Make Gary Vee’s PureWow Acquisition the Moment You Get It

Something huge went down in the media landscape last week, and it was barely a blip on the cable business networks’ daily news crawls.  In fact, it wasn’t even covered at all in so-called mainstream media outlets like USA Today, New York Times or even CNBC.  The event was Gary Vaynerchuk’s acquisition of women’s publisher PureWow.  You can read the public details of the acquisition here in the Wall Street Journal which was one of the few nontrade outlets to give the move attention.

Now if you are asking yourself ‘Who is Gary Vaynerchuk read this post before you read on.

This seemingly innocuous business dealing that, on face value, has absolutely nothing to do with your professional efforts actually should have everything to do with every single move that you make in 2017.  That is no exaggeration, I sincerely believe that this single deal is representative of the next stage of evolution of how media is used as a servant of our business goals.

So why is Gary Vaynerchuk’s acquisition of a women’s digital publisher that you probably never heard of if you are (a) male or (b) over the age of say 40 or so a big deal? Because he more than maybe anyone else on the planet earth has the best beat on where media is headed, how to harness the power of media to sell, and the impact that the media landscape has on business.

And make no mistake here.  When we talk impact that media has on business understand that it is impact first felt as mild tremors in the mid-1990s, picked up strength in the early two thousands, and is now at a full fledge 9.9 on the Richter scale threatening or taking out aging retailers, old media, and even television.   Massive disruption that moved slower than predicted at the dawn of the internet age, but is now an unstoppable force to be reckoned with.  And with every new convenience app added to millions of consumers’ phones, whether it is the next live video stream, a new way to swipe right for a hookup, or a faster tap to call your cab the habits and tastes of every marketplace continue to be transformed.

Gary Vaynerchuk completely gets the way we are being rewired.  He knows the currency, attention, that will be most valued, and he knows how to build a business to respond in a way that will exploit the evolutionary step that man has no choice but to take because of the technology that man himself has built.  Read that last sentence again because it isn’t just the media.  It isn’t about ‘the hustle’ and it isn’t about running a successful business.  It is all three.

Gary Vaynerchuk is a business man who excels at marketing and selling.  He has mastered the flow of new media to do both exceptionally well, and now he is scaling his engine to heights that are today almost unimaginable.  But here is the thing, the approach is something that will have an impact on literally every single business of any size.  The PureWow acquisition matters because it is perhaps the first demonstrable move that he has made that makes his strategy tangible.  Consider this from Gary’s appearance on Andrew Warner’s Mixergy podcast:

I’m going to buy brands and businesses. We’re going to use the talent and services of Vayner. So, it’s scaling my one true strength [emphasis added].

That was March of 2016 in the run up to his Ask Gary Vee book launch.  And now he has pretty much done that.  He now owns a digital publishing platform that holds the attention of women, a key consumer demographic.  The content that will appear on that property will inevitably be flavored by some VaynerMedia clients.  Shoot, in episode 121 of Gary’s Daily Vee (his video blog) he practically spelled it out:

‘Speed is how I [define] convenience and that is why ads are bad.  Ads are taking people’s time away in a world where people now care about time so much which is why native matters to me so much because you’re integrating within the content [emphasis added].

BOOM

Still don’t get it?  A fan of Gary’s and all you can call to mind is that he wants you to hustle, do what you love, and maybe sell some stuff on eBay to prove you care about the sale?  Those things matter, but what matters most is that Gary Vaynerchuk built one business, Wine Library, on the back of the media that was available to him at the time, and now he is building another much larger company putting to use the media that is currently available to him?

Get it?

It is the media that matters.  The hustle must be focused and focused on how you harness media to do what you do.  How you exploit media to get better at what you do.  How media helps you reach more of those that you want to do it for.  And how media will help you serve your customers better.

Gary Vaynerchuk is a media master.  He is the 21st-century mashup of William Randolph Hearst and David Ogilvy.  His moves matter, you can learn from them, and you can put them to work for you and your business.

The media is the thing, keep it main