– Hi Gary! It’s Alesya from Alesyabags, and I have one important question for you, this year I’ve got a great bag coming out, way higher quality than
anything that I’ve ever done, but, they’re more expensive too, how do I work at that
to my current audience? That’s a good question, you know the weird answer
is maybe you shouldn’t. If the price point of
your new bag is 300 bucks and you’ve been selling 25 dollar bags, you just might not want to
market to your current audiences, because they can’t maybe
afford to buy that bag. Now maybe they can, like you know, I buy 20 dollars or 500
dollars things in same category, so, you know that’s not whole
H&M like you know, like the way fashion got so
interesting to me by the way, little fun fact but any way, I think that it is very important for you to understand, much they give advise
the prior two questions, that you may have to go out,
and find a new audience, and that’s scary that
might not be the, look I’m thinking right know as your watching, I’m curious how you’re watching, leave in the comments, are
you watching like this? or on the laptop, or, really curious how you’re consuming this. Do it. But the truth is you may have to
go out and find a new audience and that’s by putting yourself out there, and engaging with others. I think influences on Instagram
are massively important, so I think you can get away with
giving away some of these bags, to some of those influencers, and getting them on the
cheap at my opinion. So I would definitely
go down the instagarm, influencer path. I think if you give away 5 to 10 bags, to the peole that have
let’s say $250,000 and more, who actually would take the
bag and give that love, I think you have a shot of
being stunned by the ROI, In todays world, so that’s
what I would go out and do, so the answer to your question is, how do you remarket them or
market to them to go up, you let them know about it and, you know five to 15% of
that audiences will grow up, with you financially or aspirationally, but I think you have
to go out and find out, and find and hunt the 85%
of the rest of the audience.

– [Voiceover] Ivan says,
“Take us back to the day “when you said yes to Jerome Jarre. “What was it that made you
believe in him and his idea? “Thanks.” – Ivan, great question,
for the ones out there that don’t know, Jerome
Jarre, a very famous Viner, Snapchatter, Instagramer, and I started an agency called GrapeStory, a sister agency that VaynerMedia, all those characters. Last May where we
represent the best talent in the emerging content
platforms to do branded content and things of that nature. Jerome beat me in rock paper scissors in Toronto and what he won on stage, Jerome raised his hand and said, I was doing Q and A, “Can I go up there and play
you rock paper scissors, “if I beat you can I have
coffee with you in New York?” I said yes, I got him up
there and I was hell bent on beating him and if I
won, I swear my children, I would have never met with him. So just amazing how life really is. He wins, pissed me off, and, you know, three months later, I look at my calendar, I’m
like what’s my next meeting? It’s like 10:30 at night on a Tuesday, I’m dead, just want to go home. I’m like, what’s my next meeting? Jerome Jarre, I’m like what is this? I click it, I don’t even know the name, I click into it for the details, that’s how my calendar kind of I do, and I’m like, “Oh, this guy.” I literally thought, I was
like how do I get there and spend four minutes in this meeting and get out of there and go to sleep because I have a 5:30 flight, which was like a 3:45 wake up
call the next day I remember, and Jerome started talking. He’s like, “Look there’s a
platform Vine, I’ve gone all in. “I’m an entrepreneur. “I grew up in France. “I went to China. “I learned how to speak English
by listening to Crush It! “on audio.” Which played to my ego, so
that made me sit there longer and then he just kept talking and basically it was deja vu. It felt like I was having a conversation 2006 except Jerome was
me and I was Eric Kastner my lead developer that I’ve
given a lot of shout out too. @Kastner, give him a little love here. I was pitching Kastner in 2006, should I start a record label? I didn’t even know about
agents and things like that, I remember saying, should I start… I remember the moment in his office, “Should I start a record label “to represent these new
YouTube stars like me?” I should have and, but I let it go and Jerome was talking, I’m like this is the
same moment over again and so, the energy, my gut feel,
the fact that I believed in what he was talking about, he wanted to do a festival,
we turned it into an agency because that’s what I knew about and so that’s what it was. It was the content, the
context, and the intuition and when I have that CCI concoction, I always go with it. – [Voiceover] Jim asks,
“What’s your opinion

So I co-founded a company called Shimmer and we’re just building
a whole bunch of assets around social media and filter space. – Okay – So as you know, you work with the space, it’s really raw. – Yep! – So, what do you think the
biggest opportunities are there currently untapped? – In social media influencers? – Yeah, like, obviously
there’s brand agencies, there’s events. All that stuff, where do
you think like the next you know, like the next big
thing can be in the space? – I’m gonna go over arch again. I know we already had
an influencer question, so I like how this is working … We’re you, like holy
crap he asked way too .. We’re you pissed? Yeah. – That’s not cool. That’s why I gotta go first. To me this is the biggest thing that people don’t understand about the influencer space. Not only do influencers create content, they create distribution. So for the first time ever, in one entity, you get both things that people want. You know, if you think about television production companies or
movies, Steven Spielberg. But then you need distribution, right. So what I would say is, the biggest opportunities for these guys, for you, for me, for everybody’s that ‘s
playing in the space, is to recognize that unique principle in today’s internet world where they actually can drive two things. And then apply them. The other place that I think
there’s a huge opportunity, to answer you question, to give everybody more
information, go a little deeper as I’ve been trying to go, is product. I think that the infomercial space, the leveraging of like, you know of like celebrity into product. I at one point could have easily sold tens of thousands of glassware sets because of my wine influence. I think retail and
product, call it QVC 3.0 is another place that
people need to think about. – Okay.
– Thanks brother. – Appreciate it, Gary.
– Good luck to you, stay well. Next, let’s go.

– Kyle say hello to the VaynerNation. – Hi everybody, I’m Kyle with LockerDome. I run for partnerships at LockerDome. – Awesome! – You can reach out to me at
lockerdome.com/kylecummings. – I like the plug Kyle, go
ahead what’s your question. – Yeah absolutely, you’ve
been in the influencer space for just over a year,
specifically with GrapeStory. With that business model what are the biggest
challenges you’re facing in scaling that business model and what is the brand you would say is embracing that model for marketing with mobile and those channels: Twitter, Snapchat and Instagram specifically. – Which brands are doing a
good job in those channels using influencers? – Yep. – Uh, I think a lot of brands
are starting to do it well. Right like any brand that’s
not doing well is losing but I think our GE
client was first to jump, did a really good job. Virginmobile’s done a really good job. I think Hewlett Packard
right now, Samsung, there’s a lot of brands, I
think, that are getting the value of influencer. The problem with scaling my business is we’re a talent agency, right. And so these guys and gals get built up. We build up with them and then they get too big and they want to go to CAA
or things of that nature. So, unlike Niche which is an
investment that’s building technology in a platform, you guys, there are people who are
doing it smarter than me. The model issue for me is, it’s just client service. It’s just people. You’ll only have the leverage for so long. But it’s not different
than CAA or William Morris if you’re the best and you’re good at it. There’s a real business there. But that is clearly the challenge. To make this an over arching
question for everybody, when you decide to build a model where you’re not building an asset, which is technology or
something of that nature. You’re only vulnerable to your sources. It’s being an accountant or a lawyer or an agency. You’re only as good as
your last billing cylce. And that’s why those businesses don’t get the higher multiple. That’s why people want to
build technology companies. For me I love people and so I’m always gonna
have a competitive advantage betting on my strengths which is people interaction. So I like building those businesses but I gotta tell you something. It’s really not for everybody and there’s definitely
a huge vulnerability. – Cool.
– Cool man, thanks for stopping by.

“that people are basically sheep. “What does that say about your idea “that the ‘consumer decides’?” – Will, I don’t know
who’s teaching you this, some university or some
douchebag marketers, but you know, there’s truth
in that we can influence. I mean marketing clearly influences, but the customer’s own
preconceived notions and DNA, and the way they grew up, and all the other variables, are a factor as well. And they get to choose. At the end of the day, we’re not hypnotizing people. There’s not some weird thing floating above my head that saying, “Buy my book.” You know you need to get them to post that under there, right? You know, that’s not happening, and so, you know, I think that is a very, all-in, 100% way to look at it. Do I think marketing influences people? Of course. Do I think we’re hypnotizing people? No. – [Voiceover] You called
him out for a bad question.