it well for so long that sometimes it's just easy. Think about anything you've been doing long enough to know like you can see it if you know it or not. You don't know every detail, but if like you play the piano well and somebody sits down and starts playing piano, you're like, you know what I mean? Like you just know whatever that may be. so enough of what we put out into the world I'm like hmm and then you started seeing things over the last hundred days of things like we don't need a creator in every piece of content of course there's that you know you've been in your own content before you got like some people are naturally better at it even if you're great at it right that's like if I was the creator literally actually me with my actual audience for blue bottle I still should only be in 50 % the creative so you can imagine at you know and when you're doing what i was doing just to take you a step back 40 years ago this company could not do social media we had gone full pledge for being the best at it in 2011 12 13 in the world to being much more like a classic creative agency because i was bringing that element into the agency and then in the last three years we're on the journey now of like being the best of both worlds kind of right social media at the set social first creative AOR.

3:27Preference being we're winning with CCs. They're giving us insights. We do campaign work. But not demonizing us being forced to have Wanda and Wei come up with a campaign idea for Subway in Singapore. Not preference because they're guessing. But not demonizing it. We go through the ebbs and flows in the last three years of teaching that. At first nobody cared about social at all. Then a year ago it would be like whoa you can't come up that's bad if you do classic you know so we're just going through it we're just in a process you guys are all in the perfect age of understanding of going through the process of life you're different than you were 24 months ago you're gonna be really different in five years i promise you and so that's the agency i want to get together with a core group of creators because it's incredibly important that this group is successful to me if this agency in seven years does not have all of its creative directors come from the place you all started then it's not the company that I wanted to build so I have a very deep passion of this group being highly successful both for Vayner but honestly for all of you you chose this career for a reason it might not even be what your destiny is you might realize you don't want to do this you may You may realize you want to be an account.

4:44You may realize you want to be an airplane pilot. I don't know. But many of you will stay in this field. And here's what I know, and this is something I fucking know. In 15 years, when the majority of you are still gonna be just in the prime of your career, most of the industry is gonna look like us. And that is very good for all of you. My preference is most of you are here and we're that big. 40 ,000 people. But my understanding and common sense and living life knows many of you won't. But I'm gonna feel awesome in 15 years when many of you email me when you just got your ECD role at XYZ and you remember this conversation like you fucking said it.

5:28So I know that to be true. That excites me because then I feel like I'm doing the right thing. I wanna do well but it feels good that there's gonna be a lot of collateral upside for the people along the way. And I know that to be true for 100 different reasons but again, having someone like Abby in the room, like Abby knows how many people started here as entry level as well and have gone into other places and doing things and that was off a zero base. Like that was 25 years away from what I think is gonna happen. We're now starting to get into striking distance. So my thinking is the following.

6:01I have a very big responsibility to create as much clarity which is going to be, there is a macro clarity of what we're trying to accomplish and then you're gonna walk out of here and there's gonna be the day-to-day thing that Todd Kaplan or Frito or Ford is making you do. And what we have to do is not be devastated by that, but always remember what we're trying to do and that's the journey we're on. You know, I think the normal day-to-day politics of like my creative director doesn't let me do this or the client doesn't let us do cool shit, that's, you signed up for agency life, that's our life, right?

6:39People are always like, oh, but you can always convince them. I'm not convincing them because I'm Gary Vee. I'm Gary Vee because I convinced them because I knew why I was posting. Let me say it nice and slow one more time. And I see that it landed, but I want you to hear this because this is how you can do what I did. When everyone's like, yeah, but you come in and you convince them, I'm like, because you're Gary Vee. This is the senior execs talking to me. I'm like no no no I became Gary Vee the way you're saying this because I convinced him because I knew the why it's very hard to be like oh we can't do any cool shit and then when there's any poke and prod of like why do you want to do this there's no answer I want to use this meeting to start the process for you to be able to answer that which then changes everything right and let me give you a deeper insight well this will be cool is like has validity cool to me is a slang term for it will be relevant but is it relevant to the right audience are they even looking for more of those customers do you know do you know if Doritos is looking for more young male customers or have they and then asking those questions even if they aren't answered in email form is massive for your career because it's practice for what you always want to know.

8:06I don't even say words without knowing why I'm saying them, let alone doing content. So that's the exciting part for me, the why. One of the biggest areas that we're not doing well that I'd love this group to take the lead on because I believe it can is creating content for the sake of answering a question we want to know. the number one reason i have confidence in sock right now is because i don't know if this has hit everyone's radar i know we're in motion but we're going to be doing kind of a relevance report each month for clients that strategy is going to lead i think it's going to pretty much put the nail in the coffin in a great way of like sock being something everybody wants to work with because it's going to give people consumer insights if you think about all the times of of your time here, if this has happened, there's a reason it got the best reaction.

8:59When you were able to speak to did you know that a lot of people think X or Y or Z, that is highly valuable to somebody that's running a business, right? So A, just the concept of creating content for the sake of understanding. This is why I love Instagram polls and stories. Very lightweight, nobody gives a fuck about their stories. You know what I mean? so the politics aren't there. You slab a little pole on top of whatever creative you have and then you can come back and be like 83 % of people like orange. You know? So that's something to think about that I highly, highly recommend. The other thing is creativity is a challenge.

9:43One of the reasons I find that I'm good at creativity is because I spend the majority of my time listening. But if you're not spending like an hour reading like the comments, going into Reddit, Google Trends, you need to stay curious because the curiosity will trigger the things you'll make another thing to give a lot of thought to you know if you're finding yourself like fuck you know like anytime I'm like fuck it goes right into I gotta go listen and so search and social is profoundly strong TikTok and Instagram searching I really like looking at Google Trends you know I think I might have shared that with the whole company the other day or something you know so those are some other things on my mind questions and you can go very narrow because that's when I think there's the most learning.

10:27So don't think it's too niche or doesn't matter or he won't know, like just ask. My friend. What are your feelings on, let's say we post a piece of content that we are so solid about the why we think that it's done its job based off of like the CMing afterward, good response, but just not a lot of impressions, not a lot of engagement. Like specifically I'm thinking about threads right now. Yeah. is we're just not getting a ton of impressions, but the engagement that we are getting is super wholesome, a really tight-knit Pepsi community, honestly. So I don't know, are we like... I'm happy with that.

11:06Okay. I think of that as an and. So what I will tell you is, if I had your job, which is ultimately what I would like to see this job be able to do, if I had your job, in obviously I'm in advanced state of my career creatively but I'm making 13 piece of content a day now seven of those are threads and Twitter for the purpose of insights and or a piece of content but the reason I like that is I don't think anybody in this room understands how much capacity they have in their work day to make because to get there you have to, it's almost like, you know, way, I'm sorry, I know we just used the jujitsu reference in this client meeting.

11:52And I'm not really that into martial arts, but I'm gonna use another one. You've gotta get into that space where you're just fluid and zen. Right, like the reason you don't make so much is you're early in your career, there's a ton of politics at a corporation and a client. And it's just like, it can be like hard to think about like what, you're not thinking any, you're already past the point of thinking of what you think will work, and you're thinking about what will they say yes to.

12:19Right? And so why I'm trying to get you to go hardcore into cohorts and why is that is how you actually break it. You haven't earned the ability to be free. Right? There's such audacity and entitlement at the creator level as a whole as if anyone's earned the ability to do it. The way you're gonna earn it is being unstoppable at why. that means you leave and you go to account now or strategy or the client or however you want to do this and be like alright let me take a step back the fuck are we trying to accomplish here what are we trying to sell to whom and where like I don't even go into meetings without like Pepsi and I'm like mug I'm like who are we selling it to what retailers are carrying it what regions have it done like I don't what use cases can you use root beer for obviously root beer float obviously like it's business questions you're not asking business questions but you need to if you want to get to the place you want to get to.

13:18So what do I think? I think it's great because I think it's just a piece of the day. If the only thing you did was one thread for the day and nine people commented and it felt wholesome, that's not going to really move the needle for pet, you know what I mean? So to me, when it's one of 16 things you, forget about everybody else, did output wise that day, that's the ideal state. We're not there. I understand that but that's how I think about it. I think it's fine and it's great plus you're learning things that you may like be able to bring into other places. Yeah. Yeah. I find that specifically at Facebook too just like text only questions is just like a hack for inside.

13:58Me too. Me too. I think Facebook text only posts are monsters. Not to mention for a lot of you that's where the customer actually is. The biggest challenge you have is to not market to yourselves or your friends. Wouldn't it be cool well, if my brand did this, that's fine. And by the way, if you can get into a place where you do 12 of the things you need to do, that 13th could be yours. But when the only thing you do is yours, nothing good is happening for the client. Make sense? What else? So, something that I feel like we're struggling with a little bit off the bat is TikTok in my sense of it feels very good for like driving brand awareness familiarity etc yes and i feel like clients really wants us to lean into conversion and sales and a lot of our cohorts are like gen z years yep um and obviously like you don't really think of a gen z person seeing a tiktok and immediately being like i'm going to buy toilet paper right now good news i don't think boomers do that either.

15:10Yeah, exactly, exactly. And so it's like, obviously, yeah, that's the problem we're trying to solve, but I think with TikTok specifically - Let me jump in. I'm sorry to interrupt, but let me jump in. From the data I saw on Friday, sales are up because marketing works. Our clients may be looking for that because that's what they signed up for. In that scenario, a good thing to talk about is with your team and ladder up is are we using other channels that have more sales DNA in it, but just so everybody knows, this is, we didn't create VaynerSales Inc. Like, I love selling. It's what everyone's hiring us for.

15:51But the number one way to sell something is to build brand. Right? So, you know, is signed up for sales because they gave us media and creative. But media and creative is you do marketing work and you make sure people see it in areas where they might need to make a purchase, but it's not gonna be DTC DNA. The other thing is to make sure that if we're Gen Z-ing in TikTok, but we have two or three other platforms where we're millennia-ing and Gen X-ing, to make sure that if we believe that, that even this early in your career, you're a voice of like, hey, if the purpose is to sell, and if it's probably unlikely that Gen Z is gonna buy in any shape or form except whatever's conveniently in front of them or lowest cost.

16:38Should we only maybe spend 20 % of my time and energy on here and let me get good at Facebook? Like that's the thing I wanna make. Again, I come in here with incredibly good intent. I know if I help you, that's gonna be good for our business. But I'm telling you what I started with is real. I have much bigger plans than that. I need you all to become creative directors and GCDs and ECDs. The future CCO of the entire company globally could be sitting in this room right now. That is my intent.

17:10And, or, you need to be good at this because the opportunity is enormously big in front of you because the entire industry does it a different way and we're inventing the absolute future and everyone, when they realize that in three, six, nine years, is going to recruit with people that worked here for four, seven, nine years. So it's going to happen. I prefer you're good at it. because there's something that happens on championship teams. There's the two or three players that actually got them the championship and there's the other 10 players that are a commodity. And what happens in sports all the time is those 10 players then go into free agency and they get signed by other teams and they think they're gonna be good, but they weren't the reason.

17:48The number one thing I'm trying to protect all of you from is you may be here for seven years, but if you're not good at this, when you go to Droga 5 or Wyden, you'll get exposed. and that will not be good for your career. So while you're here, get fucking awesome at this. And honestly, if I keep doing my job, most of you will be here for a long time. Maybe forever. So some of you may start your own versions of Vayner. That would make me happy, not sad. My 9 to 9.15 this morning was with Eric Fulwire. He has his own agency. He worked here. So I really want you to hear me because I'm here 50-50.

18:25I'm here for the logo and I'm here for you. And you need to get good at this. Cause it's a real opportunity. I'm telling you, you will regret not taking advantage of getting good at it. Cause no other place is gonna teach you it. Not this, not right now. You know?