Lets talk- SXSW part 2

One of my favorite talks of SXSW that stood out to me was Gary Vee.  My husband has mentioned him before but of course I never really paid any attention.  :) Funny story someone came up to me at the conference and told me my husband is brilliant.  I told the person- doesn't that make me a genius?  lol
Gary Vee, is in the wine business and he has turned a small wine business into a 60 million dollar company , and his goal is to buy the Jets (the football team). He loves wine but he is a hell of a marketer and curses quite a bit.  They even kept track of his cursing during his talk and during question and answer they let him know what the tally was.
One of the highlights of the talk was during the question and answer portion and a graphic designer gets on the microphone.  He introduces himself and says that he participated in Gary Vee's contest for designing the cover of Gary Vee's latest book The Thank You Economy. The designer sent off his work and didn't hear back from Gary for quite some time.  This was a project that the only prize was to be on the cover and the winner would only be getting publicity from the book.  So the designer hears back and he didn't get the cover and he was a little bummed.  He goes out and decides to buy the book when it came out and starts flipping through the book.  So guess what? Everyone who submitted for the cover got their work in the back of the book in glossy and in color.  The graphic designer thanked Gary and he let Gary know he was getting quite a bit of work from it.  Gary told him that the publisher wanted to cut the color and glossy because it was cutting into their figures but Gary wanted it in color and glossy.
Fine, I drank the kool aid and it was delicious.  He was an amazing speaker and I was inspired.

5 comments

Unknown said...

a little inspiration goes a long way...

Angela said...

I guess I drank the Kool-Aid too cause now I am going to have to Google him :D

red-handed said...

That graphic design story -- that's nice. Things like that rarely happen.

Cindy said...

i recently learned about gary thru seth godin's site for the domino project. he is quite something and i liked how he started his online wine business while he was already enjoying success and even though there many naysayers. and, yes, you are a genius!

Anonymous said...

When I decided to open my shop my good friend Erica (seems like I have a number of good friends named erica) gave me his book. I read a few pages...the guy is crazy, but very passionate about what he does.


have a great week end!