Social Media Marketing Strategy For Businesses In 2024
Today's video is a Q&A and a fireside chat I had at Palmer's Marketing and Sales Summit. I dive deep into the importance of having a solid social media marketing strategy for 2024, the new world of consumer attention and marketing in a 2023-2024 world. We also discussed AI and my thoughts on other emerging tech. This video is full of marketing tips to take your business to the next level, and I hope you enjoy it!
Today's video is a Q&A and a fireside chat I had at Palmer's Marketing and Sales Summit. I dive deep into the importance of having a solid social media marketing strategy for 2024, the new world of consumer attention and marketing in a 2023-2024 world. We also discussed AI and my thoughts on other emerging tech. This video is full of marketing tips to take your business to the next level, and I hope you enjoy it!
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FunTranscript
00:00 couldn't be a threat to Hershey's.
00:02 Logan Paul couldn't be a threat to Gatorade.
00:06 The influencer that I'm most worried about
00:08 for you in the next five years
00:09 couldn't be a threat to you
00:10 because they didn't have enough scale to compete with you.
00:13 You didn't have enough scale to compete with P&G
00:15 and Unilever at that level.
00:17 Now a single human can screw you all up
00:20 because she can reach everyone for nothing, zero.
00:24 She doesn't have to run commercials
00:25 and she doesn't need the retailer.
00:28 She doesn't need Walmart.
00:29 Walmart is taking your money to give to people like her
00:32 to seduce her to come into the store
00:35 'cause they need her.
00:35 Shit's changed.
00:37 - Attention is the number one asset.
00:40 - What changes do you see on the horizon
00:43 for the way products come to market?
00:45 - First of all, thank you for having me.
00:48 You know, my career really in essence
00:51 besides the lemonade stands and the baseball cards
00:53 I sold all around New Jersey growing up
00:55 in this great state,
00:56 really started my dad's liquor store
00:58 in Springfield, New Jersey.
00:59 And in 1996, I launched winelibrary.com.
01:02 So I started direct to consumer
01:04 e-commerce wine business in 1996.
01:08 And so that was on the back of a single store,
01:12 retail store that I had at that point
01:14 already worked in for the last seven years.
01:16 I started working there when I was 14.
01:18 So end caps and signage and customer account
01:22 and moving product.
01:23 This is one of, there's a lot of reasons
01:26 I say yes to things.
01:27 We're so grateful for the Sasha relationship.
01:29 I really love really what's happening in CPG.
01:33 You know, I'm empathetic that people in CPG
01:35 may not like it because there is a lot of change.
01:38 Like, I mean, right off the top,
01:41 I'm petrified about retail media.
01:43 Like you're already paying enough
01:44 in shopper marketing and slotting fees
01:46 and now they want you to run media on their sites.
01:47 Like we're left with no money to market.
01:50 Like there's real talk.
01:51 There's a lot going on.
01:52 And the reason I start here is I don't think everybody,
01:54 I'm flattered if anyone knows who I am,
01:57 but I'm setting up for everyone to know
01:59 that since 1996, all I've ever been thinking about is Omni.
02:02 And so everything I built was from that.
02:06 And this agency is built really to be an operating system
02:09 for my future private equity behavior.
02:12 So I'm in this conversation deep.
02:15 I'm also very close to Logan Paul and Mr. Beast
02:17 and I think your biggest competitors
02:19 are not the Proctors and the Johnson Johnsons and L'Oreal's.
02:22 It's gonna be influencers.
02:24 Humans are the next frontier and I lived that already.
02:27 I started a direct to consumer wine brand
02:29 called Empathy Wines five years ago
02:31 and in 18 months I sold it to Constellation Brands
02:34 for a nine figure exit.
02:35 Like there's a lot going on here.
02:37 And so like let's talk about it, right?
02:39 Obviously for this room,
02:41 there's the realities of your actual day to day.
02:44 And the retailer has all the leverage.
02:46 At least the big ones for the eight of you
02:47 that are going to those.
02:48 And then for the people you're managing in this room
02:51 or partnering with underneath,
02:52 there's a little less leverage when it gets fragmented
02:54 into specialty stores and things of that nature.
02:56 There's really only two things that,
02:59 you know really there's many things
03:00 but at the end of the day of selling stuff,
03:02 there's only two things this organization's doing.
03:04 It's marketing and it's selling, right?
03:06 And we're losing leverage on the selling front
03:09 'cause the retailers have too much power.
03:11 And the big ones have way too much power.
03:13 And that doesn't even get into the fact
03:15 that Amazon is gonna continue to take market share
03:17 and they're gonna take that first party data
03:19 and make decisions when there's enough critical mass
03:21 of private label everybody.
03:22 You think private label at big box stores are tough?
03:25 Wait 'til you see private label from Amazon
03:28 and the future of what's coming
03:29 which is you're gonna wake up in a year or two
03:31 and you're gonna see that Meta or TikTok bought Target
03:34 and now what?
03:36 Like what happens when you wake up in the morning
03:37 and Facebook bought Target?
03:40 And now they're requiring you to spend your marketing money
03:42 only on Facebook if you want those slotting.
03:45 So there is something,
03:47 I actually thought about writing a book recently
03:49 called The Channel Conflict Wars
03:51 which is predicting out what I think is coming
03:54 which is we are in direct conflict
03:56 with our retailers at scale.
03:58 And we don't have the leverage
04:00 which is why I started a marketing company.
04:02 The only thing in real life,
04:04 not in the fantasy land that we all live in
04:07 when it's in our vested interest
04:09 that can allow this brand that is so iconic
04:13 and you do have the trends going in your direction.
04:15 And I do think the product has incredible permission to win
04:19 in the ever-changing landscape of the consumer.
04:21 However, if this company is not able
04:23 to effectively market and brand,
04:27 it will lose.
04:30 No matter how epic this sales infrastructure
04:32 that I'm looking at is.
04:34 'Cause that's just real life.
04:35 And so, in cliche talk,
04:38 I'm so empathetic for the majority of this room
04:40 because we go so hard to make the selling happen,
04:44 we have such cynicism to the marketing.
04:48 Look at all this money they're wasting.
04:49 I'd rather have that, you know,
04:50 those dollars to get a couple more shelf space
04:52 or this and that.
04:53 But the problem is we're just digging our own grave.
04:56 So I think a real, if we're talking real business,
04:58 a big strategy in general is really understanding
05:02 this opening sentence
05:04 and even being more supportive in a lot of ways.
05:07 I tell a lot of sales organizations,
05:09 you've gotta be supportive
05:11 about what you're doing in marketing.
05:13 And instead of being cynical to it
05:15 or upset that we're allocating too much to it
05:17 and I can make more of it,
05:18 you should realize that unless we achieve that,
05:21 it's game over.
05:22 That's real talk.
05:23 So what's gonna change?
05:25 Most of it.
05:27 You know, TikTok is going to effectively be a retail outlet.
05:31 They're just gonna follow what's happening in China.
05:33 Like it's done, it's already happened.
05:35 You know, the QVC-ification of social media is here.
05:39 In the next two or three years,
05:40 the far majority of this product's demand creation
05:43 is gonna come from human beings
05:45 and it's gonna be a lot more of a product
05:47 that's gonna be sold live on TikTok and Instagram
05:51 or whatever pops up next.
05:52 Like it's just different and it's really different.
05:55 And so of course we can formulate better products
05:58 and yes, we are much luckier than other products
06:01 where the trends are going in our direction to our product.
06:04 But unless this company is capable
06:08 of creating consideration and demand
06:12 to give us the leverage with our retailers,
06:14 it will be tough sledding.
06:15 (audience laughing)
06:17 - All right, on that note.
06:18 (audience laughing)
06:20 - I was like, I gotta look for another job.
06:21 (audience laughing)
06:24 - A little inside joke.
06:30 - I like it.
06:31 - In all sincerity-- - Please.
06:32 - Some of the words you mentioned
06:34 are what we're talking about here.
06:35 We have a unique difference from our key confederates.
06:37 We talk about Unilever, we talk about Procter
06:39 and you're right, maybe they're not the ones to worry about.
06:42 But what we love about who we are is we're faster,
06:45 we're more nimble, we're more creative.
06:48 - You're not faster than a young woman
06:50 that lives in Atlanta with 29 million followers.
06:52 - Correct.
06:53 (audience laughing)
06:54 - That's true.
06:54 - And that's where it becomes this idea
06:56 we've been talking about for the last day and a half
06:58 is about unthinking and thinking differently.
07:00 And how do we teach these teams?
07:02 'Cause I'm scared, I put a dinosaur on the board
07:04 and the guy in the right corner there
07:05 is our e-commerce specialist, knows everything.
07:08 And I'm gonna sit with him and just keep learning.
07:10 - Of course.
07:11 - You don't have to be progressive that way
07:12 but the question I was gonna ask you is around
07:14 how do you teach your team to go next level
07:17 and think differently and to be forward?
07:20 - By not incentivizing the short term.
07:23 Another tough thing in the construct of what we've got here.
07:29 I'm empathetic to everything that's going on here
07:31 but it is the answer to your question.
07:33 - How do--
07:33 - You're a two year sales broker.
07:35 (audience laughing)
07:36 - But you know what I mean?
07:38 Again, I am really trying to be in this room
07:40 and say I understand, I've been around the block,
07:42 my gray hairs are coming in.
07:44 I'm a businessman, I understand.
07:46 To answer your question, the reason my world
07:48 is always incentivized in innovating
07:50 is 'cause I don't build structures
07:52 that incentivize short term KPIs.
07:55 Because when you're incentivizing short term KPIs
07:58 you become too oriented on the transaction.
08:00 And I'm a salesman, so I understand the energy in this room.
08:07 Don't forget, I also own and operate on my own businesses.
08:10 I'm not publicly traded, I'm not trying to sell them.
08:13 So I am giving a lot of care to 17 years from now.
08:17 I can't ask that of my employees or of any of you.
08:20 How many people here are retiring
08:23 within the next 17 years?
08:24 Raise your hand, real talk.
08:26 Tough for me to say, hey, I really need you
08:29 to give a shit about the next 17 years from now.
08:31 Tough to ask that.
08:32 So for us it's easy.
08:33 My religion is also day trading attention.
08:36 I think the only thing that, of course,
08:39 I think the only thing that matters in the world
08:42 is who's the best at garnering attention.
08:44 The end, there's no other currency.
08:48 It's how the whole world's always worked.
08:49 I was born in the Soviet Union before I immigrated here.
08:52 And I'm 47 years old, so I grew up in Jersey in the 80s,
08:56 very captivated by the Cold War,
08:58 because that's where I was born,
08:59 but this is where I was growing up.
09:01 And I was also a pretty poor student
09:03 'cause I was really a purebred entrepreneur,
09:05 but the one class I was good at was history.
09:07 And now I understand why.
09:09 I was interested in pattern recognition.
09:11 When there's a coup in a country,
09:14 at the same time the army or whoever's doing the coup
09:17 is going to the palace to get the guy,
09:19 they'll go into the radio station, the newspaper,
09:22 and the TV station to control the message.
09:25 All of the anxiety and unrest we all have in our country
09:28 and in geopolitics right now
09:30 is because communication has changed.
09:32 We've gone away from the big platforms owning it,
09:36 hence the governments,
09:37 and now we have decentralization of communication.
09:40 Mr. Beast couldn't be a threat to Hershey's.
09:44 Logan Paul couldn't be a threat to Gatorade.
09:48 The influencer that I'm most worried about for you
09:51 in the next five years couldn't be a threat to you
09:53 because they didn't have enough scale to compete with you.
09:56 You didn't have enough scale to compete with P&G
09:58 and Unilever at that level.
09:59 Now a single human can screw you all up
10:02 because she can reach everyone for nothing, zero.
10:07 She doesn't have to run commercials, right?
10:11 And she doesn't need the retailer.
10:13 She doesn't need Walmart.
10:16 Walmart is taking your money to give to people like her
10:19 to seduce her to come into the store 'cause they need her.
10:23 Shit's changed.
10:27 And I think the energy I'm trying to bring to this meeting
10:29 is we don't have the luxury of believing we're fast.
10:34 You're slow.
10:36 I'm coming here with one agenda,
10:38 the deep hope that the energy of the conversation
10:40 makes you go faster and makes you go realer.
10:43 We can't waste money.
10:46 You are not in a position,
10:47 I know this business well enough and the competitive set,
10:49 you are not in the position to waste one penny on marketing.
10:52 And so that's what day trading attention is for me.
10:56 What's the underpriced influencer?
10:57 What's the underpriced platform?
10:59 Last week, TikTok worked like this,
11:01 today it works like that.
11:02 What creative works there?
11:03 Why is organic social media
11:05 the most important thing in business
11:07 yet nobody's looking at it?
11:09 Because everyone thinks it's an afterthought
11:10 and a nice to have when it is the foundation
11:13 of the competitors that are eating up the ecosystem.
11:16 Sally in Atlanta didn't start with a $40 million budget.
11:21 She posted on TikTok and it went viral.
11:24 You need to do that.
11:25 That.
11:28 - There you go, great stuff.
11:29 Next one's me again, right?
11:29 - Yeah, yeah.
11:30 - And dovetailing from that,
11:31 it feels like there's this whole idea of creative commerce
11:35 and digital and you've gotta be really present
11:38 to do what you said about the TikTok effect,
11:40 is take advantage of selling.
11:42 - That's right.
11:43 - So what's your thoughts on creative commerce
11:44 and all that that could mean?
11:46 - I believe everything's always been the same.
11:49 Procter and Gamble, let's use them,
11:51 outspent everybody at the right time on television
11:54 to become Procter and Gamble.
11:56 Do you know that Amazon outspent everybody,
11:58 everybody on Google AdWords the first five years,
12:01 which is why it's Amazon.
12:02 There are moments in time
12:04 when there is underpriced attention
12:06 and the best practitioners in it.
12:08 I'll use a real estate cop.
12:10 Somebody bought all the beachfront property
12:12 in Malibu at some point.
12:14 It wasn't yesterday, but 80 years ago,
12:16 somebody made the right bet
12:18 and they bought four or five acres there
12:20 and that worked out.
12:21 15, 20 years later, you were on the fourth street
12:25 away from the beach paying twice as much
12:26 as she or he paid for beachside 15 years earlier.
12:30 It's just arbitrage, right?
12:33 Some, you know, slotting fees, like private labels.
12:37 You know, there's some OGs in this room.
12:39 The CPG retail relationship looked very different
12:41 in 1980 than it does today.
12:43 We had 100 cents on the dollar to do marketing, right?
12:47 And so they took our money and slotting fees
12:49 and created competitive products to us.
12:52 And that hasn't stopped, that's accelerating
12:55 with all the data they have now, right?
12:58 The data's really clean.
12:59 This is why we have to build our own DTC capabilities,
13:02 not support theirs.
13:04 Of course we have to support theirs
13:05 'cause we're in trouble if we don't.
13:07 But we have to milk every dollar we have
13:09 to know who the customer is
13:10 'cause they know every customer and we know very few.
13:13 Right?
13:15 And so, you know, creative commerce is to me like asking,
13:19 like, what do I think about oxygen?
13:21 - That's just it.
13:22 (group laughing)
13:23 - You know, like, yes, it is essential to live.
13:26 - Yeah, you know, the next question's
13:30 a little bit of a gearshift
13:31 and I really like what we're talking about now
13:32 and I feel like in some ways a brand like us,
13:35 we're held hostage to some of those
13:38 shopper marketing programs and slotting fees
13:42 where we feel like we're not big enough to say no.
13:45 - You're not.
13:46 - Yeah.
13:47 - And news alert, neither of the biggest companies
13:49 in the world.
13:50 - Right.
13:51 - And like, Disney and Procter and Kraft,
13:53 they're not big enough either.
13:54 When a retailer represents 30% of your business,
13:56 you're in trouble.
13:57 - Well, just to talk about something else
14:01 that, you know, there is a lot of change out there
14:03 and, you know, AI, right?
14:05 That's what everyone's fearful of
14:07 'cause we all don't understand it.
14:08 How do you think that's gonna impact
14:10 creative selling or whatever?
14:14 - It's gonna make it more efficient
14:15 once people start demonizing it and fearing it.
14:18 I was in, actually, this is so incredibly fun for me.
14:22 Wait 'til you hear what I'm about to say.
14:24 I was in New Jersey, in Union, New Jersey,
14:28 at a Chamber of Commerce event in 1997
14:31 that looked pretty similar to the room I'm in right now.
14:36 And I said, we were talking about this thing
14:39 that they wanted me to talk about
14:41 called the World Wide Web.
14:43 (audience laughing)
14:46 And I gave my spiel the way I'm giving it now
14:48 and with the same level of conviction
14:51 and the same Jersey mouth.
14:52 And somebody raised their hand and said,
14:56 "Gary," I was explaining, like, finding,
15:00 you know, this was early web.
15:01 There's some kids in here, like,
15:03 for some of us that are a little bit over 45,
15:05 like, the internet was like, what is this?
15:07 Like, it was like crazy.
15:09 Kind of like the way you may feel about AI now.
15:11 Like, it's something but what?
15:13 And I was talking about a directory, like, search.
15:16 Like, you know, find, like, if you remember,
15:18 for the OGs, the internet used to mainly be referred to
15:20 as the information superhighway.
15:23 It was predominantly known as a place
15:24 to go get information and now it's obviously
15:27 the foundation of society.
15:29 Anyway, I gave my spiel and a guy raises his hand and goes,
15:33 "This is the stupidest thing I've ever heard."
15:36 He said, "Gary," I was talking about
15:38 if you needed to find a plumber in Jersey.
15:40 He goes, "If I need to find a plumber,
15:43 "I'm gonna go to the Yellow Pages."
15:44 (audience laughing)
15:46 And I said, "For now, but you won't."
15:49 And he laughed and most of the people in the room laughed
15:52 until they didn't.
15:53 And so, AI, we're in a different place
15:56 'cause now we have 25 years of technology
15:58 and everyone here who laughed at the internet,
16:00 who laughed at email, who laughed at the iPhone,
16:03 who laughed at social media is like,
16:05 kind of understanding that they're wrong.
16:07 And so, none of you right now
16:09 are completely dismissive of AI.
16:11 Instead, we're now on the other side of the pillow.
16:13 We're fearful of it.
16:15 Is it gonna take my job?
16:16 Are the robots gonna kill my kids?
16:19 Like, you know, we've turned it into fear
16:21 instead of audacity.
16:23 The answer to the question is AI is gonna do for us
16:25 what the tractor did for us
16:26 when 80% of us in the world worked on a farm.
16:29 There was a day when 80% of the human beings on Earth
16:33 worked on a farm and then the tractor was invented
16:36 and allowed us to do other things.
16:39 AI is going to allow us to do other things.
16:42 We are gonna be able to do work that used,
16:43 I can make a deck in three minutes.
16:46 And that used to cost me hundreds of thousands of dollars
16:50 in employees in three weeks.
16:52 Now, the question becomes what happens to those employees?
16:55 They'll do other things.
16:57 This is what they said, I mean, the car was debated heavily.
17:01 Electricity, my friends,
17:03 I don't know how many people like history,
17:04 electricity was demonized aggressively by humans.
17:09 Most people claim that it was demons
17:11 running through your house.
17:12 So, basically what I'm, I just need,
17:16 even the people that are retiring in the next 17 years,
17:19 all of you will be affected by AI for the rest of your life.
17:23 And in great ways, like it will do your taxes for you
17:27 and you don't have to pay an accountant the money
17:29 and it'll actually be right
17:30 and you'll get your full tax credits
17:31 and it'll take two minutes.
17:33 That's good.
17:35 Right?
17:36 And the way you sit here and say,
17:37 really, is the same way that people sat 100 years ago
17:41 that I can go to Australia within the day
17:45 and that used to take a month.
17:47 The world's moving.
17:50 Innovation doesn't stop in our lifetime.
17:53 And AI will be one of the most profound things
17:55 that you ever see in your life.
17:56 And it will completely change all our lives.
17:58 However, this company at this moment
18:01 should spend zero minutes on it.
18:03 Maybe a little bit for internal,
18:04 maybe decks to each other to be a little faster.
18:07 We need to talk about the first step.
18:08 This company needs to figure out how to be more relevant
18:11 to more customers at scale within the money that it has
18:15 to become a defense mechanism to the infrastructure
18:17 of how their product is sold.
18:19 Marketing is the only way out.
18:20 Which is like super hardcore,
18:25 'cause again, I'm marketing and sales
18:27 and this is a sales, like I get it,
18:29 but marketing is the only way out.
18:33 It's true.
18:34 (audience laughing)
18:36 But, but, but, but to the point of the joke of all this,
18:39 you can waste all your money in marketing.
18:41 You can't in sales.
18:42 And that's why we have the feelings we have.
18:44 But marketing is the only way out.
18:46 - I'm with you, babe.
18:48 You can say that I'm marketing, but you take it from me.
18:52 - I'm the only way out, Liz.
18:53 - You are.
18:54 (audience laughing)
18:55 I'm gonna follow her.
18:56 - Social media is important and obviously
19:02 that's something you've been preaching
19:04 to a lot of brands and companies.
19:05 And I think that we've leaned on it heavily
19:07 'cause we didn't have budgets.
19:08 So we actually, maybe we're a little further.
19:10 I don't wanna-- - No, I get it.
19:12 - But, so what are some of the big mistakes
19:15 you see companies make with social media?
19:17 - Not understanding how much science is behind it.
19:21 The science behind the art.
19:23 You know, I post my content, my personal posts on LinkedIn
19:28 are scheduled to the exact minute.
19:31 Like I will post on LinkedIn at 9.07 a.m.
19:34 'cause more people will see it
19:36 than if I post it at 9.06 and 9.08
19:38 and nobody thinks about that stuff.
19:41 I think about the first three seconds.
19:42 I think about the creative,
19:44 all I think about is how the algorithms work
19:46 to give me more reach to what I want.
19:49 And then I layer human psychology
19:51 and then I layer my business objectives
19:53 and then I layer that Kelsey and Taylor Swift are dating
19:56 and how can I use that?
19:58 You know, pop culture.
19:59 And so, you know, I'm playing a game of ingredients.
20:02 I'm using pop culture, I'm using platform reality,
20:05 I'm using science, I'm using best practices,
20:07 I'm using human behavior, I'm using business reality.
20:11 So, again, the hardest thing in the world to do,
20:16 in the world, in marketing, and I do it all,
20:19 is social media creative.
20:20 And yet, it is deemed the easiest by every organization.
20:26 And what I mean by that, I mean it's the thing
20:29 that most people don't actually really care about.
20:31 This is where you can outflank your competitors.
20:33 Your direct competitors, the biggest companies,
20:36 many that we work with, will take more seriously
20:39 a 30 second commercial and spend more money
20:42 on the catering of that 30 second commercial
20:45 and the T and E of that 30 second commercial
20:48 than they'll spend their entire year on social.
20:51 Which is why they're all so reliant on influencers.
20:56 Because they don't know how to do it.
20:58 And so, my big take is that people,
21:02 marketers, business people, sales people like ourselves,
21:06 will go to a dinner table and we will have conversations
21:08 about social media, if we do, on two fronts.
21:13 One, how it's ruining the country.
21:15 Two, how it's ruining our children.
21:17 So, general conversation amongst people
21:20 is they will literally have dinner conversations
21:22 with gusto on how powerful this platform is,
21:25 that it's ruining how scared you are of it,
21:28 what it's doing to the politics,
21:30 what it's doing to politicians,
21:31 what it's doing to the country,
21:32 what it's doing to your children.
21:33 You will sit there the whole time on Saturday night
21:37 with your best friends or your relatives
21:39 and then you'll come in Monday morning
21:41 and you'll look at it as the least most important thing
21:44 in your marketing mix.
21:46 I've literally had CEOs of companies
21:49 who I do business with, especially when a lot of stuff
21:52 was going on three or four years ago in America,
21:55 and they would yell at me for 10 minutes
21:58 about how bad social media was
21:59 'cause it's put democracy on the brink of its knees.
22:04 And then we would switch over to business
22:05 once we were done with our opening cocktail
22:07 and letting that person rant,
22:09 and they would then explain to me
22:11 how social media can't sell their product
22:14 the way that print can.
22:16 And I was like, let me get this straight.
22:18 Social media's powerful enough
22:19 to put democracy on its knees,
22:22 but it can't sell lipstick?
22:24 Get the hell out of here.
22:25 (audience laughing)
22:28 - That's great, 'cause I'm just gonna
22:29 jump off script a little bit.
22:30 'Cause you mentioned one word, Ned,
22:32 that is what I believe we're about here.
22:34 And I get made fun of for my Bronx, New York accent
22:37 coming out here, human.
22:39 Humanity, we believe in this room,
22:41 our sales competitiveness is that we have better people.
22:45 And I believe that deep in our heart,
22:46 and that's why they're here.
22:48 The key is to understand that AI and all this other stuff
22:50 still needs us to a degree.
22:52 - 100%. - Right, still needs us.
22:53 So we've gotta not be afraid of it and embrace it
22:56 and elevate our game with it.
22:57 So any other thoughts on that?
22:59 - I'm a full buyer of that.
23:02 Do I believe at some point the robots can win?
23:04 I do, I don't think we'll see it.
23:06 But if you told me in 200 years robots,
23:09 dinosaurs didn't think they were finished.
23:12 Things happen, I believe in those kind of things.
23:14 I don't think in our lifetime.
23:16 And so that's exactly right.
23:18 A lot of you in this room did not move fast
23:20 or hard enough on the internet,
23:21 did not move fast and hard enough on social,
23:24 did not move fast, I mean some of the people here
23:26 actually held onto their Blackberry three years longer
23:29 than they needed to.
23:30 Because you needed to touch the buttons.
23:32 (audience laughing)
23:35 So what I would ask is to inspire this is,
23:37 I agree with you, like again,
23:39 a robot is not going to a specialty retail store
23:42 that has 15 units in Ohio and placing the order.
23:46 It's not coming.
23:48 Not any time in your career.
23:50 So you need to figure out how to use ChatGPT
23:53 to type in how would you sell to a,
23:55 this is literally something you could do with AI.
23:58 Hey, ChatGPT, how would you sell to a cliche
24:01 third generation business owner
24:03 who owns 40 drugstores in California,
24:07 like do you understand that it will spit out stuff
24:09 and may say one thing that you may just try
24:12 on a phone call being a human and it might work?
24:15 Use the weapon.
24:17 Here's how I've always thought about technology.
24:19 It is the biggest tidal wave coming that you've ever seen.
24:24 And we've got one of two decisions.
24:26 Grab a surfboard and run it.
24:29 Put your head in the sand and pray.
24:31 And the second one is not a good outcome.
24:35 And that's what I think about AI for you.
24:37 Find your way to use it.
24:38 - Great, thanks.
24:41 Anything else we've got for a question and answer?
24:43 - Just a quick one because in leaning into social media
24:46 and how those influencers have all the power right now,
24:51 we've had success with great influencers
24:54 who have organically met us and those are--
24:58 - Fun.
24:59 - I don't wanna say they're the only successes we've had
25:00 but we haven't been able to replicate that.
25:03 - I think about this a lot.
25:06 I'm writing a new book about what I'm talking about.
25:10 This is why I'm so in it right now.
25:12 It's called Day Trading Attention.
25:13 And the thesis is what we're talking about
25:15 but it's also that we've never been in time in marketing
25:19 in the last 100 years where you can steal it
25:22 or you can get murdered.
25:23 Think about the analogy that just happened.
25:27 Influencers is a big one for me
25:28 that I talk about in the book.
25:30 It's what you just talked about.
25:31 You might wake up this morning
25:33 and something good's going on.
25:34 You're like, what's going on?
25:35 And then you finally figure it out by midday
25:38 that a single human made a single video
25:41 and good things have happened and you paid zero.
25:45 And then you're all excited and you're like,
25:46 all right, let's milk this.
25:49 And you go out and try to find other people
25:50 that seemingly look like that person
25:52 and you give them money and nothing happens
25:55 and there's confusion.
25:57 And the confusion sits in the day trading of attention
25:59 which means every, the reason I use day trading is
26:02 there's two different ways to invest.
26:05 You invest like me which is you make different big bets
26:08 and you go to sleep and you know that your grandkids
26:10 are gonna be happy or unhappy with you.
26:12 Or you day trade and you're making it in the margins
26:16 hour by hour and both are different ways to do it.
26:19 Marketing used to be the other way.
26:20 Nine months, we're gonna plan the campaign
26:23 and we're gonna pray that it works out.
26:26 And now it's if you are not marketing every single day,
26:28 someone's outflanking you.
26:30 It's hard and I'm empathetic.
26:32 Like I don't, by the way, I wish it wasn't like this.
26:34 I wish I was Don Draper.
26:35 I wish I was chilling in Midtown drinking for four hours
26:40 coming up with a slogan and you're thrilled with it.
26:43 That would be a great life.
26:44 It's just not the reality of what we live in.
26:46 You know and so I think that influencers
26:50 is something you have to figure out.
26:52 It's why I bought a publishing company.
26:53 I actually think advertorial is something
26:56 people should be doing more of.
26:58 I don't know if you know what green screening is.
27:00 It's when you see people, right?
27:01 You've seen it, like I see some people shaking
27:03 but for the ones that don't know,
27:04 in TikTok or Instagram you see a person talking
27:06 but in the background it's like a headline.
27:09 I think you should be buying advertorial.
27:11 You should definitely connect them to gallery media group
27:13 because then you're writing your own, oh got it?
27:14 Good, thank you.
27:15 Oh that's right, I'm sorry, that's right.
27:17 That's gonna work.
27:20 You're literally writing the headline you want people to know
27:22 and then you have a human endorsing it.
27:24 That's pretty good.
27:25 You know and so like, you know,
27:26 there's a reason the FTC is starting to get really involved
27:29 with influencer marketing.
27:30 Like you're gonna start seeing content a year from now
27:32 of like big red ad 'cause it's just, you know,
27:35 their concern is do customers know?
27:37 The answer is no, it's so seemingly,
27:39 the marketing, right?
27:41 It's not a commercial, it's not a print ad.
27:42 It's like, and so there's a lot going on
27:44 but influencer's a place you gotta keep hacking at.
27:47 You becoming the influencer though is the holy grail.
27:50 What I do for a living right now is try and get you
27:53 to be in a place where you're not at the mercy
27:55 of the influencer and not at the mercy of the celebrity
27:57 and not at the mercy of the retailer.
27:59 That is my obsession.
28:01 And that's what needs to be your obsession.
28:03 Otherwise, it's gonna cost you more money to do business.
28:06 Right, and that's why marketing is it.
28:07 Like you just have to be as great as,
28:09 if you have a dollar, like how do you make it work?
28:12 Right?
28:13 You know, a lot of times in this scenario,
28:14 people are like, Gary, we don't have the,
28:15 I'm like, good news.
28:17 Your competitors are spending 18 times more than you
28:20 are wasting every dollar.
28:21 So if you spend your dollars properly,
28:24 you can actually grow.
28:25 That's why brands grow.
28:27 I don't have to explain to anybody here,
28:29 you're in the business, like many brands get big
28:32 with less budget.
28:33 They did the right thing.
28:35 Money is not the variable.
28:36 Otherwise, there'd be no new brands.
28:38 - Open it up?
28:43 - Yeah.
28:44 - All right guys, we're gonna open up to some questions.
28:47 Anybody out there have a few?
28:49 - Sure.
28:50 - I guess we should pass the mic.
28:51 - Yeah.
28:51 - Do you have one of your own?
28:52 - I got a big enough voice.
28:53 - All right, go ahead.
28:55 - Wayne, you mentioned talking about AI.
29:01 And you used a noun there that I didn't think I'd hear
29:06 you say, because the majority of humanity
29:09 is very fearful of AI.
29:11 - Yes.
29:13 - But then you used in your sentence,
29:14 you said, use it as a weapon.
29:17 - That's right.
29:18 - Okay, how do you change humanity's mindset
29:21 and not consider it as a weapon,
29:24 and embrace it so that it is a more positive element?
29:29 - Pain.
29:30 (audience laughs)
29:32 People that are ideologically set in their ways,
29:34 which is 90% of humanity, only adjust with pain.
29:39 Almost every one of the people that calls us
29:44 to do business are in trouble.
29:46 I'm selling the truth, the rest of the marketing world
29:50 is selling yesterday, and the only time we get a phone call
29:53 is when they have a problem.
29:54 The only time people innovate is there's a small group
29:58 that it's in them, and they win,
30:02 and everybody else gets on board when it starts to hurt.
30:06 When I was running around saying that Facebook
30:09 was gonna be enormous in 2005, I got laughed at.
30:14 You know what I called it?
30:16 The grandma effect, when I was trying to explain why.
30:19 So I'd do my spiel, I'd get my feedback,
30:23 and I'm like, do you know what the grandma effect is?
30:24 And of course they didn't, 'cause I made it up.
30:26 They're like, no.
30:27 (audience laughs)
30:27 I'm like, do you know what's happened?
30:28 This is 2006 Facebook, just to give people context,
30:31 whatever your journey was with Facebook.
30:33 I said, do you know what grandma's like?
30:36 And they would say, what?
30:37 I would say, they're grandchildren.
30:38 Okay, so we agreed.
30:42 I said, do you know where every picture
30:45 of a grandchild is going right now
30:46 for the people that actually have children
30:48 that were just born?
30:49 Facebook.
30:50 And that's exactly what happened.
30:53 Grandma said, I don't need Facebook until she did.
30:57 Your Blackberry was good until people were outflanking you
30:59 or doing things on their phone called the iPhone
31:02 and were on the internet and you were sitting there
31:04 saying, what's going on?
31:05 Pain.
31:06 Here's what's gonna happen with the AI conversation.
31:10 A couple people here are gonna get inspired by this talk
31:13 and go in the offense.
31:14 Everybody else is gonna think they're gonna do something,
31:16 but they're not.
31:17 They're gonna chill, and then when they feel
31:20 the effects of it, they'll adjust.
31:22 It's the history of man.
31:24 - All right.
31:25 - Fair point.
31:28 Hannah?
31:29 - Four years ago, we were here, the same group.
31:31 TikTok was not part of the conversation.
31:34 So thinking about your point as over-investing
31:37 in what's up and coming, is there anything
31:39 that you have your eye on that you think
31:40 is the next big frontier?
31:42 - So a point of clarity, thank you.
31:44 My point is not to over-invest in what's upcoming.
31:47 My point is to invest in today.
31:52 The business world thinks it's tomorrow.
31:54 That's where all my delta is.
31:57 TikTok's not tomorrow.
31:58 I think you should spend 60% of your marketing budget
32:02 on TikTok today, all of it.
32:04 Like 60%, like the whole thing, maybe 80.
32:08 - Prove Becky.
32:10 - You know, like, and by the way,
32:13 Becky is amongst every other marketer on earth
32:15 that would think that is, that wouldn't even cross
32:17 one's mind, it's not how it works.
32:20 It's very hard to make that jump.
32:23 My point is TikTok's not tomorrow.
32:25 The answer to your question is I have no idea.
32:27 I don't predict, I'm not an Ostradamus.
32:29 I know my track record, I know why people follow me,
32:32 but I'm just talking about today.
32:34 I'm just lucky that the world is stuck on yesterday.
32:36 I didn't know Google AdWords was gonna change my life.
32:41 They came out, I played with it the first day,
32:44 and I took my dad's liquor store from a three
32:45 to a $70 million business in four years with no money.
32:50 You know, it just, I don't know what,
32:53 the second I saw TikTok, it was Musical.ly when I saw it.
32:57 I'm always paying attention, but whether it's Be Real,
33:01 and then I'm like, nah, whether it's,
33:03 you know, like I'm watching everything.
33:04 I look at the top 100 apps in the Apple store
33:07 every morning when I wake up to see if anything's spiking.
33:11 And the way I found Snapchat, and the way I found Musical.ly
33:14 was it was there before anybody was reporting on it,
33:17 and after it was there for four weeks,
33:18 I'm like, something's here, I download it,
33:20 and now I have so much pattern recognition,
33:22 and I understand human behavior naturally,
33:25 and now I've done it for so long,
33:27 I have a good feeling often,
33:31 is this sticky or is this a two-week thing?
33:34 But I don't speak about it, even if, I mean,
33:37 when I saw Snapchat, I'm like, this is it.
33:39 'Cause I know that high school kids
33:41 don't want their parents to know what they're texting.
33:43 Wasn't super complicated.
33:44 (audience laughing)
33:45 Like, here's a good value prop.
33:47 You don't want your mom to take your phone
33:49 to see what you've been talking about,
33:50 so use Snapchat so she can't.
33:52 Pretty easy to understand that
33:53 was gonna be valuable to kids.
33:54 But I didn't talk about it for a full year.
33:59 I don't wanna guess 'cause it would undermine my reputation.
34:04 But I'm in everything, always.
34:08 And so the answer to the question is,
34:09 it's in the nuances right now.
34:11 YouTube Shorts is very good.
34:13 And underpriced because YouTube is the second biggest
34:17 search engine in the world.
34:19 And so we can win twice, with TikTok,
34:21 we can only win once.
34:23 We post, boom.
34:25 Yeah, there's some searching going on,
34:26 you've probably seen headlines,
34:27 Gen Z uses TikTok to search, I get it.
34:29 Yes, YouTube is way bigger.
34:31 And so the same video on YouTube, if it does well,
34:34 you might also get work from that asset
34:37 for the rest of the year,
34:38 especially if you go into how-to
34:40 and things that people search.
34:42 So we train at Zosch and VaynerMedia,
34:44 make the content that you wanna make,
34:46 but on the backend, title it for search.
34:49 Even if it's not directly correlated to the video.
34:52 So that we win the search game.
34:54 Those are things I think about.
34:57 Then it's also, the other thing I think about strategically
34:59 is media and creative together against a business result.
35:02 So one of you opens a new account that's meaningful,
35:06 and we're being tested for nine weeks,
35:08 and it really matters, I wanna run media and creative
35:11 in a five mile radius of all 41 doors.
35:15 So getting sales and marketing to team up
35:17 more specifically against truth of business
35:20 is very passionate part of this for me as well.
35:22 You get, uh-oh, you got a nasty phone call today.
35:27 The buyer of XYZ says, if you don't buck up,
35:30 what do we go to?
35:32 Pour money into Shopper, not me.
35:33 I wanna not do that.
35:34 That just gets us further down the path of our death.
35:37 I wanna run ads on social on a one to two mile radius
35:42 of the 29 locations we need to fix.
35:45 So it starts to become surgical.
35:47 - All of our media to that point--
35:53 - Can you guys hear on this one?
35:54 Yeah, good, go ahead.
35:55 - All of our media to your point goes to retail.
35:59 Sometimes we're targeted.
36:01 You know, we don't drive to our D to C.
36:05 With social organic, you know, we don't really have,
36:08 each day we link one of our posts to one of our retailers
36:11 and try to give everyone a little love
36:13 'cause we've found that that's a real great selling point
36:15 when we're with our retail partner saying,
36:17 hey, we are driving all this organic traffic
36:20 in addition to media to your site.
36:24 And we've started doing these static images called,
36:27 you know, we call them shelfie shots
36:28 and we get more engagement on those organic shelfies
36:32 than, you know, some really,
36:34 some assets that we spend a lot of time on.
36:36 So I guess I'm trying to understand,
36:39 is there a better approach than just picking every day,
36:42 you know, which retailer, like a strategy behind it
36:44 to make it more impactful?
36:46 - Post more and make the more point to your DTC.
36:50 - To our DTC versus make the more.
36:54 - Make more content.
36:56 So don't replace your content with,
36:58 for the retailer because that's working for you
37:00 in the short term vulnerability that you have.
37:03 But add more content output to your mix.
37:09 I have, ready for this?
37:11 Gary V, me.
37:12 How many people here consume,
37:14 somewhat consume some of my content on the internet?
37:17 Don't, you don't, it won't hurt my feelings,
37:18 I'm just getting a sense.
37:20 Okay.
37:21 So for the ones that raised their hand,
37:23 I have 29 full-time employees on my content.
37:26 You know?
37:31 (group laughing)
37:32 It's all me on the copy.
37:34 It's all me if I reply.
37:35 It's always me.
37:36 Nobody acts as me.
37:37 But I have 29 full-time people that work on the post edit,
37:41 the strategy, the analytics.
37:43 I'm a human.
37:44 I'm a human being.
37:46 I have 29 full-time people on social media organic content.
37:50 That I pay real money.
37:52 Like, it's not free.
37:55 I don't know what else to tell you.
37:59 I could have literally walked in, said that, and left,
38:02 and for the most bright in this room,
38:04 they'd realize the punchline of the conversation.
38:06 A human is allocating dramatically more output
38:12 than you are as a company.
38:14 - Yeah.
38:16 - So, the answer to your question,
38:17 you need to put out more stuff,
38:19 whether with Sasha, with yourselves, I don't really care.
38:22 And a lot more of it needs to point to your DTC,
38:24 'cause all I heard when you're doing stuff for them is,
38:28 you're funding your enemy.
38:32 - Yeah.
38:34 Thank you.
38:36 (group laughing)
38:37 First of all, it's nice to meet you
38:38 as a fellow '80s Jersey baby.
38:40 (group laughing)
38:41 Where in Jersey did you grow up?
38:43 - Park Ridge.
38:44 - I love it.
38:45 - In the north.
38:46 - I know it.
38:47 I did so much direct mail for the first 10 years
38:49 of my career in New Jersey.
38:51 I know literally everybody, you know how Jersey is, right?
38:53 They're like, "I'm in Bergen County."
38:54 I'm like, "Where?"
38:56 Or, "I'm in Monmouth County."
38:57 I'm like, "Where?"
38:57 They're like, "Oh, it's Colesnack."
38:59 I'm like, "I know Delicious Orchards."
39:00 (group laughing)
39:03 - One of the things I've seen the power of Twitch streamers
39:08 myself and I was wondering, you know,
39:10 it's kind of hard to convince people
39:11 who don't know who Logan Paul are,
39:13 don't know who some of these people are,
39:14 you know, in these spaces.
39:15 Do you see an over saturation necessarily
39:17 in the beauty influencer space and that opportunity
39:19 as white space for Palmers or a beauty brand
39:22 to really embrace something--
39:23 - 100, oh.
39:24 - Gaming streamers and people that have these kinds
39:27 of influence that might be a little bit
39:28 out of our normal box of thinking.
39:30 - Yes.
39:31 It's underpriced attention and it's the exact demo.
39:34 If you look there, so female gaming gamers and streamers
39:37 are an incredibly fascinating category
39:41 and they over indexed to the demographics
39:46 that I heard on the end here of a mixed families
39:48 and like it's just incredible how many Latinx mixed,
39:52 like there's just, you know, it's one of those things.
39:55 They're over indexing.
39:56 Now, the problem is the good ones are compensated in real,
40:01 you know this if you're in it,
40:02 like if you tell a bunch of people that don't know
40:04 and they're like, "Oh, this little girl
40:06 "who's like playing video games on Twitch,
40:08 "like let's get it, how much is she?"
40:09 And they're like, and you're like,
40:10 "400,000 for a week."
40:12 And they're like, "What?"
40:13 This goes back to people just not knowing what's happening.
40:16 So this game in day trading attention is Charlie D'Amelio
40:21 and Logan Paul and Emma Chamberlain, that ship has sailed.
40:25 All three people I mentioned, I spoke to
40:28 when you could get them for 100 bucks.
40:30 You need to be in the business of emerging talent
40:34 'cause you can't afford real talent.
40:37 And emerging talent is remarkable 'cause like yourselves
40:41 on the human sales team and the product itself
40:44 'cause it's the right,
40:45 one of the fun things to come to this is,
40:47 do you know how rare it is to actually have a great product?
40:50 (group laughing)
40:51 Like you have it easy, right?
40:54 Like you have a competitive advantage on just the product.
40:57 Like you're halfway home.
40:59 So, you know, you need to win on emerging talent.
41:04 Emerging influencers, somebody who has 40,000 followers
41:07 who might just be happy for free product.
41:09 I would use product all day long.
41:11 I would just ship it everywhere.
41:13 Like, again, back to another thing that I'm building now
41:16 currently on my belief on this,
41:18 I'm now up to seven full-time employees
41:21 who I pay very handsomely, especially the top three,
41:24 who are just mapping the 40 million people that follow me
41:27 and putting them one by one into a CRM.
41:30 Shirt size, shoe size, favorite foods,
41:33 like a database that's so bananas,
41:35 'cause that's the weapon.
41:37 That's the weapon.
41:38 When I decide to get into another business
41:40 and I can click one button
41:43 and have 47,000 people that like bananas
41:46 and I have their address,
41:48 I can sell my bananas to them.
41:50 And when I say sell, give them the bananas
41:53 with the hope that 3% of them post
41:55 because that arbitrage against my costs
41:59 will create enough demand for what I'm trying to accomplish.
42:03 - Yeah.
42:04 - Humans are the next social media.
42:05 I'll give you one that I would do at scale
42:11 with your product.
42:12 I would do a lot more live events
42:14 where people can get the product, trial,
42:18 and I would film it
42:19 because people will come up to your booth
42:21 or your activation and give you endorsements
42:24 and then you can chop that up and use it on social
42:27 so the content that you're recording at the event
42:30 is worth more than the cost of the entire event.
42:33 It's almost like the event is free.
42:34 It's turning an event into a production facility
42:38 and it's the best content that will work on social.
42:41 So it's 10 times better than a Shelfie.
42:46 So you put on an event at a, you know, right?
42:49 It's a--
42:49 - It's a Beautycon, yeah.
42:50 - Yeah, but you know, to that point,
42:52 if you filmed every second of Beautycon
42:54 and left with 912 ads, social media posts for the year,
42:58 that made the Beautycon investment 10 times better.
43:01 And then again, let's talk business.
43:05 Uh-oh, we're losing at Publix in Florida.
43:08 Well, let's do a pop-up event in Florida,
43:10 you know, maybe even in their parking lot.
43:13 I don't know, like, you know what I mean?
43:14 Like, you can do bubble,
43:15 I'm obsessed with bubblegum and tape.
43:18 You know, this stuff doesn't have to be fancy.
43:20 You can always be from the streets of Jersey, you know?
43:28 - In this scary phase of AI that we're in right now,
43:31 are there any brands that are leveraging AI
43:36 in a smart way that you could share with us?
43:37 - Internally, a lot of companies are using it, again,
43:40 to make decks, like all this,
43:42 the reason no one's doing the external
43:43 is all the biggest companies in the world
43:45 know that there's huge litigation brewing
43:47 on copyright and trademark.
43:49 Right, if you were to, brands know
43:51 that they can make a 30-second commercial right now
43:53 in AI in two seconds.
43:54 They don't know where it came from
43:56 and they don't want the litigation.
43:57 So we probably have a half a decade worth of
43:59 misunderstanding and clarity needs
44:03 before we get true, you know, law.
44:06 This, Internet '96 to 2001 was scary for me
44:08 'cause we didn't have the Internet Act in 2001.
44:11 The blockchain NFTs is scary for me right now
44:13 'cause I'm waiting for the government for clarity.
44:15 AI is gonna be the same.
44:17 So you won't see brands go too crazy just yet
44:20 'cause they won't use it for content
44:22 'cause they don't need a letter from Disney saying,
44:24 this inspired by Mickey Mouse, you owe us $400 trillion.
44:27 You're welcome.
44:31 What time is it?
44:34 Julian, what the fuck?
44:37 I gotta get the hell out of here, I'm so late.
44:42 I gotta go, thank you so much.
44:43 (audience applauding)
44:47 (upbeat music)
44:49 (upbeat music)
44:52 (upbeat music)
44:54 (upbeat music)
44:57 (upbeat music)
45:00 (upbeat music)