Gary Vaynerchuk just wrapped up his fireside chat with Craig Fuller, CEO of Freightwaves at Transparency19.
It was a very interesting hour. I was fortunate to meet with Gary one-on-one prior as well, and we talked for a few minutes. The main theme of our discussion was the mistakes we both see logistics companies continuing to make with their marketing (e.g., too much reliance on “old” media, like print, and not doing enough innovation to differentiate themselves in a very commoditized industry).
Here are some of my notes on things that resonated from the discussion between Gary and Craig.
1 – Perspective is important. It’s important to make sure to bring new perspectives into a business – in particular those that come from having offices in locations OTHER than Silicon Valley and New York.
2 – According to Gary, we are in the greatest era of fake entrepreneurship ever. His main message to startups is to… make a profit. This comment brought the first round of applause from the crowd.
3 – How can logistics companies innovate their marketing and services? Simple… Gary said all logistics companies should work to reverse engineer what their audience needs and create content and solutions based on that. Every CEO should spend 100 days having phone calls… drinks… dinner… with customers to hear what they care about. Then, go back and make that happen.
4 – Social media is slang for the internet. Social media is not just Facebook.
5 – B2C and B2B marketing are different. How do you market B2B? The short answer is to build a content and media brand (see #3). This is what will drive real awareness.
6 – A question every logistics company needs to answer is “Are you a brand or a commodity”? Qualitative feedback drives what he does. Communication and marketing based on constant qualitative feedback are the delta to get past commoditization.
