Thank you for writing the Thank You Economy.

Author, Social Media Pioneer, Gary Vaynerchuk

As REM once said: “It’s the end of the world as we know it and I feel fine.”  If anyone reading this hasn’t realized that everything has changed, maybe Gary Vaynerchuk’s new book The Thank You Economy will help smack some sense into you.  At the very least, it will make the new world a bit less scary for you or your boss or your boss’s boss.  I think people will find that Gary V. is a wonderfully unlikely spokesperson and an incredibly steady voice of reason in a seemingly endless world of chaos. He intuitively gets it and can articulate and translate social media very well.

Here’s my take on the brand spanking new Thank You Economy, the latest from the author of the New York Times best-seller Crush It!, famous internet wine marketer, social media godfather, and overall feisty personality.

The book opens by drawing some amazing parallels to the days when every store owner needed to endear himself to his small community, be an intrinsic part of it, and keep the community happy. If a customer was unhappy, word of mouth would spread and it would cause great problems. Then we became busier, more fragmented, less personal and our individual voices stopped mattering as much to businesses. Essentially they could get away with not caring.

But, with the introduction of SM, we are back in a community where each individual’s voice matters a lot and the business owner needs to authentically care and should want to communicate with the individual for a lifetime of ROI. That really simply sums up the incredible and undeniable role of SM today. While we have seen other authors point out the differences between pre- and post-industrial revolution society and how it relates to brands roles in our lives, Gary has put a lot of smart thinking into what this means for social media and drawn out useful conclusions for us. The book gives great easy-to-digest examples of some social media successes and failures we can all learn from. There is also content  in here that won’t sit easily with the ad community, but it’s a viewpoint that needs to be heard. In fact, he makes a great case for why advertising and marketing need to continue to be more relevant and more entertaining then ever, why they naturally go hand in hand with SM if used properly by the right people.  It also gives nice context to social media’s role in relation to advertising and marketing. All stuff that should be smacking advertising and marketing people in the head, if it hasn’t already. The book also underscores the need for absolute authenticity in SM and how to get there with your company.

Gary’s book should be required reading for anyone working, thinking or thinking about thinking or working in social media. Or anyone who works at a company that is thinking about using social (which should literally be every company in the world). The Thank You Economy has been written in a way that people who are very new to social and people who have been working in it for some time will get a lot out of it. Agencies and clients need to get their hands on it and distribute it liberally. It should be used by agencies to get clients (and there are still some) who don’t yet know the invaluable value of SM to get off the fence. And it should be used as a tool by clients to get senior management who may not yet see the undeniable value of SM to be a lot less scared about it. It debunks the anti-social media myths and paths of resistance in very compelling and motivating ways.

Like I said, thank you for writing this book Gary, it’s a much needed smack upside the head for marketers and I think you just made all of our jobs a whole lot easier. Nice work.