#AskGaryVee Episode 69: Monetizing Media Sites, Sad Super Bowl Ads & Solid Data

Alright, my man, are we on? – [DRock] Yeah, we’re on.
– [Gary] Alright, my man, why don’t you tell the
VaynerNation who you are, what you do here, how long
you’ve been at Vayner? And then I will be
ready for your question. – Cool, cool, I hope so. Hey everybody, I’m Jordan,
I’m a project manager here. I’ve been here for a little over a year, maybe a year and a half. And I’ve got a question for you Gary. – OK, (laughs) that’s what I figured. (laughter) It is the #AskGaryVee show. – Oh, is that where we are? – Not I’m Giving You
A Statement Gary show. (laughter) Can we register I’m Giving
You a Statement Gary .com? Can we get on that?
– [Voiceover] Yeah. Thank you. – I’m a huge fan of long form media. – OK. – Which is medium to– – Like movies? – No, mainly on-site so like– – [Gary] Got it.
– [Jordan] Vlogs. – [Gary] Like when Verge writes a 7,000 word expose?
– [Jordan] Exactly, 7,000. Yeah, yeah.
– [Gary] Yeah OK. Vice, big fan.
– [Gary] Got it, OK. – [Jordan] What do you
feel is like the next best way to monetize off those sites? So, beyond sponsored
content, beyond placements, how could someone who writes
that make money off of it? – You know, I think
that’s a good question. So you’re saying, if you were to start a long form media company and you hired journalists and your spin was anti, let’s call it, BuzzFeed, and
it was the other direction, and back to the old days of journalism, but from a digital standpoint. Are you saying, to me the mix of that and BuzzFeed has always
been interesting to me, are you saying what if I just went in that whole direction of just that? Like if the site put out
three to four long pieces of content a day, is
that where you’re going? – Yep exactly. – You know, to me, obviously
sponsored content would work. Obviously people will still sell banners and things of that nature
against those things. But if you wanted to go
in a different direction, there’s a couple of places to go. First and foremost, I
actually think events is a sneaky thing. I don’t
think people recognize or understand Re/code or
TechCrunch or Mashable, how much money they actually make on event arbitrage versus ad revenue. So I think that’s one way to go, I also think the keystone
sponsor is something that people haven’t thought enough about. So imagine a world, if
you were the modern day Sports Illustrated with long form and Pepsi was your anchor sponsor. Almost like, for anybody who watches ESPN, I’ve been fascinated by 30
for 30, the documentary series where the brand comes in and says, this 30 for 30 was
brought to you by Levis, and then that’s it.
(hands smacking) I think there’s a real play
that if you show quality and there’s a brand wanting
to be associated with it, where there’s just one
anchor brand that owns, let’s call it, like a
stadium naming rights. Like if I was starting
something like that, I’d go out and try to sell
my thing up front to a huge brand for three years as
the anchor sponsor period. I actually think television
over the next decade, as they start struggling
with monetizing commercials, you’re gonna see a lot
more product integration, but all of us are cynical
to product integration, I think if you, for a
lot of you who watch, you know how when you watch TV there’s the NBC or Fox logo, I think
there’s a substantial chance that in the next decade,
when you’re watching a TV show, you will see the Fox logo, but you’ll also see on the other side, the Bud Light logo, and they’ll be there the entire time, and it’s
a college show, right? So, to me, the keynote, the
kind of the keystone sponsor, to me there’s doing events around it, and so what would that look like? It depends on your genre I guess. And so those are the
two things that really most stand out for me, I also think media companies and the
agencies are combining. I think one of the weird ways to subsidize and make money is, if
your Sports Illustrated’s playing here, and then
you’re producing content around sports for brands,
I mean, I do think that that is what Vice and BuzzFeed
and Refinery29 are doing. And so, that’s my answer.
– [Jordan] Cool. – [Gary] Thanks, bro.
– [Jordan] Thank you. – [Gary] Thanks for being on our show. – [Jordan] Yeah.
– [Gary] Say goodbye. – Thanks for having me. – Cool. (cheering and applause)

– Hi Gary, it’s Amanda from here in LA.
– [Gary] Hey Amanda. – My question is, roughly what percentage of your business decisions
are based on a gut feeling versus being backed by actual data? – Oh, that’s a very good question. (laughter) I think all of my strategy is completely intuition, because if you look at my 20 year career, most of it has been guessing, I’d like to think projecting
where the market’s gonna go. And there was no data on what
e-commerce would do in 1996, there was no data on email
marketing when you’re one of the first hundred people
that’s doing email marketing. There was no data on the ROI of Twitter four or five months after Twitter came out and you’re starting to
use it for marketing. There was no data on what
a YouTube show less than a year after YouTube came out
was going to bring in value. There was no data on
what Instagram was gonna bring us in value when
AJ sold Brisk Iced Tea an Instagram campaign 13 days
after Instagram had come out. There was no data around what
Vine celebrities would mean when we started a Vine agency
110 days after Vine came out. So, from a strategy
standpoint, I mean truly I believe that I get
the accolades and have the luxury of doing a show that people actually watch, completely on intuition, because that’s what I have
that other people don’t have. It’s no different than
being great at basketball or being attractive or
all the other good things that can happen in life,
it’s just there, right? It was just always there. And so that’s my X factor. Now, I think that is equally then 50% quantified against data, right? So I make these predictions,
but then to run an actual business, this is where my
practicality gets underestimated. You know, this company grew very quickly, you don’t do that if you
can’t make payroll, right? There’s a lot of practicality
(laughter) that goes into running a business. And so, for me I’ve always thought I was a super 50/50 guy,
obviously my personality and communication style
gets most people’s attention and they bucket me into
that kind of place, but I take enormous pride
out of the fact that, for the first ten years
of my professional career, I didn’t say a single word
to anybody about anything and all I did was execute, and
I’ll be very honest with you, it’s been extremely gratifying to me to shut up all the people that thought, when I was building VaynerMedia that, “Mister Lot of Twitter Followers,” like there was a
substantial amount of buzz when I started VaynerMedia of like, “Oh, “this social media guru thinks
he can build an agency.” And now building one of the biggest and fastest growing agencies of all time and sticking that directly in
their throat feels tremendous. (laughter)
– [Voiceover] Yeah!

And I was kind of laughing
’cause I watch it literally walking down the sidewalk,
like stepping over a dog, (Gary laughs)
like in the shower, brushing my teeth, like just
however you can consume it, it’s the one thing I don’t miss every day. – Raise, let’s give this one a– (laughter) Let’s talk about her raise. Alright tell the VaynerNation who you are and what you do.
– [Whitney] Hi Vayner nation, I’m Whitney, I’m an account
manager here at Vayner, and February 10th will be
my one year Vaynerversary. – [Gary] Awesome. (group cheering and applauding) – So, my question is, do you prefer to be around people who are the same as you are or who are different from you? – Oh, that’s a good question. Same or different? You know, it’s interesting,
I had an interesting moment maybe five or six years
ago where I was questioning if I was surrounding myself
with yes men and women, right? Like people that were just
shaking their head to myself. I started noticing it in
other people and my friends, and I thought that that
was super dangerous. And I couldn’t really figure out if I was surrounding myself with
yes people or that (laughs) I’m so forceful of my opinions
that I leave no oxygen in the room for anything else.
(laughter) But I think it’s funny, like
Steve for example, right? I would, and we’ve
referenced this in the past, and Steve and I talk about
this, I like that Steve, you know, I think now he
almost does it as a shtick ’cause I think he, but
(laughter) that being said, right India? – [India] Totally.
– [Gary] Thank you India. (laughter)
Thanks for the confirmation. But I take a lot of pride in really valuing other people, like I think I, for as much as I talk, which is constantly,
(Whitney laughs) and for as much in a meeting for an hour and a half that I
can talk the entire time and nobody else can get a word in, I think I listen quite a bit, and I listen in a lot of different ways. Having a one hour meeting where you listen is very different than what
I’m actually doing which is, when I actually spend
time with everybody here or in the world, that’s
actually my time to talk, because every other minute, I’m listening, every other minute, I’m
looking at what my employees are putting on Instagram
from a selfie standpoint. (laughter) (laughs) You know? Every other minute, I’m looking at what people are favoriting or consuming, or when I walk through
here, looking at what they’re looking at in
their screen, if they’re not “working,” are they reading Reddit? Are they watching YouTube videos? The VaynerNation knows this and you’ve watched the show, you know this, I’m critiquing the shit out of them. Like I’m, again, I think
when it’s all said and done, I like to think maybe this
is what I’m projecting, but I know that I’m doing the reverse of what a lot of people think I’m doing. And so when I’m with people,
I’m talking a whole lot, because it’s my time to
take what I’ve gathered throughout every other minute that’s going on in the world,
to execute again, so I, to me it’s just a people net game, I love being around
people that are like me, but the truth is, back
to being an anomaly, I don’t meet that many people that I think are really similar to me and that’s probably a good thing for the world. (laughter) I find most people are different than me, I definitely feel like, from where the market’s going, 90%,
95% of the market doesn’t see or agree with me and I’m
happy that 80% of the time I think I’m right on those
things long term, but I just like people in general and so to me a good solid debate is equally sexy to yesing each other and just
glorifying how awesome we are or that we see this or
agree on this issue. They’re weirdly one and the same. – Very cool, thank you.
– [Gary] Cool, thanks. (group applauding)

(laughter)
– [Gary] Is he Joe Namath? (muttering and laughing) Amazing. (laughter) – Oh hi. Gary, I have a question. Nationwide CMO recently
justified their Super Bowl ad by saying, “We weren’t
trying to sell insurance, “we were trying to save children’s lives.” How do you feel about advertising such a somber spot in the Super Bowl? – Great question and great legs Geoff. (laughter) – You like that, Johnny? (laughter and clapping) That’s a really good question,
it’s really interesting, I always have wondered if everybody talking the next
day after the Super Bowl about the monkey that
jumped on the bear with the cute little puddle of
water with a smiley face on it, did that actually help
XYZ thing sell its thing? And I think at some level we have a lot of wannabe movie producers
making TV commercials for the Super Bowl and it’s their chance to do the most creative thing that they’ve always wanted to do, and they’re so happy. I actually weirdly am pretty pro that commercial spot, and I’ll explain why. Number one, at some level,
advertising’s supposed to make you remember and think and recall, and the truth is, that
piece of content makes me think about what those people
actually do for a living a hell of a lot more than
a lot of other things where people bring back
old school celebrities and then 10 minutes
later you don’t even know which snack it really
was or which soda it was or which beer it was and
so I understand peoples’ push back against it,
but I’m a humongous fan of going counter-cultural,
and so in a world of Super Bowl is festive and this and that, and everybody’s kind of
going for humor, I mean, here we are talking about it, right? And so, (sighs) again,
I was at the Super Bowl and haven’t fully even
seen the spot and don’t have all the context so I’m
not super prepared to give my final, final, final
(hands pounding) answer on this, and I’ll
try to do that shortly because I should be on top
of something like that, but my early intuition
is that there’s a lot of value to always playing the other side of the equation and from what I can tell without seeing fully the
spot, ’cause I’ve seen the images but not fully
the spot, the content is at least closely tied in
to what that company does for a living and I think
that way too many people wanna throw Betty White out
there or a cute XYZ kitty cat or something of that
nature, and you’re just talking about the
creative, but you have no interest in going and buying the product. I think there’s real
potential for that kind of effectiveness so, I think standing out and going in the other direction is always the right thing in a crowded environment and I think they’ve
clearly done that because everybody’s still talking
about it and debating it, and it’s tied into the
business they actually do.

What’s up everybody? I’m Steve Campbell, DRock you can (dinging)
link that up right here. (laughter)
– Ah. I like the right hook,
I like the right hook. – Right?
(group applauding) I’m a copy writer here at Vayner, I’ve been here about
four and a half years. – Oh gee, baby. – Oh gee. So I’ve always wanted to ask you– – Steelers fan? – Steelers fan, gotta get that out there. – One of our rare wins
this year for the Jets. – Yeah, unfortunately, I remember that. (laughter) So, I watch you answer
dozens, literally dozens of questions over the
years about everything from family to business to
wine, I was always curious, what is one question that you’re shocked nobody’s ever asked you before? – That’s a good question, the truth is, people have asked me this
exact question before, I guess it’s never been on film. (laughter) And since I’ve answered
thousands of questions, not “dozens.” – Maybe more. (laughter) – The funny thing is, even though I think I get a lot of credit for being able to answer questions immediately
(fingers snapping) when I don’t know what they are and they come from so many different directions. I’m trying to figure out the
psychology behind this answer, it is very intriguing
to me that I don’t know how to answer this question at all, right? I don’t know if I’m so pure about loving Q and A that
like, I don’t even know, I’m never prepared for a
question, there’s nothing I, look, I definitely don’t
struggle with telling the world things that I wanna say,
so there’s no question I need for me to be able to communicate something that I want to say. For a little while there, and
I think the #AskGaryVee show has helped it, and definitely
that post I did the other day about, “Here’s how you
build your personal brand.” And it was like, “Just shut the fuck up “for 10 years and build something.” I don’t think it’s that,
it’s not that I’m surprised nobody’s ever asked me questions, I do wish that more people asked me hardcore business building questions. I think that people wanna go towards the motivation and the vision
and things of that nature, but hardcore tactical, like how
do you staff, against a P&L? Like the stuff that I actually
do that’s super nerdy. I mean, I’m sure the reason
people don’t ask me it is because it is super
nerdy, it’s not as sexy, it’s not the sizzle, it’s
clearly the boring slab of steak. But for me, I take so much pride in being an operator, I take enormous
pride in being able to build two businesses now,
in a young business career, that have both grown from a
small base to 50 million dollars in revenue in 36 months, that
just doesn’t happen a lot. Especially in a non-funded environment, neither company got
money to do it, so it was all its own growth and using
its own cash flow to do, which makes three year growth
so much more difficult. So I guess I’m not doing a
good enough job portraying that part of my career to
induce that type of audience to ask me those kind of questions.