Tom Guarriello, a psychologist and management consultant, explains why he embraced YouTube around 2006. He maps his strategy on a 2x2 matrix of personal versus business motivations, citing examples like Geriatric1927, an elderly YouTuber who connected across generations, and William Sled's "Ask a Gay Man" series. Guarriello uses the platform to share family videos and test business ideas with audiences.
Well, hi guys, it's Tom Guarriello. I mentioned that I did a short mini seminar on YouTube at the TED conference, and I thought I'd take you through it. So let's go ahead and do that. I started off with a 1-minute resume of myself. I've got a Ph.D. in clinical and social psychology, and the first part of my career I spent working in the mental health field. 6 years or so in institutions and the rest of the time in the community mental health world. And I met a lot of folks that were really interesting doing that work and did a lot of psychotherapy. In the mid-'80s, the mental health care system in America changed pretty dramatically. It became more about struggling to get payment than it did about doing the kind of work that most of us started to do. And so it really, you know, those changes were pretty significant. And I guess I changed a bit as well during that period. And so meanwhile I had, in 1982, I bought my first computer, a TI, Texas Instruments PC that looked just like this IBM job, dual floppies and all. I bought a 300 baud modem and put that in there and joined CompuServe and discovered the online world. And, you know, eventually that led me to change my professional focus to management consulting. And after working with some other consultants, about 15 years ago my partners and I founded our own firm, and we call it True Talk. We help clients to make— to design and establish cultures that foster innovation and great execution and Along the way, I had become really more, even more passionate about the social potential of the internet, and I was really strongly influenced by the Cluetrain Manifesto, which, if you haven't read, it's a terrific, terrific work. I also was, was significantly interested in intergenerational leadership, which is a focus for our firm as well. Meanwhile, all this Web 2.0 buzz started to come around, and So in May of 2004, I started a blog and have been blogging ever since. And in April of 2006, I started monitoring YouTube. So I started to monitor YouTube, and I really thought I was going to be a lurker, and, but I was wrong. Since August of 2006, I've produced over 130 videos here on YouTube. So Why? Why did I start a video blog on YouTube? Well, like I said in the presentation, uh, look, I'm a management consultant, and management consultants are really not able to talk to 3 or more people without presenting the obligatory 2x2 matrix. And so if we take a look at this matrix, on the y-axis of the matrix, we have personal and business reasons to answer the question, why YouTube? And on the x-axis we have the watch and produce. And each one of these, that gives us 4 quadrants really to talk about. And as you see, I've got this red line going from lower left to upper right that I called the axis of impact. What that means, of course, is that I think, you know, there's great impact to be had as you move in that direction. And lurking in the background all the time, of course, is this Web 2.0 business. So, uh, so for me personally, let's take a look at my own journey, which— and we'll start in quadrant 1. I mean, this is, as all of us know, it's Peter, Geriatric1927, who really was, uh, the first, along with Lonelygirl15, really the first YouTube star. And, um, you know, Peter was more than just a YouTube star. He was a cultural phenomenon. If you take a look at the numbers, these are numbers that I got just before the presentation. But, you know, since August of 2006, Peter had made, at the time I made this, 65 videos, had over 5 million views, was the number 7 most subscribed, uh, of all time on YouTube. And the question that I asked people is, why do you suppose that is? Why do you suppose that a 79 going on 80-year-old man from the Midlands of England has all of this interest? And, you know, I think Peter's success, if you will, on YouTube has been an indication of a significant cultural phenomenon, which is people wanting to connect with people across space and across time and to learn about people different from themselves. And so seeing Peter, you know, I watched his videos and That kind of convinced me that I should start my own. When I did start making videos, Peter became my first subscriber, which was really gratifying. And today I've got over 600 subscribers. In terms of producing videos from a personal basis, it was clear to me that YouTube could be kind of a Flickr for videos. You know, of course, that you can designate videos as private. You can set up groups of people who you would like to see your videos, and that's what I do with some of my private videos, my personal family videos. This is my grandson Benny, he's gonna be 2, just as an indication of the kind of things you can do from a personal perspective. What about business? Why do I watch YouTube for business purposes? Well, I do a lot of work in the fashion industry and work with designers a lot, and so learning about trends and customers is really important. In my work. And so I watch a lot of YouTube videos in order to learn about trends and about customers. Of course, everybody here knows William Sled, you know, 24-year-old Gap employee from Paducah, Kentucky, 5th most subscribed of all times. And, you know, his Ask a Gay Man series has been a great, a great hit on YouTube. Why? Because it's hip, it's funny, it's informative, and, you know, William has been featured on CNN, on The View, and Women's Wear Daily. So, you know, it's a pretty clear way to learn about things. How about producing videos? Why do I produce videos? Well, for business purposes. Well, I really saw my YouTube channel as an extension of my blog. The things that I talk about here are also things that I've talked about on my blog, and a way to interact with people about ideas that are important to me from a business perspective. You know, you guys are great at answering questions about things that are of interest to me from a business point of view. This particular video, you may remember, I made about GM vehicles and asking you if you would buy one or what you thought of them. And this is something that I've been blogging about for a couple of years as well. Okay, so that's it for part 1 of the TED YouTube presentation. Come on back and check out part 2 later on. Thanks. Bye.
