Welcome to EL: The Podcast

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It is leaders from across every category of business showing up here and really not just to enjoy the game, in fact, the promo for a lot of them is to fly out on Sunday morning and go watch the game at home, don't tell. One of the conversations we got to have is with an old friend of mine named Gary Vaynerchuk, probably better known to you as Gary V. Gary is one of the best marketers. One of the most creative people in business you can ever have to spend time with, he gave us 10 minutes and 10 minutes with Gary is more two hours with almost anyone else. You're in love with this one. A Super Bowl ad about shitting? Yeah, you know, like, shitting is something everyone understands. We all do. Everyone does it. Hopefully, at least once a day. I think it's super clever. Like, it's amazing to me how many people think about pooping in fiber. Like, now that there's so much buzz around our Super Bowl spot with Raisin Brand, I was like, wow, like, we had the insight, but I was like, oh, wow, like everyone knows. And so, and the will shat, like that, I got to get my creative team, like, this is why you hire talented people and give them room to cook. Yeah. It's so clever and we're really proud of it. And what I'm most proud of is, as you know, because we've known it so long time, we were focused on, we believe that social would not only eventually rival traditional, but it surpasses the social surround sound. Yeah. Like, we've already kind of won. It has an area. Right. But what happens if Shatter says no? Is there a plan B on this one? Is there someone with another name that works or is it like, no, it's a one of one idea. Yeah. We have many ideas when we approach the world. We've done about 15 spots in the last 10 years, eight years. We have to, you have to, by the way, we'll, it's not young. Like, you know, it's, I mean, by the way, let me tell you something very devastating. We had a Super Bowl clerked Marshall with J-Lo for Hard Rock Hotel that had a helicopter in it, the year that Kobe passed and we had to redo the commercial. Wow. Like, yeah. So when you're in Super Bowl commercial land, you're in anything can happen. Yeah. I mean, like, literally one of the things, you know, as an owner, I'm always thinking about what could go wrong. When, when we're like, we're doing William Shatter, I'm like, he's 94. I'm like, like, I don't want to say it, but like, there's risk. So, so, but yes, if Will was like, hey, to expense over, not interested, we would have went with a different direction. But the whole concept was, this is what uses Super Bowl 4. We need to think at all of yours. It's amazing. No matter what your age is, we're all thinking about fiber more. It's trending just like protein did. Like we need raisin brand to be associated with fiber as like an easy way to do it. This was the way to do it. And once you get that, are you going in with the social and being like, we're gonna, we're gonna do every version of this, like, this ad is the shit, like, instead of I ship this ad, I ship this ad, like, is it coins in the slot machine, like, here are all the ideas we're gonna do to capitalize on this. But it's funny, the analogy is, I keep trying to push this on Madison Avenue. It is not coins in the slot machine. Actually, let's use football. Great. It is, we're gonna throw the ball 41 times this Sunday against the Patriots, and here's what we are, like, strategically on film, right? It's, we're running 41 social media ads with purpose. Yeah. Not like, oh, let's see what the algorithm does. Right. So, yes, and no. Well, but with purpose, you still don't know what's gonna catch it. You can have a theory about, you can feel really good about something, you don't know. Correct, correct. But in social, you could afford to do 41 passes at a low cost and get quantum, quality data. Television, I have to spend a fortune and pray. Right. And there's no, take the data, pivot the next day, adjust you today. And if you know, when you're in television, you're going broad, so now all of a sudden you're doing vanilla, something that's not relevant. You're trying to be, you're trying to be everything to everyone, which means you're nothing to no one. Right. You know, and so, yeah, and social, we're allowed to take that message. And now let's go after Star Trek fans this way, and let's go after people 60 to 90 this way. And let's figure out some way to let 25-year-olds know who the hell this is. And like, it gets, it gets very strategic. And so, when you and I first started hanging out 20-ish years ago, it was like pushing a boulder up a hill to get CMOs, to even think, like, they didn't have social media budgets. They had no, like, they didn't have digital budgets. It was like a whole different world. How is it today going and sitting with the CMO and a marketing team? And pitching the idea is that, like, you know, you got to see, yo, it's probably like the CMO. At some point you can go, we're linking our brand literally to shit. Are you sure? Right? That was easy, again, to your point. For 99% of our clients, they would not do that. When you were in the fiber business, and it is gut health, and it is poop, that was, it made sense. I think overall, you know, it's funny you asked me this question. And this is so common in stories when you're on the right side of history. The amount of shit pun intended that I had to eat to what's happened in the last six months, brother? I can't believe, I mean, flying to San Francisco, I was with my North American president. We were supposed to get six hours worth of work done. We've probably had five hours of pinching ourselves of like, we had clients that two years ago would, would, would balk at 500,000 for the year in organic social that are looking to sign $25 million deals. This is real. So what's changed? What's changed in those six months? The truth suffocated everyone. When you're Pepsi, and I'm in the building for 13 years, like I am. And I'm like, and nothing's changing in their day-to-day business that much, because Coke's not doing anything either, nothing happens. But when Poppy, liquid death, and prime energy drink go attack Gatorade, Pepsi, and Aquafina, and you get hurt. The answer to your question is, why did it switch for us? Pain. Our clients started to feel pain. And when you start to feel pain, all of us, why are we doing bad food and exercise behavior? But guess what? Go to the doctor and be told you're in deep trouble. I'm a funny feeling. We're going to all shape up. Yeah. Brands are starting to feel the pain of doing a non-social first strategy. And it is, we are the great beneficiaries, because we have been the pie-piper for 20 years that this is the real game. I was in a meeting yesterday where someone said, and I'm waiting for the data to back this up, that they're starting to see their AI-generated ads outperform their human produce ads. By the way, I can save you time. That is true. Okay. What do you see? I see that both can work. Meaning, the AI ads that perform will be cheaper than the human-based. And you can create, they're not even ads or pieces of content, you can create hundreds. Here's how it's going to play out. For the next three to five years, the big companies aren't going to do it, because we keep yelling at them. Because we're all scared we're going to lose our jobs. So we're just mad at AI. So the big companies are not going to be able to do, by the way, there should be AI Superbowl ads this Superbowl. Why aren't there? Because they'll get murdered. Why? Because humans in society are scared about AI, so they shame brands and say, I'm not going to buy your stuff and brands don't want to lose market share. But it's called stigma. Do you remember online dating in 2001 and 2002? We're in the perfect age, some of us here. If we had friends or ourselves met someone on match.com, we made up that we met them at the bar. We were in cooots with our new boyfriend or girlfriend, because there was that much stigma around online dating in 2001, 2, 3, 4. Now? Well, even when I was at my space, we did married on my space. We did a whole show with people who met on my space and I married. Right. Okay. Next year's the first year we see an AI generated ad in Superbowl. No. No. I think there's a, I think, 28 maybe or a startup. And by the way, we might have it this year from the AI companies. Right. I don't know if open AI or-- Did you see the Anthropic ads yet? I saw Twitter this morning going crazy about it, but I don't have the context yet. Okay. Was it AI generated? No, but it is an absolute mocking of open AI integrating ads and Sam wrote a lengthy reply that was defensive. Yes, but pay attention. The fact that the AI companies did not make AI ads in a world where we all know that you could make a great AI video right now. I mean, McDonald's got murdered a couple months ago. If you follow Adelaide and they made an ad, Burger King, like mocked it and like stole the pur-- it went poorly. And so I think that made everyone say, oh, we're definitely not doing that for a year or two. But it will happen. The stigma will go away and my company will have to adjust and every company will have to adjust. What's the number one thing, CMOs aren't thinking about today that they need to be thinking about to be successful three, six, nine months from now? I would say they're probably have thought about it, but they're not serious enough about it. But social creative and how it affects the GEO and AEO results in the LLM and two live social shopping, the QVC application of social media. The half a trillion dollar industry in China is now here. Is that TikTok and YouTube or is that-- That is TikTok shop number one. That is what not? The independent app number two. That is eBay, live, quickly number three, that is Twitch, live shopping, starting to groom and inevitably you've got to think that Google, YouTube, and Meta, Facebook, Instagram are going to get serious about this because the economics are astonishing. There's also for all the nerds out there, there's an app called District, Full Disclosure. I'm thinking about besting in it. It's the Shopify of live shopping, very smart play. Yeah. So there's a lot going on in that space. Amazon owns Twitch. They integrate Twitch live shopping into Amazon, is that what we see? Because their plays have been not very good in this space. So it's quite fun to talk to smart people. You'd like to-- We've got to find one for you. You know, yeah, I'm sitting with one. I think that's one of the plays. You know, they're a little decentralized there. I do not see a world where I actually think the only reason that Google, a K, YouTube, and Meta are not in it right now is because they're so distracted by AI. Yeah. It's a bigger thing to focus on. But had the AI thing happen two years from now, not last year or two years ago, I think you would have already seen executions from them. Economics are enormous. Our mutual friend, Cole Lazaro, is graduating from college in just a few months. Same. The best kid. He calls you and he says, Gary, I need one piece of advice to share with my classmates who are going out in this uncertain world where AI's eating the entry-level jobs. What are you telling Cole to tell us about this? Go work for as little as possible, whether you're lucky like Cole where maybe you have parents that can help you, or you're unlucky like I was where you were just willing to live humbly with five roommates and live that life. Go work for as little as possible. You got to live to be as close to the sun as possible. Want to be in sports? Go be an intern for Pat McAfee, the number seven intern, and just be around it. Want to be in marketing? Come to Vayner and do our residency program. Get close to the thing. That is a huge mistake. The amount of people that have big dreams in their 20s that don't realize they get offered 5,000 more from some job that has nothing to do with their life dream, but they're not humble enough or willing to eat enough crow to go work somewhere where they're right there in the traffic. Want to be in music? Go work for the most important music manager or label or Spotify for nothing. Just get close to the action. Love you man. Love you too. Have a fun week. Great. Yeah, yeah. We'll catch up. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Appreciate you, buddy. Masters of scale is a weight what original our executive producer is Eve Trobe. Our senior producer is Trisha Bobita. Associate producer is Masha Makatonina. Senior talent executive is Stephanie Stern. Music in mastering by Aaron Bessinelli and Brian Pue, original music by Ryan Holiday. Our head of podcasts is Leetal Moulade. Visit mastersofscale.com to find the transcript for this episode and to subscribe to Tour News letter. And please make sure to check out our YouTube channel.