“Word Of Mouth Is On Steroids”

What’s the most important marketing tool out there?

TV advertising? Nope.

Newspaper ads? No.

Twitter? No.

Word Of Mouth.

Whatever the benefits of digital tools and social media, all they’re trying to replicate is good old fashioned Word Of Mouth. It’s what we all aspire to, to grow our businesses, sell our books, our products, our brand. In 10 years of running my own business it’s what I’ve relied on for business development, every single project and client has come via w.o.m.

Gary Vaynerchuk reminded me this week in London about the importance of w.o.m. and how Twitter et al have super-fast-tracked the spread of buzz; for good, and for bad. In his words, “word of mouth is on steroids”.

Here’s my two minute video of Gary talking about word of mouth and the film ‘Bruno’.



If the video above is not displaying properly, you can watch it on YouTube here

Crushing It With Gary Vaynerchuk

Here’s the second part (well actually it was shot first) of my brand new video interview with Gary Vaynerchuk that I recorded on the M4 from Heathrow to Kensington when Gary was in London earlier this month.

In the video I chat to Gary about his new book ‘Crush It! Why Now Is The Time To Cash In On Your Passion’ – he talks about how social media has put power into the hands of the individual and covers:

- the importance of publishing ‘old school’ and how he doesn’t get ‘romance by a platform’. ‘I don’t care if it’s smoke signals or a laptop’.
- how social media has changed the game, gatekeepers have lost their power and now everyone is in play.
- it’s all about niches; ‘everyone’s passion is more narrow than they think’.
- the fact that you can still crush it if you’re quiet; you don't have to be loud like Gary.




if the video is not displaying properly above, you can see it on YouTube here

Me and Gary V: Part 1

Last Friday Gary Vaynerchuk and I took a ride from Heathrow to central London together. Gary had come to London from Hawaii (via LA) to speak at the Future Of Web Apps Conference. Having interviewed Gary in Paris last year (download the video free on iTunes here) and connected again in Texas at SXSW it was great to welcome him to London. I shot two videos with him; one about his new book ‘Crush It’ that I will post on October 20th and this one below.

For anyone who doesn’t know who ‘Gary V’ is, he’s the New York based wine entrepreneur who’s reinvented himself as a social media star. Having made his name presenting the daily wine tasting video blog Wine Library TV , Gary became an expert on social media and web 2.0 speaking at conferences around the world. His first book ‘Crush It: Why Now Is The Time To Cash In On Your Passion’ is out this month (part of a $1m multi-book deal), he now runs a consulting business Vaynermedia and has recently launched a wine club website and a food retail website GourmetLibrary.com. He’s a true juggler and he also has about 850,000 more followers on Twitter than me.

In the video Gary talks about:
- the importance of change in his life and business.
- his ‘layer cake’ notion where he juggles a lot of different business interests.
- how social media is changing the agenda for businesses; they can’t dictate to people anymore.
- staying flexible in business and the impossibility of the five year plan.




*If the video is not displaying correctly, you can watch it on YOU TUBE here