How to Do Social Media Marketing the Right Way (The Exact Blueprint)

0:00Social media is just a tool. If it is not done right, it can't be as effective as it can be. The last two years is more predicated on being unbelievably strategic about the creative variable so that the creative wins and then do the media planning after the fact, not in parallel or before the fact. Imagine you said to everyone, we will not spend media unless the creative does well. All of a sudden, the creative changes overnight. This is the Gary Vee Audio Experience. Before you go to the podcast, I've got a big announcement. I know several years ago, a lot of you bought 12 books of 12 and a half to get the NFT, the book games NFT.

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1:18So please go to vfriends.com slash old books where you can start your journey on reactivating your book games journey. I'll start with the first question. So I know that Gary, you have been launching brands and businesses since you were seven. And if you were to launch one of your businesses, like for example, your wine business today, in today's day and age with this social landscape, with the KOLs that you were mentioning, how would you do it differently? You know, not too differently in the macro. So for context, I learned how to be a marketer because I ran my father's wine and liquor store at 22 years old, and I had a very big passion to build my family's business.

2:03I was born in the Soviet Union, and we immigrated to America when I was three years old. And we grew up, you know, very humbly, and my father got a job as a stock boy in a liquor store and eventually owned it. So very first generation son of a merchant since I was 14. You know, seven, I had my own businesses. At 14, I started working for my father. much to like actually how I think about SK2 of like a premium product within a category. My father's liquor store was called Shoppers Discount Liquors. So he sold beer and liquor and wine, but discount lower end. But the store was located in one side of it was very blue collar, but the other side was white collar and had affluence.

2:44And I started noticing at 14 and 15 that people were coming in and asking for expensive wine. And I thought that was interesting. even at a young age, I cared more about paying attention to the customer than any rule that existed. And so in that, I learned that people wanted these certain wines, I learned about wine in 1997, I launched one of the first e-commerce wine businesses in America, and I was able to build my father's business from a three and a half, four million dollar a year top line business doing 10 % gross profit, so a very small business, to almost$70 million business in an eight year period with no money, with no venture capital, with not even a credit line.

3:29My dad didn't believe in it. And the way I did that is the way I do it today and the way I would do it if I started one tomorrow. And this is gonna answer why I have so much anxiety about Fortune 500 marketing. With whatever money you have for marketing, you must squeeze it and it must work unbelievably hard to make the thing happen. you can't create growth without new customers or without having such a great service that you create word of mouth so back then it was having a website that was revolutionary back then it was doing an email newsletter which was profound because it didn't cost me any money I was doing direct mail and it would work but that cost money hey everybody hope you're enjoying the podcast right now make sure you follow the podcast that's why I'm interrupting let's keep going on this show, but follow the podcast.

4:22It'll make my mom super happy. Email, I was able to send an email. As a matter of fact, I sent so many emails in the mid-90s because I thought by the year 2000, they're gonna charge for this. This is true. Later, what really took the scale was Google AdWords came out. I bought every wine term for five and 10 cents a click. and it was five cents for a few minutes. Then it was 10 cents. And I owned that world for two, three years, then email. And then my career changed when YouTube came out. I started a wine show on YouTube in February of 2006, a 20 minute me sitting down doing content, which is now like considered like best practices today.

5:06This was 2006. That created brand. I was not paying for that. And so today, the big elephant in the room, and you know this because you're in this sector, because every KOL is doing it, but we're not doing it. We're doing it, but I come here to want to really do it. And I understand why we're not doing it. I understand that subjective opinions of is it on brand enough. I know what your pain points are, but we must have this conversation together that the scale of volume of creative we need, and we must win on relevance, not just on our subjective opinions of brand. And we must do it at scale. So what I would do today is I would produce as much content as humanly possible on TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Snapchat, Pinterest at scale at the lowest cost possible, which is not at the expense of the quality of the content.

6:03And I would do that. And then when I would get the signals, quantum qual signals, I would then amplify true consumer insights into more meaningful. And that is the model that I believe in. I believe in above the line activities. I just think they're overpriced and I think we guess. And I'd prefer to use social media as a proxy. And I don't believe posting on social media is spray and pray. I don't believe it's test and learn. I believe it's marketing. why is a social media picture any different than a print ad? As a matter of fact, a social media picture done properly will be consumed by more people than a print ad in Vogue.

6:46But in social, it's like this lightweight thing and it's maybe test and learn. But in print, because it's yesterday, we put yesterday on a pedestal. We'd rather pay$4 million for a celebrity than$400 ,000 for a KOL and the impact's not even close in 2023. We'd rather run a print ad that takes us four months to decide that's on brand with our brand positioning than post a proper photo on Instagram. We don't treat them the same, yet the latter is actually more impactful in 2023. And so I view marketing and social as you do marketing for the sake of doing better marketing. So I would make a pot commitment to social media organic creative.

7:32And once the signals played out, I would then use media to amplify, to create brand building and sales. And that's what I would do today. And then when I would do above the line work, I wouldn't do commercials. I would do pre-roll YouTube. I would do connective TV. I would do the new streaming service options because they are more built on social where I can target. And again, I would try to mitigate my cost of the creative. I came from Silicon Valley world where the biggest companies in the world, Facebook, YouTube, were making videos for their company, commercials on the internet, and they were spending tens of thousands of dollars to make it.

8:09Then I came into Madison Avenue and smaller companies like yours, compared to those companies, were spending millions of dollars to make a video. And it was a very big culture shock for me. I promise you, a video that's 30 seconds long should not cost$500 ,000. I promise I promise but the reason we all laugh is that's the rules of the industry and the industry has done an incredible job justifying it and so we must talk about this and everything I just said enhances luxury doesn't decline it but luxury is super struggling with what I'm saying there's this subconscious in their stomach reaction to this modern that feels like it's diminishing the luxury when you look at the data, watch, premium watch industry has exploded because of social.

9:01Premium car, premium art, all exploding. Yet in CPG consumer luxury, there's this bias that the modern communication channel somehow diminishes the brand, which is really detrimental because this is no longer, and everyone here knows this, this is not 20-year-olds on social anymore. The amount of 40 to 60 year olds that are completely living in these platforms and all their consideration is coming from these channels is profound and we must recognize that. We must accept that truth. I was actually looking at one of your posts on Facebook Reels and you were saying that a lot of the 60 year olds or 50 year olds are on Facebook.

9:46The thing that's different about me than a lot of the people that do what I do for a living is I'm a practitioner of the craft. Most CEOs of large multi-global agencies live in an ivory tower in France. I am a practitioner of this craft. When I say you can sell$80 stuff, I'm selling$90 wine on Facebook Reels for my father right now. Right now. As we sit here today, we sold 80 cases of a$90 Barolo on a Facebook Reels marketing execution. I'm not sitting up here guessing. I'm not regurgitating what Meta and Snapchat and YouTube are saying to me. I'm not looking at where my margin is and then selling that to you.

10:30I'm living this and then speaking to it and that's why it's worked for us. This is grounded on true consumer behavior, not an ideological consumer behavior that brands wish was existed or consumer behavior that's being pushed for profit by platforms and agencies. And the reason there's a lot of head nodding and accepting is because when you all leave this building and clock out, as a human being, the words that are coming out of my mouth are incredibly intuitive because you're a human being living in the world. You know this to be true. What I'm trying to do is create the freedom for incredibly talented individuals to have conversations of the truth in boardrooms, to challenge the reporting and the bonus structures and the things that are actually forcing you to do what you're doing and make the bosses feel comfortable to give latitude.

11:26We fear things that don't exist. There's not a single post SK2 can put out that's gonna make somebody say, oh, this is so not premium, I'm never gonna buy it again. As a matter of fact, your product is so good, we can almost do anything and are gonna still keep buying it. And so I want to create more, can you go back to the last slide? This is the only thing I care about. We need way more courage with this global team to make creative that's relevant, not subjectively luxury.

12:02Right? All of you know. And so we need to help you get there. That's a lovely perspective. So I'm going to take the cue from what you just said. Please. Courage, yes. Now, team has been having a TikTok day today. yes i'm going back to what you said earlier right that we need to do it at scale because i think the email marketing that you were doing today morning you said that yes 92 percent of the yes they opened your email yes today we are struggling to get even 0.9 percent or 0.09 percent to open right so that means we need to do things at scale we still have to do it with quality and let's take case of tiktok right and uh my thumb is working faster than my brain yes So I don't know what is getting into my brain.

12:47And if the brand has to do brand building on TikTok in such fast-paced environment, building the scale, still trying to maintain the quality, what is going to be your guidance? Because it's the same people who are doing that. And yes, I think some aspect is you have to be a hands-on practitioner. Yes. But beyond that, if you have to manage that - Yeah, I got it. I got it. Let's start with the most important part of that question. can someone here define quality for me? Right? Because you asked the question of how do we maintain our quality? I would like somebody here to raise their hand and define the quality of what SK2 must maintain to on a post on TikTok.

13:30If it sells the product, it's a quality ad. So that's interesting. You've just, we need to be friends immediately. That is not the first thing I expect. Like that just completely went, I wish you could see what's happening through my body. I believe that is one of the most important answers I've ever heard in the 13 years that I've done this. I agree with that. I agree that quality, one of the absolute things we should judge when we say quality is does it sell the product? Now I get to do a Procter & Gamble example of this based on what just happened. Why are we sitting here today? I will tell you from my perspective of why we are.

14:12A gentleman by the name of Chris Hyatt, who worked in the US and ran Olay, had the intuitive belief after hearing me speak at a conference that I might not be crazy, that I might be onto something, and asked us to go to Cincinnati and have a meeting. So we did. We talked it through. Because he is an operator, business, not an ideological marketer. He gave us a chance. Because I was selling it, I didn't compromise in any step of the way of the model. Thus rendering us to do the model, which is consumer segmentation at scale, volume at scale, because quality is subjective. Quantity is not. we did the model we were building up ole.com very easy to measure on ole.com very different than selling at tesco or saintsbury right or at walmart you could see it the piece of creative that changed our relationship vayner and proctor a single piece of creative changed our relationship forever.

15:29Not a commercial that won a canned lion, a single Facebook post. Do you know what that Facebook post looked like? It was a picture of a cat with lasers coming out of its eyes. Olay has a standard, not SK2 standard, but just to give you the preview, a cat with lasers coming out of its eye was below the standard. If it was to be in a subjective meeting, but because the The model was built on we can do it our way. That ad sold the living Jesus out of Olay, was converted into outdoor media because it was proven to be working and became a conversation that we were able to continue to build from. So you threw me a tremendous curve ball by answering in a way that is so dear to my heart.

16:23I do believe quality has to factor in. it achieving the mission at hand, which is to get someone to buy it. I agree with you. I also believe that the way quality is debated in every boardroom in the Fortune 500 CPG landscape is completely based on someone's opinion if it is hitting luxury enough, funny enough, irreverent enough, their personal opinion. And so I think that to answer your question, we must define quality first. I think everyone here intuitively understands if they had to bet their children's health on it, what the TikTok would look like to make it SK2 sell probably looks very different than what would be approved by everyone in here.

17:12And that becomes the debate that I would like to have because why are we emotional about what is relevant? Why are we emotional about what is relevant? Today, luxury around the world requires for growth to do partnerships with streetwear brands. Do you understand 25 years ago, if you told Louis Vuitton or Gucci or Hermes that they would be doing collaboration deals with street kids from Queens, they would laugh you out of the room. But they got to a point where they couldn't win on relevance enough anymore without them. We must learn from what's happened prior to us. There is absolutely a place for this brand to make undeniably very expensive, high luxury, mass production videos and pictures.

18:06We're never gonna get off that for a little while. But there has to be a place for and relevant, just human, just authentic, and contextual, especially if you do not want this brand to completely die with 45-year-olds. If you do not acquire 25 and 27 and 20-year-olds who, as you know, every day are acquiring more and more from their formulas, so much so that our point of differentiation on the massive, incredible formula we have continues to close the gap. If we do not become relevant under 35 and yesterday, we will all wake up and realize that it was our era that put the executives that are dealing with the issues five years from now in a precarious spot.

18:56While you are the custodians of this iconic brand, I ask you to not put the next group in a precarious position. Any thoughts on any luxury brand that you think is really winning on this quantity but yet with scale and quality like today? every brand that companies like yourselves end up M &Aing because they went from zero to 100 million in revenue by doing this model. None of your contemporaries are doing it. That's why all the holding companies and all the fashion brands keep M &Aing all these brands. I'd prefer you not pay 50 times EBITDA for a brand that started three years ago and do it yourselves.

19:40That's where you could imagine that the boards and the CEOs of the companies I work with buy much more into what I say than the marketers. Because they know what I'm talking about. And I know this room knows, this is a very specific category. You are in a very dangerous era. The KOLs now understand they don't want your brand dollars, they want to be your competitors. They're coming. And they're really coming. Gatorade has a problem. It's called Prime. Right? Emma Chamberlain doesn't want your cockamanian $100 ,000 anymore. She wants your market share. And this is going to happen at scale. And wait till the platforms decide to become their partners.

20:20My friends, we don't have a lot more time putzing around. We must get much more relevant, very quickly, grounded in platform and culture truths. And we must allow our insecurities and egos and ideologies, we need to leave them at the door and walk into these boardrooms and win on consumer truth. We must. We have to challenge and we must talk to our bosses, bosses, bosses with respect but with candor of what's actually happening with the consumer. And you all know it. That to me, you know, that's the part. That's what motivates me to do stuff like this. If I can get one person in here to just say, you know what?

21:05I am gonna say something in the next meeting. I don't believe that the circulation of this magazine is actually how many impressions we're getting. Yes, enough. I believe in marketing and branding over everything. But measuring brand is like measuring love. Measuring brand is like measuring God. I understand that you have reports to justify it, but it doesn't mean it's true. So we need to bring common sense back to the table. You know, we do a lot of this work that is very black and white. Let me explain how we do it. When we have media and creative together, which is a whole nother conversation that has to happen in this industry, we must bring back media and creative together under one roof for one agency so we can hold them accountable.

21:58Because this whole game of this is doing nothing for us. if you do that and we get that a lot in social media and creative together what we start to do is we actually take your biggest retailer in the market you could say let's test this in japan we take your biggest retailer let's say that retailer has 200 doors we take 55 doors that act like 55 other doors we run five mile radius ads to those 55 doors we don't to those doors and we look at incremental say it's black and white the model that i believe in is desperate to be held accountable to business. The industry has done everything it has and can to not be held accountable.

22:38And so that's how I would do it with brand because you know you're affecting them not because of discounting, not because you're a good sales organization, you have incredible placement within the store, it's because you've proven that messaging has compelled more people to buy something than not. And so that's how you would do it. I have a question because - What's your name? Oh, you're in. Such a pleasure. Nice to meet you. Because the point that you talked about relevancy versus what's quality or on-apply as we call it, I feel like I feel that tension in my work because I'm doing exactly what you said on the volume, right?

23:14which is producing paid media ads on TikTok or the China version doing every single day. And if you want to talk about relevancy, obviously what's relevant to everyone would look different. And therefore, I can create, you know, a thousand or a million different types of copies and types of visuals that will work for different individuals themselves. And are you doing the media with the creative upfront or are you letting the creative post organically look at the quant and qual feedback because how strong the algorithm is to show intent and then amplifying the media. So I am seeing the content first before we push.

23:52Not that. To the point that matters, is the creative being posted first letting consumer intent and insights drive the decision to allocate creative media against it? Or are we making decisions like old advertising where we just look at the creative and then we're running media against the target segmentation? Correct, that is the answer to whatever you're about to answer, and that's next. Because the other thing is, social media is just a tool. So, you know, if it is not done right, it can't be as effective as it can be. So, I think one thing you should absolutely try immediately, and China's like the dream world for me, because it's fully integrated and horizontally integrated, and there's no debate.

24:40That's why everyone's like, oh, China's different. from like China's the same, it's just that they can see it and here we have fragmentation that doesn't allow us to see it, thus we make assumptions that it's not true. So the vertical and horizontal integration of China and the way the consumer behavior plays in it has so much more attention for this kind of work. I just want the whole world to do that kind of work. However, even in China, there's variables of how to maximize its execution. I think what you need to do is add a very strong rigor in parallel while you keep doing what you know is working or what you're comfortable with where you base it on really focusing on the organic strategy of the creative and letting the relevance become the reach and then amplify that reach the problem is when you plan the media up front with the creative the media is forcing the reach but we have no idea if the creative is absolutely driving relevance or conversion we're forcing it.

25:37We can see it in CAC and LTV, but we don't know the variable difference of could the CAC be$13 instead of$63 had the creative been different. What's so powerful about modern social, unlike social four years ago, is the algorithms now are incentivizing, because they want to keep the attention on the platform, the creative that is best. So now, unlike the last seven years, the last two years is more predicated on being unbelievably strategic about the creative variable so that the creative wins and then do the media planning after the fact, not in parallel or before the fact. I got what you're saying, which is we get the feedback first before we try to then amplify, right?

26:19That's right. But what will happen there, there's something more important and deeper what I'm saying. That's right. But imagine now if that's true. Imagine you said to everyone, we will not spend media unless the creative does well. all of a sudden the creative changes overnight. Right, so there's a proxy there that's incredibly powerful in that framework, which is it forces creatives and strategists to actually be good at the creative. Media has been the band-aid and the makeup of creative for 70 years. We don't need to do that anymore and we shouldn't. So yes, I am saying that, but there's a bigger thing.

26:59It then requires a rigor and a capability and a strategic framework that is so much more profound than what you're getting right now in creative. And the creative is your variable and your CAC and LTV. There's a second part to the question actually. The tension is also that if we do go big on relevance, then I feel and perhaps maybe some of my colleagues feel that there is a concern on what is true or iconic to the brand. Meaning, if I think of the brand, and I would think of certain elements and a certain feeling that is consistent. That's your feeling. But that's a focus group of one. You know, I understand because you guys and gals all sit in boardrooms and take a brand positioning that you spent a lot of money for, which is in essence a sentence or two, and hold it up as a North Star.

27:54But that means nothing to the end consumer. you know I understand that people have convinced all of you that that's schizophrenia that that's you know not on brand that that is the essence but that's not how consumers work that's a that's what professors say in universities based on books written in the 90s you know people can say that Nike means just do it to them but it's not true People buy Nikes because they want to have Virgil Abloh collaborations on their shoes because they want to signal. The same reason he's wearing that modern art hoodie, it communicates to me who he is. And I had a closer affinity to him because I like street wear.

28:40And so I think that, you know, I think, I think we need to have a much stronger conversation of consumer psychology. And I think our industry is behind. because we're holding on to things of the past that made it easy for corporations to do things. And your partners reinforce it because they make margin on it. You know, reach and frequency is insanity. It's potential reach. It's not actualized reach. Do you really think all your programmatic banners are being consumed? So I get that and it's very religious. it's also just uncomfortably proven to not be true when you look at the business landscape over the last 15 years.

29:28That's why so many fashion brands do collaborations at scale. They need relevance.

29:37And then more importantly, what's really fun about this conversation is the chest of it. Meaning, okay, so now let's say I am your right down the line consumer that you're talking about that you don't want her to be confused, right? You want her to understand what the brand stands for. Do you believe that if God forbid somehow she would see an Instagram post that had a boxer on it holding up an SK-2 bottle that she would say, well, that's it. I'll never use it again. One could say yes, I believe that. I would be like, okay, no problem. Here's the problem. Can somebody pull up the hashtag SK-2 across all the platforms on China and the US and the rest of the world, we're not in control of our message anyway.