Gary Vaynerchuk: "Snapchat Is My Most Valuable Marketing Tool Right Now"

PARIS - If you're not using Snapchat for your marketing, you're not getting it, warns Gary Vaynerchuk, the "megachurch preacher of social media"*.

"Before you tell a story, you have to have somebody's attention," he says. By making content ephemeral, Snapchat has created a platform that demands your attention. That's why Gary Vaynerchuk calls the teens' favorite app "the most valuable marketing tool for my personal brand right now"... and plugs his Snapchat handle on the giant screen at LeWeb.

"It's not how many followers you have, it's how many care. It's not width, it's depth. It's not how many impressions you get, it's how much attention you get." Social media strategies focused on amassing large numbers of page views and follower counts are missing the point. Our digital world is noisy, an ocean of Facebook, Twitter (and yes, LinkedIn) updates. You have to ask yourself – are you catching the attention and are you making a connection?

The logical objection – and Loïc Le Meur raised it – is that Snapchat is for teens and only brands marketing to teens would see the point. So Vaynerchuk put it to the crowd, arguably young but 30-somethings, not teens. "Who here is using Snapchat?" About a quarter of the room raised their hand. Not bad for a relatively new network. (The next objection is that LeWeb is packed with social media geeks. No argument there.) And Vaynerchuk's target audience isn't teens either – it's business people wanting to understand social media. Yet it works for him.

The crucial question for the future of the company will be its monetization, he says. Ephemeral one-to-one communication might be great to use, but it's tough to sell anything against it. The company will find a way to move to one-to-many communication, Vaynerchuk predicts.

So you would normally conclude that Vaynerchuk thinks $3 billion for Snapchat is a steal, right? Not necessarily. The idea is great, he says, the execution still needs to be proven.

"At the height of it mattering, Snapchat has done one product update, one that was really poor," Vaynerchuk points out. "It makes me question if there's any product people there. I don't bet on the horse, I bet on the jockey." Ouch.

Photo: LeWeb13/Flickr

*H/t Loïc Le Meur for the apt comparison.

Author's note: Gary Vaynerchuk is a LinkedIn Influencer. His quotes were cleared of quite a few expletives. No offense, Gary. A paragraph was added to answer commenters' questions about the teen audience. Thanks everyone for your input.

___________________________________________________________________________

Missed LeWeb? Read more coverage and posts from LinkedIn Influencers at the conference.

• A Traveler’s Guide to Europe’s Tech Scene
• How Brands Can Make the Most of Any Event by Clara Shih
• Mindfulness, Frictionless, Makers… The Trends that Are Shaping Silicon Valley by Loïc Le Meur
• Fred Wilson : The Three Trends That Will Transform our World
• Why Q&A Should Be the Future of All Conferences by Gary Vaynerchuk
• Nick d'Aloisio, All Grown Up: On Snapchat and his Next Startup
• Tony Fadell: Work for your Heroes, Save Entrepreneurship for Later
• The Dilemma’s Innovator: The Next Ten Years Will Either Happen To Us or Because of Us by Brian Solis
• Uber v. the World: When You Can't Innovate, Regulate