- Hey guys, first of all, thank you for clicking. You're about to watch a new video or another video on YouTube. And before you do, 212-931-5731. What I'm doing in my text
community is bonkers, it's instant, it's access, it's exclusive, and now, enjoy this YouTube video. To me, if you're selling
to 15 to 25 year olds, anything, and you don't have
an uncomfortable strategy, uncomfortable is a slang term for all in, creating every day at scale, on TikTok, you're missing one of the great kind of moments. And the shit can go away! Yeah!
- Yeah! - [Gary] You've got your perspective. - [Announcer] Gary Vaynerchuk! - [Gary] I just wanna be happy. Don't you wanna be happy? (jazzy hip hop beat) What was the biggest a-ha? You were at Facebook for a decade? - Mmhmm. - What, when you, obviously besides seeing
that whole thing happen and I obviously, I'm assuming, but correct me if I'm wrong, you're like, wait a
minute, this platform has a real chance of potentially
being the next one, let me a smart executive, obviously, there's some opportunity being early-ish. What was the a-ha of the platform that was different than
what you've seen before (snaps) that really kind of gave you the strategic or courage to make that
kind of career move? - Well I'll give you two. The a-ha moment with Facebook was where I met with Zuck'. - Yeah.
- Right? - Yes. - And there you kind of look at that and just an amazing entrepreneur founder. Right? The passion that he exuded was, I just remember
coming out of discussion - Where were you at the time? - At the time I was with Yahoo. - Understood. - Yahoo in the UK, in London. The a-ha moment with TikTok was when I met who's the founder of and it was very, they're very different, the two of them, right? But they're both engineers, they're both super passionate, they're amazing founders
and entrepreneurs. And at the end of the day, they both want to make
the world a better place. Right? And when you see that combined with some of the metrics, the metrics really on the
Facebook side as well, the metrics on TikTok were astounding. There's no surprise to
people in this room, the reason folks are sittin' here is because of the numbers, right? The reason I'm sittin' here is because of the numbers and the reason you talk so passionately about the platform's for the numbers. So,
- And just to add my two cents, just like, I also recognize a lot
of people in this room might have a side hustle and are trying to get something started or have a friend who does or have some other things that she or he wants to talk about in the world that other platforms can't. I think the thing that TikTok has and I've mentioned it earlier today, LinkedIn ironically is going through the same thing, there's always this time
when these platforms are so big, that there is so big with attention that there's not enough content to fill it to ultimately not create a scenario where you can get an
incredible amount of awareness and reach when you have no audience. I think the thing that's
been most interesting to me over the last two months, and I don't think I've seen this in a long long time, where the nature of TikTok's algorithm and just how much consumption
is happening there, and I've been talking about it quite a bit over the last hundred days, I've been bombarded with emails and DM's from people who've desperately been trying to create
on YouTube and Instagram for the last three years, eight hours a day, and within six days, 19 days have built such bigger audiences and engagement, not just
numbers of followers on TikTok. And that's reminiscent to the people I saw on Twitter in that first
2006 to 2008 world. You were able to get
so many more followers because the nature was, everybody followed everybody 'cause it was such a small community, and you were able to
get a lot of awareness and before we do anything else, I think we all chase awareness, the industry has been
overpricing potential reach with GRP's and impressions
and programmatic and here's a platform, though I still believe
skews to a certain demo that may not match everybody potentially has its
way to match everybody, but has, in essence, 'free' awareness that is very difficult to achieve in other places and I think that in itself is important. - Yeah. I think you asked a question earlier about kind of brand, and how they think about it and for me, the I've been with the company for six months. By no means do I have all the answers. We don't have a lot of the answers and one of the things that I'm really trying to emphasize to teams kind of around the world is that we need help, we're
trying to learn as we go. But it is different. The environment's different, so brands have to think differently about their presence in the platform. And we have some amazing brands who are doing some really cool work. And they're kind of the early adopters, the Nikes, the Burberrys, Samsungs, doing some amazing things and I can talk about lots
of different executions and how they view it. One thing in common that everybody has is kind of willingness to try. First and foremost. Two, they think a little bit differently. So it's not about how do we just take content that I'm running on
Insta or Facebook or Snap or ESPN or whoever might be running, or YouTube and try to cut it and paste it and stick it onto TikTok. There is a little bit of
a different nuance to it. And the greatest success brands are having is when they are engaging
with the audience in very authentic ways. - I assume you would
believe that to be true for every platform. That the context of the creative is one of the big conversations our industry is not having enough of. - Absolutely. Absolutely, on this platform, audiences are so engaged, when people and great examples might be the MAC Cosmetics
execution of fashion week. Right? They pertained three influencers, they enabled and empowered
these influencers, they brought them to the shows with 'em, there was a campaign around Your Beauty. Right, so it's all about
you and your beauty and transformation of beauty, and they ended up with
these three influencers, created this amazing content. Getting that content
distributed up on the platform, then they had 250,000 other people creating content with the hashtag. And they ended up with I think the number was close to two billion videos, right? All through relatively small investment in time and energy. - How are you guys, I actually don't even know this, 'cause I'm just in full content and read comments. How are you guys counting video views, is that three seconds? What is your metric? - So for us, video views
in that context, organic is full video views. For advertising we are working with IES and others around
viewability standards and - I understand. - And I will say, it's new. So we only launched our
IES integrations maybe six, eight weeks ago. Which might sound crazy, for we kind of appear to be
this massive puppet even. I would argue that in many parts of the world, we still behave, it's
intentional, like a startup. We're still building the foundation. - Again, something I don't know and I have no clue if you guys are publicly saying this. What always gets my attention is when apps shoot to the top of the download list. I'm just fascinated by people in marketing who don't download every
one of those apps and plays. So, I know it takes a lot to get there and stay there as long
as TikTok has been there, but when's the last time TikTok announced how many users are on the platform, or how many users are on the platform? - We really don't announce it. We talk to brands about we're pretty clear with brands, we don't it publicly.
- Okay. That's why I hedged, I have no idea. But it's more than one, right? - We're pretty transparent
in those numbers. It's not a billion but it's
not half of that either. - I understand. (audience laughs) - Wide margin, I guess. - How global is it, given it's a Chinese based, where, I always remember,
I was just in Brazil which was a lot of fun
for the first time for me, which is unusual for me, I travel so much. And it was so fun to talk about Orkut because back in 2000, you know, when I was doing this in '07, '08, it was so fascinating to see Orkut be the dominant social, you know this, this was the toughest battle for Facebook back in the day, I remember. You know, so are there any pockets that TikTok has completely exploded in? I'm always fascinated by the global thing, Twitter, it's stunningly a non-player in Germany for example. I'm always fascinated
by the global dynamics. Has there been a market where TikTok has completely
exploded recently or anything interesting
to share for context? - Yeah, I think it is global. And so we're seeing
somewhat growth all over it be the Americas or India's been exceptional - Yeah I've noticed that.
- In terms of growth. And culturally, it just resonates. And so there's been a lot of
growth in the India market. But other parts of Asia as well. TikTok doesn't exist in China. It's autonomous on the
Chinese side of the business. Run it outside the Chinese market, we run it very locally. So in the U.S., is run
by teams in the U.S. Business run, European business run by teams in Europe. So, but it is pretty, pretty, around the world
it's pretty common. I mean I think the big thing is, what's interesting is, people always say what's the difference between you and Facebook or Instagram or Twitter or Snap? And I would say that
some of those platforms are very much social, they're
social networks, right? And that's the world they live in. And we do get bucketed in to social, but I would argue we're
not a social network. Because at the end of the day, my content in this, I don't care what my friends and family, matter of fact, I'm not connected to any friends and family on TikTok. - But is any social network
playing in that game? - What? Being connected to friends and family? - Yeah, I mean the evolutional people are creating Finstas
and secondary things but the reality is, all of this has opened, it's really fascinating to
watch it all happen, right? I mean the notion of a place for friends and family has, for a far majority of consumers is now their text messaging I mean, TikTok in its
execution as a social network has massive similarities to and Instagram, for example. - I guess, I'm probably
a little bit skewed on Instagram and Facebook, 'cause that's where I grew up. - Sure. - And be part of that family, you're deeply involved in content so my experience on those platforms is very much friends and family and then obviously, brands. Whereas, my experience on TikTok is very much on the content. So it's a content grab
- What's interesting about that though is when you look at a 14 or 15 year old, a lot of them, that is
their friend network. It is being controlled by a parent to allow just their friends
and their camp friends and things of that nature, it's almost like where
your starting point is becomes your friend network, then it evolves. And then it's interesting to watch people maintain a place for their friends. And it's just the evolution of when you get into a platform. - Yeah. I think it's interesting,
it's interesting. Gen Z's definitely coming up on TikTok as their platform. - Yes. - I was having dinner with my wife and younger kids, maybe two weeks ago and there were a couple, probably Seniors in high school girls who were in the corner, doing some stuff. What is that? I'm like, they're TikToking. Right? And she's like, what do you mean? And sure enough, their TikTok's from their friends. Right?
- Of course. - And they were out in Vail having a hike and there's a family. A family with maybe 10,
12, 13 year old kids, Mom, Dad, and they were
doing the same thing on the trail, going up the mountain. They were just kind of
halfway at the mountain creating a TikTok video. And my wife was kinda blown away by this. And then - Do your kids - Why would people do this? And I'm like, well it's
just a different world. She grew up in the
Facebook family as well. And then, funny enough, two weeks ago, Tom Brady joins TikTok. (Gary sighs) And now all of a sudden,
she's downloading TikTok. (audience laughs) She's like, I love TikTok! - I'm not, I'm not engaging anymore. (laughs) Fuckin' hate that dude. (audience laughs) (applauds) Yeah. Like, hate. Like, not even like, not even like polite claps
that we were doing now. Like, fuckin' hate you, bro. (audience laughs) You can ask the next question. I'm not even excited anymore. (audience laughs) - You're gonna leave the stage now? - Just super on tilt, man, my football life is the worst! (audience laughs) - At least you're not
an Eagles fan right now. - I would rip my fuckin' arms off to be an Eagles fan. (audience laughs) You guys won a fuckin'
Super Bowl two minutes ago, what the fuck? (audience laughs) I haven't even been to one. Thank you.
- You will one day. - I will. I'm gonna fuckin' make sure of it. - If you buy the Jets
- Exactly. - You know you'll win the Super Bowl. - What else? (audience laughs) - So I want to talk a little bit about the creator ecosystem. - Okay. - They're all developing content on YouTube and on Instagram - For sure. - And the one thing they say is when they launch on TikTok, it just goes fast. The content, for whatever the stream by the social graphic, whatever you want to call it, right? When it pops, it just goes really - There's so much attention on your platform right now. I mean, it's not super complicated. It went really fast on Vine too! It went really fast on Instagram when Instagram didn't have enough creators making for it. This is one big game of
supply and demand of content, and the attention on the other side. Yeah! And it's gonna go really fast until the attention doesn't
match the amount of output. It's just the same old game. This is one game played
over and over again. And by the way, it went
back to television, but in modern times, this is email marketing. Email open rates for very developed email newsletters in
the 1996 to 1999 range had scary numbers like
80 percent open rates. 90 percent open rates. 'Cause nobody was emailing! You know, and how many people here had email in 1997, just raise your hands? Raise 'em high, 'cause I
want the kids to see this. (audience laughs) Remember how we read every
fuckin' email back then? (audience laughs) And so there's this attention graph that plays out. And, I mean you intimately know this. This is what I was yelling
about in 2009, '10, '11 about Facebook, I'm like, these pages,
organic reach is remarkable. And I'm like, it will go away. And it was not because I knew anything other than, it always goes away. TikTok, inevitably, unless
it's able to suck out all the collective attention of the world at all times, eventually, there's a crescendo,
there's a tipping point, where there's more content being produced plus you'll eventually,
I think, maybe not, create a product where people can start showing up in the feed or other places. It's a land grab, it's like buying up beachfront property in Malibu. Somebody did that! And eventually got more expensive. And so, yeah I mean I
speak to all the creators, top down, a lot. And I'm spending a ton
of time talking to them over the last 150 days. And you're absolutely right! And where I'm really passionate is being a creator now is everybody's dream at a youth level, and
then more importantly, for a lot of people here, storytelling and having
it seen is very important. And, I think it's one thing for a creator that's already won on YouTube or Instagram or somewhere else, when they come over. What's been so fun for me is seeing these people who, I said it earlier, desperately have tried for the last three years and seeing how quick the results are and look, flag in the ground, 'cause I try to be historically correct. I have no equity or
involvement with TikTok, I could give a fuck if
it disappears tomorrow. I,
- Hopefully that doesn't happen, Gary. - Fair enough. You know, respect, respect. (audience laughs) I'm sure that 10 year run in Facebook wasn't the worst, Blake. But nonetheless, (audience laughs) nonetheless, I think for me it's like, hey how many more times does this industry, ad week, need to see this show to understand what the game is? The game is very simple. Things emerge that have uncomfortable amounts of attention in comparison to how much output creatively is there, and those are incredible times to storytell and learn. And people waiting for it to be real or some reporting mechanism to the rub, and you know this, this is your guys' world. The rub of waiting for reporting to justify your spend on it is the rub. It's no different that
podcast pre-roll right now. There's no confusion that there's an enormous amount of people listening to podcasts. But watching people not buy ads because the reporting isn't in place yet is why people don't do it, and that's why entrepreneurs and startups always grow, 'cause big companies trade on fake metrics and small companies trade on truth. So,
- Want to let that just sit in for a second? - Yeah, I mean it's - That was very profound. - It's, it's, it's historically correct. All that TikTok, for me, being the first brand
to go heavy into TikTok that is targeting that demo, because I still don't fully know where the demo is but let's just say, skews younger for now. It's no difference than Proctor and Gamble being the biggest spender on television in the '50s and '60s, 'cause that was the arbitrage or Wish, the shopping app, you probably knew this. - Yeah. - I mean, this is what Facebook executives joke about all the time. There's all these companies and LLCs that nobody's ever heard of spending uncomfortable amounts of money and Coke and BMW are
spending a third of that and everyone's confused
at what's going on. To me, if you're selling
to 15 to 25 year olds, anything, and you don't have
an uncomfortable strategy uncomfortable is a slang term for all in, creating every day at scale, on TikTok, you're missing one of the great kind of moments. And the shit can go away! You know, and still goes with you. One of the things I was most fascinated by is people like, well, Gary, what if it
goes away in three years? I'm like, you take the
brand equity with you. There's a lot of people who built a lot of brand equity on Vine, and when they started creating
on Snap, or Instagram, the audience, a percentage of it went! I don't know why everybody's so literal. You're so happy to market on Super Bowl or on television or on outdoor, that goes away too! But there's something
ideological in the system that has this sad feeling that it might turn into MySpace. My preference is that they all die! Because that means the attention's moving, and it will always benefit the quickest and the people that are most
willing to play that game, which is my most comfortable game. I love having debates with
people about the past. The past is always people's vulnerability to the current and
definitely to the future. - So, I think that, listen, I'm a big fan of
everything you just said. I'm an entrepreneur, I love this space. And the reason why I joined the company is 'cause at that inflection point, it's having to learn, it's
having to grow up a little bit, it's having to think differently, it's having to create some standards. It does have to have some measureability. - 100 percent. - Contents, not only being seen but it's had an impact on awareness, consideration, intent. - And real quick on that, I apologize, Blake. That's all true and all plays here, that has nothing to do with what the consumer's actually doing. That's the rub. Of course that's gonna happen. That's why you go there. And that will play out over time. But every second you
wait for that to happen, the underpriced attention
becomes more expensive. - Yep. There's an inflection, up until now, up until
probably a month ago, I think a lot of that was true. There were good brands on the platform, there were dozens and dozens and dozens. In the last month, for whatever reason, there's been a real inflection point. - Well everybody's back from the summer. - Could be the summer, it could be because I'm
just doing such a great job. - Oh, got it. That's where you were going? I think it's fuckin' obvious. - That's not where I'm going. (audience laughs) It could be when you started talking a lot about it! - I don't know about that. - There is a lot more activity now. And some of the more, what I would call mainstream and really, powerful brands get on the
platform and experiment. - Yeah. - 'Cause it is about experimenting. It's not, the point you made earlier is we could easily launch a platform and say, let's take 15 second clips from wherever else and
stick into our feed, right? And build a currency around it, and scale business. We could do that all day long. But when I talked to leading brands, what I keep trying to say is we want to be different. We want brands to be
really this kind of this first class citizen in the graph, so that when people see the content, they actually engage with it. Right? They engage with it and they become connected to it. - Where your rub is, as a platform has been historic, which is getting brands to be
contextual, creatively is the rub. - It's hard. - It is hard, because they
are partnered with people often that don't contextualize creative, or they don't see it. Real quick, I apologize, 'cause I don't know if
we're supposed to do this, we're gonna take some questions, right? - Yeah, in a few more minutes. - Is that what they said? Okay. Do you guys know about
this, the slide-o stuff? Okay, cool. Sorry. - The
- They're real. - If anybody saw today on TikTok, Walmart's got a great activation. It's saving shuffle. In the stores, it's kind of engaging, it's beginning Walmart, which is kind of one of the biggest brands certainly in the U.S. And engaging with that
audience is a big deal, right? It's kind of one of the seminal moments where you start seeing
those kind of brands. And we're seeing that with Variety, and HP did an amazing, we saw Chipotle's done some great things - Yeah I saw. - There's lots of great, great work coming. - I'm gonna jump in on number four, 'cause I'm excited about it. I don't know if they're
showing it up there, but the question is, how can TikTok ensure they will not have the same destiny as Vine? I touched on this earlier. For them, at least what
I've seen historically for the last 10 years, they're gonna have to continue
to innovate the product. Right? I think, if you look at Vine, it got stuck. It just stopped innovating features, obviously it got bought by Twitter and so it had those dynamics. Platforms that have been able to continue to innovate with trends, I mean, look at Facebook now. They're pushing groups
'cause that's innovating what they're, what's the
behavior on the platform. I think one more time though, 'cause I think this is
the biggest value ad I can bring here, we have to start looking
at these platforms like shows, not like channels. Again, when it's relevant,
you market on it. When Coachella's at it's hottest, you activate there. When nobody watches the Super Bowl in 30 years, if that's the case, I have a funny feeling nobody's gonna buy Super Bowl ads. It's not complicated. What I tend to do is
spend hundreds of hours consuming content, but
more importantly, comments. I spend almost, when I think about the last hundred hours plus that I've spent in the last couple of months on TikTok, 90 percent of it has been reading comments of the piece of content. So I go into, for you or where it's explore or things that are popping or get into a hashtag portal, or see something popping, and of course I'll look at the singular piece of content and that takes two
seconds on the platform, or six or what have you. It's actually spending the next 15 minutes reading how people react to it. So, for me it's seeing new acronyms, slang term, it's been super
interesting, to your point, over the last 45 days, I always love, and I loved it on Snap, and I loved it on Vine, when people that aren't 15 start coming onto the platform, nothing makes me laugh more than seeing something go viral and just reading comments, and you can look at the profile and see it's like a 30,
40, 50, 60, 70 year old and 94 percent of the comments are, 'what the fuck is this?' You know? (audience laughs) You know, which is like the best, right? You just learn, and so I'm looking - Waiting for the first f-bomb. - That didn't happen during Tom Brady? - I don't think so. - I, I (audience laughs) The number one thing I look for, I think will resonate with this audience is, I'm spending all my time looking for are there nuances that make me believe that this is going to age up and stick around, but that doesn't stop
me from making at scale and extracting awareness at the time. And no different than MTV, and then what that evolves into, if you have ambition to be successful at your craft, understanding what's going on here now is going to pay dividends for the rest of your career. I think the reason Snap and
Vine and Instagram Stories and TikTok came so natural to me is because Socialcam was an app that used the algorithm, remember that? Do you remember that pop? I don't know how many of you guys remember Socialcam but
for like 48 seconds, it popped, and it was the same time that Photobooth was popping. And so, the idea of storytelling that way, you can see so many of the nuances of the content today on TikTok that are grounded in the DNA of Socialcam and Vine and Musically and that's important because then you start understanding
how to storytell. Because being a creator
as a creative director for a brand, I think we all know this, having the tough
conversations as they evolve with the biggest brands in the world to justify why to be on this, it has to go much deeper than test and learn is always right, and you're seeing that now. But at some point, this conversation's gonna evolve into is this doing anything for my business? And the only way to
actually make that happen is to be a relevant storyteller within the context of the
four walls that we're in. And that takes strategy, let alone contextual output. - That leads into a
good question which is, how do you see ad created
for TikTok evolving in the context of Facebook,
Instagram Stories? - Look, I think, from my perspective, the industry, the reason I fell in love with the feed, the idea of those ads was there was less friction
in that at the time than there was in a pop up in a website, in a pre-roll before you saw what you wanted to see, and the native integration of that was far greater
than anything I had seen, which is why it came natural to me, 'cause I think friction, to the consumer, is the devil. And so I was committed,
and it had its run, and now, I think we can all recognize, that we've been conditioned to expect ads in a feed, which means, inevitably, it will decline in its relevance with human conditioning. I don't know what TikTok's thinking. I think you've eluded to it twice and I think it will always
be an interesting thing of how do we get brands
to actually be great at just creative on the platform. But for me it's always how the least friction within the four walls of where you're consuming to actually get the ad across. Integrated in the content is always the best way to do it, especially if you can do it. But if you can't, and you have empathy for the fact that TikTok's building a business, and will create ad products, it will be interesting
to see where it goes. It's funny, you guys started doing the ad that is just there for everybody when you open. That has such great scale, and it reminded me of trending topics on Twitter. I don't know if you guys remember the trending topic ad on Twitter when it was still a desktop app, and it wasn't like a heavily mobile, and it would show you trending and you can have the number one, you could have the ad above the number one trending ad. And I remember, we did some stuff for GE and Green Mountain Coffee that was uncomfortably successful, 'cause it's just the sheer awareness. Just good old fashioned actual consumption and awareness. Which is the counter
to contextual at scale. So it's interesting to see you guys have already gone there. - Yeah. - And I think, I don't know where you guys plan on going, but the
least amount of friction will result in the best results. - I think, so there's cold products, not gonna bore the audience with this because people can see, hashtag challenge which is basically integrated
into the meme culture. Or the top viewage is kinda what wanted today, which is a mass scale. I just truly believe, if people would pull me aside and say, where do you want the world to go? I really want this to be heavily driven around native feeling ads. I want brands to feel like they belong in the feed. I don't want it to be an
interruptive experience - I agree. - My friend Mark over at Facebook he said advertising was, it's all bad at averting
people away from the content to talk to your brand. Right? And I really want brands, 'cause the success they're having when they engage audiences, whether it be Chipotle, or whether it be Mac
Cosmetics or whether it be what Ralph Lauren did with the U.S. Open with the hashtag winning. The numbers are staggering. Not just 'cause the sheer scale, because they're actually
engaging these folks, and the creatives being
created by the audience. - Let me slip this in, 'cause I think it'll help the audience, I'm generally curious as well. Once (distortion) got beyond Gen Z, and then the other, and I think it just went away which is it said, you're saying
we should get on TikTok I remember it 'cause I read it, you're saying that we should
be on TikTok right now, to grab this underpriced attention, but is it relevant for
things outside of Gen Z? In its most simple point, are you confident and
comfortable at this point telling brands that
are marketing to people that are 25 to 45, let's just start with
that wide massive demo, that there's enough user attention on a platform that it justifies the investment to put into the platform? - Absolutely. I would say, fully, a year and a half ago, I may not have been old
to make that comment when it was purely Musically, TikTok has fundamentally shifted from a demographic and
from a content diversity - Forget about the content diversity which I think you guys, to your point, have done an extremely good job, to make sure it's not lip syncing. How are you, this is actually a very selfish question because I'm getting hit up by my brands. I'm not, on common
sense, paying attention. With no data behind, I'm not comfortable saying, hey, you're targeting 30 to 38 year olds and we should really be
spending real time and money on this platform to extract attention to create consideration. Are you guys sharing with brands' numbers? - Yeah. Yeah, we're sharing all
the demographic numbers. So, they're brought to me. It's not like how many 17
year olds or 23 year olds - Yeah, 'cause you're not capturing that. - 18 to 24, 24 to 35 - You're using third party data overlay on that, because you're not asking
for that info, right? - We are using our own data on that. 'Cause it's part of the
registration process. - Yeah, I don't recall at this point. You put in your data. Okay. - With seven seconds left, - I just have to say, fuck Tom Brady. (audience laughs) - Awesome. Thanks, y'all.
- [Gary] Thank you guys. Take care. (audience applauds) (Gary laughs)
