when I was in the US when I was 12 or 13
baseball cards were a very big deal
every everybody collected them and I was
making one to two thousand dollars a
weekend selling baseball cards as a 12
13 year old so probably the richest I’ll
ever be and that was great but then I
turned 14 and I was first-generation
oldest son from the old country which
meant I got dragged into my dad’s liquor
store got paid two bucks an hour to bag
ice for 15 hours a day so it was kind of
hardcore I always tell a lot of my
friends that I grew up much more like
their grandparents than they did cuz we
were so first generation when I was 17 I
realized that people collected wine and
that was a big deal for me because I
didn’t want to go into my family
business though I wanted to because I
thought I could do it much better than
my dad but I wasn’t passionate about
selling beer or liquor but this wine
thing was super interesting to me and by
the time I was 18 somewhere between 16
and 18 I went completely all-in I mean
scary to think back how much I learned
about wine as a teenager and I decided
that I wanted to open up 4,000 wine
shops all across America eventually
build a big business sell it and buy the
New York Jets which is my career
ambition when I was 18 even though I
only spent about 30 minutes of my life
on a computer at that point I was in
college and I went to my friend’s dorm
room and I heard the dial-up internet
sound for the first time and in 1994
about 14 minutes into surfing the web I
ended up on a bulletin board in AOL that
was selling baseball cards and I
realized that I could sell through
this machine 24 months later I launched
one of the first three ecommerce wine
businesses in America called
winelibrary.com
and and that became my career spent
$15,000 on building that website I was
still at university and so nobody back
home at the liquor store knew what to do
with it so on that fifteen thousand
dollar investment the wine ecommerce
site in the first two years of
operations sold less than two thousand
dollars in wine I don’t know how many of
you have a Soviet father but uh Sasha
Vaynerchuk was not happy with the ROI in
1998 I came home and took over the
business and from 1998 to 2003 in a
five-year window I grew my dad’s
business from a three million dollar to
a sixty five million dollar a year
business I did it on the religion that
allows me the humbleness to sit in front
of you guys here today which is when you
have no money and the business just for
context did three million dollars a year
in revenue
ten percent gross profit so three
hundred thousand dollars before expenses
luckily Sasha didn’t pay anybody
anything but still there was really no
money the only way to build that
business as quickly as I did especially
in the time when the internet was quite
immature and there wasn’t the kind of
user base that we all have now there was
no venture capital
there was no M&A activity I built it
because I made every penny of my
advertising work like a hundred dollar
bill and how I did that in 1996 was I
launched an e-commerce site when nobody
did that in 1997 I launched an email
newsletter that had 200,000 people on it
that had 91% open rates and 55% click
through to add to carpa and because in
1997 nobody was doing email marketing in
the US market or any market for that
matter the day Google AdWords came out
in 2000 I bought the word wine and I
owned it for nine cent nine months for
five cents a click
basically my career is very different
than the legendary status of this agency
which is all of my career in the first
five to seven years was predicated on
the one thing that is my religion so I
you know it’s a it’s a smart thing and
and the thing that I believe in my heart
to say in this room I truly believe that
creative is the variable of success that
the creative is the difference between
selling 1000 cases of that wine or 1
bottle of that wine and I think that’s
the way the world will be forever my
problem my excitement my debates my
passion my hours are spent on the fact
that I believe most people deploy
creative into a gap of attention that is
overpriced so my career was built on
buying attention at a very low cost
ecommerce email marketing and Google
AdWords in 97 2000 was grossly
underpriced by the creative and
advertising shops of the world and by
the businesses and startups of the world
and that’s why I was able to build such
a big business I continued that path
with banner retargeting when that wasn’t
a thing and my career took a really
different turn and probably started my
path to this seat in 2006 when YouTube
came out YouTube came out I thought it
was gonna be a big deal and within four
months of YouTube being alive I started
a wine show and every day for five years
I sat in front of a camera for 20
minutes and drank four bottles of wine
that was a good gig in the first year
half of YouTube 2006 to 2007 and a half
very few people watched it there was not
a single video that had a million views
it was building by 2008 i I was selling
hundreds of cases of wine per episode if
I reviewed the wines carefully and
properly and it was the first time in my
career that I was selling stuff where
there was no paid distribution it was
completely predicated on the content
itself and the organic distribution of
the channel a few months later Google
bought YouTube for 1.6 billion dollars
that was the point where my career
changed I read an article that Ron
Conway angel investor was set to make
you know 25 million dollars on his fifty
thousand dollar investment and it was
the first time I realized you know this
gift of being right about EECOM and
Google AdWords and email and Google and
YouTube
has to pay off more than selling a
couple more cases of Bordeaux or
burgundy and so I promised myself the
next time I felt it the next time I felt
that feeling that is so dictated the
success in my life that I would invest I
went to South by Southwest the following
March because I want to learn more about
this Web 2.0 thing that was happening
and there was an app everybody was
making fun of called Twitter I thought
it reminded me a lot of early email
marketing I became very friendly with
the founders and a couple months later I
invested in Twitter at a 50 million
dollar valuation a couple weeks later I
made my first business video it was
called Facebook should be worried about
Twitter I explained why I thought
Twitter was a very exciting thing and
why this new force Facebook should be
paying attention to it it led to Mark
Zuckerberg steam reaching out to me I
flew out to Palo Alto and spoke to their
company gave a talk about consumer
behavior and the attention graph mark
luckily agreed with a lot of stuff we
had dinner and a couple weeks later I
bought a shitload of stock from his
parents
a week later I came home to New York had
my first lunch with David Karp decided
that tumblr was gonna be a big deal and
three months later I invested in tumblr
so as an investor I’ll probably never do
better than my first three investments
I’ve gone on to invest in Birchbox and
uber and Buddy Media and wildfire and a
lot of good things and have done quite
well but back then I understood that all
those platforms attention was
underpriced it’s the way that I know
that any brand in the world that you
work with definitely now in the UK in
the US and many other markets if they
are trying to sell something sneakers a
soda a piece of candy clothing to a 15
to 25 year old 95% of the ideas in this
room at Vayner and many other rooms are
not going to work because we’re gonna
deploy stories in places where 15 to 25
year olds are not spending their
attention
you know I’ll use Mondelez Sour Patch
Kids was probably one of our most
interesting case studies in the u.s. the
brand manager literally almost got fired
for doing what I recommended to be done
which was
in 2015 in 2014 they spent all of their
money on a commercial that was running
on Spike television because they were
trying to reach 15 to 25 year olds
business was down seven-and-a-half
percent in 2015 when we took over the
business we moved to every single dollar
to only Instagram and snapchat
there was no reporting to justify the
spend Mondelez is modeling mix didn’t
prove that moving those dollars to those
channels was going to do anything the
first nine months of our activities
because the reporting wasn’t back yet
the brain manager was literally on the
process of being fired out of the
organization when it was all said and
done last year sour patch kids in the US
had the fastest growth of any candy
brand in the last 10 years because I
don’t know if you know this this is a
crazy thought but 15 to 25
year-olds spend their attention in
Instagram and snapchat we have right now
in marketing and just all over the world
a stunning disrespect for attention and
a gross overwhelming overwhelming
respect for metrics headlines
awards and a ton of that has
nothing to do with actually selling
product now now thank you my man
now that being said it’s an interesting
thing because look I’ll say this and
it’s a super important to say here
because I think context is everything I
am in advertising now for the last seven
years really I’ve been running the
company for five years just for context
since you’re in this world
I’ve grown the agency from 30 to 650
people from 3 to 100 million dollars in
revenue no ma no cash infusion and I’m
still selling something nobody wants you
know nobody wants our creative nobody
even thinks of vaynermedia is a creative
shop and and I know enough to I I don’t
know much about the advertising world
right like if you told me you’d give me
50 billion dollars right now if I could
name the CEO of your company or any
other company I would not be able to do
that
I don’t know it you know when I go to
can I feel super out of place because I
have no idea what the
anyone’s talking about I don’t know the
space very well I mean that and so the
reason I just did that little rant was I
I do know enough as a matter fact I even
use your guy’s name in some of my
speeches because I know this is a
special place I know this is one of
those places that is so well known for
their great creative and things of that
nature and and I’m a funny guy because I
speak so much about creative being
subjective because it is because it’s
subjective when it’s you and it’s me and
I run doves and you’re the creative lead
for Wyden and it’s just you and I and we
decide that this idea versus that idea
is what goes on television that is a
hundred percent subjective just so
everybody knows it’s a hundred percent subjective
baseball cards were a very big deal
every everybody collected them and I was
making one to two thousand dollars a
weekend selling baseball cards as a 12
13 year old so probably the richest I’ll
ever be and that was great but then I
turned 14 and I was first-generation
oldest son from the old country which
meant I got dragged into my dad’s liquor
store got paid two bucks an hour to bag
ice for 15 hours a day so it was kind of
hardcore I always tell a lot of my
friends that I grew up much more like
their grandparents than they did cuz we
were so first generation when I was 17 I
realized that people collected wine and
that was a big deal for me because I
didn’t want to go into my family
business though I wanted to because I
thought I could do it much better than
my dad but I wasn’t passionate about
selling beer or liquor but this wine
thing was super interesting to me and by
the time I was 18 somewhere between 16
and 18 I went completely all-in I mean
scary to think back how much I learned
about wine as a teenager and I decided
that I wanted to open up 4,000 wine
shops all across America eventually
build a big business sell it and buy the
New York Jets which is my career
ambition when I was 18 even though I
only spent about 30 minutes of my life
on a computer at that point I was in
college and I went to my friend’s dorm
room and I heard the dial-up internet
sound for the first time and in 1994
about 14 minutes into surfing the web I
ended up on a bulletin board in AOL that
was selling baseball cards and I
realized that I could sell through
this machine 24 months later I launched
one of the first three ecommerce wine
businesses in America called
winelibrary.com
and and that became my career spent
$15,000 on building that website I was
still at university and so nobody back
home at the liquor store knew what to do
with it so on that fifteen thousand
dollar investment the wine ecommerce
site in the first two years of
operations sold less than two thousand
dollars in wine I don’t know how many of
you have a Soviet father but uh Sasha
Vaynerchuk was not happy with the ROI in
1998 I came home and took over the
business and from 1998 to 2003 in a
five-year window I grew my dad’s
business from a three million dollar to
a sixty five million dollar a year
business I did it on the religion that
allows me the humbleness to sit in front
of you guys here today which is when you
have no money and the business just for
context did three million dollars a year
in revenue
ten percent gross profit so three
hundred thousand dollars before expenses
luckily Sasha didn’t pay anybody
anything but still there was really no
money the only way to build that
business as quickly as I did especially
in the time when the internet was quite
immature and there wasn’t the kind of
user base that we all have now there was
no venture capital
there was no M&A activity I built it
because I made every penny of my
advertising work like a hundred dollar
bill and how I did that in 1996 was I
launched an e-commerce site when nobody
did that in 1997 I launched an email
newsletter that had 200,000 people on it
that had 91% open rates and 55% click
through to add to carpa and because in
1997 nobody was doing email marketing in
the US market or any market for that
matter the day Google AdWords came out
in 2000 I bought the word wine and I
owned it for nine cent nine months for
five cents a click
basically my career is very different
than the legendary status of this agency
which is all of my career in the first
five to seven years was predicated on
the one thing that is my religion so I
you know it’s a it’s a smart thing and
and the thing that I believe in my heart
to say in this room I truly believe that
creative is the variable of success that
the creative is the difference between
selling 1000 cases of that wine or 1
bottle of that wine and I think that’s
the way the world will be forever my
problem my excitement my debates my
passion my hours are spent on the fact
that I believe most people deploy
creative into a gap of attention that is
overpriced so my career was built on
buying attention at a very low cost
ecommerce email marketing and Google
AdWords in 97 2000 was grossly
underpriced by the creative and
advertising shops of the world and by
the businesses and startups of the world
and that’s why I was able to build such
a big business I continued that path
with banner retargeting when that wasn’t
a thing and my career took a really
different turn and probably started my
path to this seat in 2006 when YouTube
came out YouTube came out I thought it
was gonna be a big deal and within four
months of YouTube being alive I started
a wine show and every day for five years
I sat in front of a camera for 20
minutes and drank four bottles of wine
that was a good gig in the first year
half of YouTube 2006 to 2007 and a half
very few people watched it there was not
a single video that had a million views
it was building by 2008 i I was selling
hundreds of cases of wine per episode if
I reviewed the wines carefully and
properly and it was the first time in my
career that I was selling stuff where
there was no paid distribution it was
completely predicated on the content
itself and the organic distribution of
the channel a few months later Google
bought YouTube for 1.6 billion dollars
that was the point where my career
changed I read an article that Ron
Conway angel investor was set to make
you know 25 million dollars on his fifty
thousand dollar investment and it was
the first time I realized you know this
gift of being right about EECOM and
Google AdWords and email and Google and
YouTube
has to pay off more than selling a
couple more cases of Bordeaux or
burgundy and so I promised myself the
next time I felt it the next time I felt
that feeling that is so dictated the
success in my life that I would invest I
went to South by Southwest the following
March because I want to learn more about
this Web 2.0 thing that was happening
and there was an app everybody was
making fun of called Twitter I thought
it reminded me a lot of early email
marketing I became very friendly with
the founders and a couple months later I
invested in Twitter at a 50 million
dollar valuation a couple weeks later I
made my first business video it was
called Facebook should be worried about
Twitter I explained why I thought
Twitter was a very exciting thing and
why this new force Facebook should be
paying attention to it it led to Mark
Zuckerberg steam reaching out to me I
flew out to Palo Alto and spoke to their
company gave a talk about consumer
behavior and the attention graph mark
luckily agreed with a lot of stuff we
had dinner and a couple weeks later I
bought a shitload of stock from his
parents
a week later I came home to New York had
my first lunch with David Karp decided
that tumblr was gonna be a big deal and
three months later I invested in tumblr
so as an investor I’ll probably never do
better than my first three investments
I’ve gone on to invest in Birchbox and
uber and Buddy Media and wildfire and a
lot of good things and have done quite
well but back then I understood that all
those platforms attention was
underpriced it’s the way that I know
that any brand in the world that you
work with definitely now in the UK in
the US and many other markets if they
are trying to sell something sneakers a
soda a piece of candy clothing to a 15
to 25 year old 95% of the ideas in this
room at Vayner and many other rooms are
not going to work because we’re gonna
deploy stories in places where 15 to 25
year olds are not spending their
attention
you know I’ll use Mondelez Sour Patch
Kids was probably one of our most
interesting case studies in the u.s. the
brand manager literally almost got fired
for doing what I recommended to be done
which was
in 2015 in 2014 they spent all of their
money on a commercial that was running
on Spike television because they were
trying to reach 15 to 25 year olds
business was down seven-and-a-half
percent in 2015 when we took over the
business we moved to every single dollar
to only Instagram and snapchat
there was no reporting to justify the
spend Mondelez is modeling mix didn’t
prove that moving those dollars to those
channels was going to do anything the
first nine months of our activities
because the reporting wasn’t back yet
the brain manager was literally on the
process of being fired out of the
organization when it was all said and
done last year sour patch kids in the US
had the fastest growth of any candy
brand in the last 10 years because I
don’t know if you know this this is a
crazy thought but 15 to 25
year-olds spend their attention in
Instagram and snapchat we have right now
in marketing and just all over the world
a stunning disrespect for attention and
a gross overwhelming overwhelming
respect for metrics headlines
awards and a ton of that has
nothing to do with actually selling
product now now thank you my man
now that being said it’s an interesting
thing because look I’ll say this and
it’s a super important to say here
because I think context is everything I
am in advertising now for the last seven
years really I’ve been running the
company for five years just for context
since you’re in this world
I’ve grown the agency from 30 to 650
people from 3 to 100 million dollars in
revenue no ma no cash infusion and I’m
still selling something nobody wants you
know nobody wants our creative nobody
even thinks of vaynermedia is a creative
shop and and I know enough to I I don’t
know much about the advertising world
right like if you told me you’d give me
50 billion dollars right now if I could
name the CEO of your company or any
other company I would not be able to do
that
I don’t know it you know when I go to
can I feel super out of place because I
have no idea what the
anyone’s talking about I don’t know the
space very well I mean that and so the
reason I just did that little rant was I
I do know enough as a matter fact I even
use your guy’s name in some of my
speeches because I know this is a
special place I know this is one of
those places that is so well known for
their great creative and things of that
nature and and I’m a funny guy because I
speak so much about creative being
subjective because it is because it’s
subjective when it’s you and it’s me and
I run doves and you’re the creative lead
for Wyden and it’s just you and I and we
decide that this idea versus that idea
is what goes on television that is a
hundred percent subjective just so
everybody knows it’s a hundred percent subjective
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