Every summer, more than 15,000 executives and entrepreneurs from the worlds of advertising, communications, and digital innovation gather on the Mediterranean coast in France for the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity. The weeklong event includes seminars, networking activities, awards, and plenty of glitzy parties. Gary Vaynerchuk, C.E.O. of digital marketing agency VaynerMedia, hosted his first Cannes Lions party on June 22 in partnership with Thrillist. But the day before the event, an email invitation sent by a third-party promotions company went viral—and not in a good way. The email indicated that the invitation was for “attractive females and models only” and asked those interested in attending to send “recent untouched photos and/or your Instagram/Facebook links” for review in order to receive party details. Vaynerchuk learned about the email when entrepreneur and activist Cindy Gallop shared it on Twitter to her more than 44,000 followers.
It's 2016, @vaynermedia @thrillist. This is not how you party at @cannes_lions. #canneslions #changetheratio pic.twitter.com/jF50tdPe0p
— Cindy Gallop (@cindygallop) June 22, 2016
Vaynerchuk immediately responded to Gallop and others on Twitter with videos and statements expressing his shock and outrage, and explaining that the email was sent by a promotions company without his approval. We spoke to Vaynerchuk to find out more about how this happened and what he has learned from the situation.
Tell us the background of this party.
Thrillist and I decided it would be good to throw an event at Cannes [since] a lot of clients and platform partners and such are at the event. Thrillist hired a production company they’ve worked with in the past, and they hired somebody on the ground to help them with the party, since it’s in a foreign country, to make it easier. Those people hired a promotion company to get more people to the party as we were building the RSVPs. What I understand is that group had promoters, and one of them was clearly not the kind of character I want to be associated with. He sent out that email, and that’s what happened.
You learned about it the morning of June 22 when Cindy Gallop sent out a tweet admonishing you. Talk me through what was going through your head.
"Oh crap, what is this?" What went through my mind is, "Let me figure this out, but let me take full responsibility because I’m responsible for anything that happens with my name associated with it. Let me first respond to Cindy [Gallop] because I respect her a lot." I knew we didn’t send it. I just didn’t know what the circumstances were. But time matters. If you look at my response, I said, "Look, if my name is associated to it, as the C.E.O., I’m a big boy, I’m responsible for all things." I spent the next hour or two trying to understand what was going on. Obviously, there was a lot of finger-pointing and everybody trying to figure out what was going on. A couple hours later, we got a hold of it.
I just want to make sure everyone knows we didn't send the email and it was a rouge 3rd party promoter. Still on me https://t.co/PMQTfDDSIU
— Gary Vaynerchuk (@garyvee) June 22, 2016
Your quick response on Twitter generated a lot of praise, but it also led to several headlines in the media focusing on the fact that you apologized.
Most people don’t read articles, so now everybody assumes we sent [the email]. And then I spent 15 hours on Twitter trying to make sure anybody who spoke about it understood that I was devastated and would never be associated with such garbage. I still apologize that it happened. Even though I know any rational human being, if they had the time—and most people don’t—to spend one minute understanding what happened, they would understand how far removed I and VaynerMedia are from this. But it is hugely painful for me knowing there are hundreds of people that are running around right now that still think that I sent a bad email out. That’s the way headline-reading is now. I get it. I don’t think it’s unfair. I think it’s the reality.
Do you think there is anything you could have done to prevent this from happening?
Probably not, believe it or not. In our contracts, it said our suppliers can’t outsource suppliers, but that’s just such common practice at parties, I guess. I think you learn from every situation. It was my first time throwing a party of any magnitude for me at a conference or event, and then I decided to throw it in a foreign country. We did it with a partner company and didn’t really handle the production. That speaks to, on paper, not being in control of a situation, and that’s what happened. But you can’t play into fear. Running a business and being in the public eye ... there are always vulnerabilities that something you’re associated with doesn’t have your energy or your approval. I’m not going to all of a sudden become a micro-manager of details. If you get bit[ten] by a dog, you’re going to be more scared of dogs. I’ll be a little more sensitive, if we decide to throw another party, of crossing Ts and dotting Is. I’m not sure if I’ll ever work with a production company or promotion company for a party, given this circumstance. I feel like I’ll figure out how to build an internal team and just take care of it that way. But at the end of the day, like I said to my mom, "I know who you raised, I know what we’re about."
The party did go on as planned?
Yes. It was fairly uneventful, meaning it was nice and busy and good. I continued to do damage control during the party. I did an interview during the party, I jumped on Twitter during the party. It’s definitely not a net-net win. The party didn’t execute what I wanted, which was to build some relationships and create some business from it.
As you reflect on this now, what are your thoughts?
I thought a lot of people were very kind and fair to me, and kind of gave me daps for how I handled it. I think that way too many C.E.O.s and executives try to throw other people under the bus these days and don’t take accountability. They’re there for the accolades and the stroking and the rewards and the bonuses, but when times get tough, they hide. So I’m proud about how people that work for me felt about that. I feel like I’m going to make mistakes in my life and have missteps that I’m going to have to apologize for, and it stinks to feel like you have one in the loss column when you didn’t really do that.
