I'm giving you a million bucks. I want you to sell this hat. What do you do? Influencers, Facebook, Instagram, pre-roll, placement on Pat McAfee's show. Like, what are you doing? Raise your hands. You've never clicked the banner ad on purpose. Raise your hands. That's it. Our industry spends more working media dollars on banner ads than social media. Are you kidding me? So, whoever here is the best at thinking of how to spend the money to make the sale in the short and the long term. Sale in the short term, brand building in the long term, that's who's going to win. And AI will take away a lot of the jobs of like what you do in an Excel sheet. Everything that AI will do is force more value on thinking and less value on commodity executing.
To become great at media, I believe it's based on the biggest thing that I'm pushing as we go into this next chapter with media. I believe my relationship with our media department is really interesting because a lot of things that the media department currently believes, I don't believe in, because they are forced to believe it because the way the client measures awareness is based on potential views, not actualized views. That I believe a lot of you, even given the head nods in here now, that if your life depended on it, you would not buy programmatic trade desk's garbage digital inventory with ugly banners and pre-rolls to sell a thing. I think what's going to happen is that AI is going to force everyone to realize it's the thinking, whether that's creative or whether that's strategic, that all the value in the world is about to go to thinkers.
This is why school is such a bad framework. This is why I've always challenged school so much. School, which all of you are so close to at this point in your life, I don't think anything is lost on this with any of you. You're not being rewarded to critically think or to be creative. You've been taught your whole life in school to do something that AI is now going to do. It's really true. Like what? Like you were taught to memorize facts. I can get the facts in a second. You were taught math. I could do math in a second. All of the value in the world is headed towards creativity and strategic thinking. So if you're in media, do you know where attention's shifting? Right? Like for example, people are like, Gary, what about Reddit? I'm like, Reddit doesn't have good ads. It's true. I love Reddit, but I don't like what we can buy on Reddit. It's not going to do anything.
I'm aware that people go to ESPN.com. I'm sure you looked at your brackets to see if you're going to win anything. You know, like I get that you go there. Raise your hands. You've never clicked the banner ad on purpose. Raise your hands. That's it. So, I think it comes down to are you a thinker, right? Do you use common sense and truth? Do you know where trends are going? Do you understand the thinking? Like, how it goes back to planning? Everyone's got to be the best planner. If you're using a historical term, you're a planner. I'm giving you a million bucks. I want you to sell this hat. What are you doing? How do you think creative?
You said creatively, but what do you think about ChatGPT like creating images or like how are you using it as a tool? Like do you think that's going to take over as well or no?
Yes. Like why do I need a designer to spend four hours making something that I can make in nine seconds? Like if you're a designer today who doesn't have his or her own ideas, you're in trouble. But if you were the leading salesman selling Yellow Pages in 1999, you don't even know what Yellow Pages are. How many people here have no idea what the Yellow Pages are?
Yeah. So, yeah, bro. Like the Yellow Pages used to be a book that every person had that you would look at for information in your general area because there was no internet. The telephone book. The telephone book. The telephone book.
Well, when Google came along, Yahoo, search engines on top of the internet, there were people who made their living, paid for their family's mortgage by being salespeople for Yellow Pages. They went out of business. You're going through it for the first time. So, you're like, 'Oh, fuck, my cousin John is dead.' But like, that's what always happens. When the tractor was invented, everybody worked on a farm. This is just evolution. And if you're a designer, if you're a creative, by definition, the first requirement is ideas. Otherwise, what are you bringing to the table?
So AI is going to put a lot of pressure on the world. You guys are in it. Congrats. You picked a good time to be born. But I would argue it's the biggest opportunity for a lot of you. It means you'll end up not being an employee. It means you'll end up being an entrepreneur because you're going to learn how to use these things. And instead of being an executive here making 150,000 a year, you'll do something around something you love making 150,000 a year because your AI infrastructure and capabilities will be the power of a workforce of 10. So pros and cons to everything.
What's the best way to improve our either specialized skill set or overall skill set to really become those people of like note and become, you know, the experts in the field of digital media?
Well, what do you think, Jen?
Oh, I think the start is listen. You know, I agree. It's a pretty good open door policy. I've been making the best of it, trying to get as much feedback and insight from everyone up the ladder as much as I can.
I think that is a remarkably smart and strong observation. The only reason that this is a good program is because of the culture we've created for the last 15 years where you have senior people that are willing to spend time with you. Now, of course, some of you just heard that and you're like, 'No, not true, Gary. Fuck, I reached out to like two people and I haven't been able to get a response.' There's going to be always moments in time, right? Like if there's a fucking account on fire and you happen to be on that account and like you want like, 'Hey, teach me.' And they're like, 'Fuck, we're just trying to save the business.' That might just be the luck of the draw. But as a whole, including what I'm doing with you right now from the top down, there is a much bigger appetite to just help you than you will find in 99% of businesses. And so I'm proud of you that you've sniffed that out.
And like you know this, like like Air in your office, he's fucking smart as fuck. He'll tell you, he'll tell you everything.
