Is Social Media Marketing the New Business Superpower?

0:00the ability to understand how to create creative, to fill the pipes of the seven social networks that staggeringly dominate the attention of society is probably the biggest requirement of a business and is still something most people don't think about. The way you navigate it is through skill, strategy, and understanding what's happening. I have 137 full-time employees right now, hopefully, working on just understanding what the thumbnails on Instagram posts need to do to maximize organic reach. 137 full-time in place. This is the Gary Vee Audio Experience. I'm really excited to have you here today.

0:52And you obviously have spent much of your career tracking with some of the biggest companies in the world, as well as some of the smallest startups and founders. and earning relevance has been something that has evolved over the last decade, even the last couple of years. So can you maybe just share with the audience what you've seen change and how you've seen it evolve in your conversations with leaders? It's a really great question. I mean, I think relevance is very understood by most people as the gateway drug to consideration, which then gets people to buy. I think the biggest thing I've seen change in the last 15 years is we're going away from the one size fits all, the fragmentation of the media landscape, the acceptance of different ways to do it.

1:45I mean, even the casualization, right? You know, a 49 year old businessman 30 years ago isn't wearing jeans and sneakers and a cap. I think that there's a real opportunity for Fortune 50s, let alone 5000s, to understand that relevance at scale with as many different consumer segmentations is what the startups that are going from zero to 100 million in B2B and B2C are doing properly that they struggle with. So I think the biggest change, I think, is just the scale of understanding relevance to many versus creating a brand and forcing it down to many is the debate and, in my opinion, the opportunity.

2:37Great. And as you've thought about and looked at it in the last kind of 10 decade or so, consumers have also changed. Yes. A lot faster. Everyone has a cell phone. They're on multiple different social media channels. What are you seeing that consumers expect of the brands they interact with? Everything defined by them, right? All of you know this in this crowd. There's certain categories of products and services that you can right now, as we're sitting here together, you realize you ask very little of that. Like you don't care. You're agnostic. How many people here are into wine? Raise your hands.

3:20I just wanna see. Raise it high, don't be scared. So for the people that raised their hands, they have certain expectations when they drink wine that all the people that didn't raise their hand, because for them it's just a white wine or a red wine, but for a nerd like me, there's so much I expect. Then you get into the technology advancements of the last decade. everybody knows the term convenience is king i think convenience is kind of the cost of entry at this point if you're inconvenient if you're creating any level of friction in your in your micro or even macro ui ux experience you're in trouble i mean it's it's profound titled we've become with time.

4:10We expect everything so quickly, right? I was on a flight out here and the wifi did not work on the plane and people lost their fucking mind. And trust me, I needed those four hours to work as well and I get it, but maybe coming from such humble beginnings and being so well-parented and having a good perspective, I was smiling at this incredible technology that was invented. We're literally in the air on a metal machine with Wi-Fi. And, you know, so I think our expectations of through the roof, we expect everything of certain things we care a lot about. And we expect very little, I think, for all of our businesses and everybody here.

4:57You need to figure out those two consumer segmentations and how you think about them. And then obviously the severity of your product. you know i expect very much major major execution from a surgeon versus a bottled water and it's one of these you imagine buying and you were very successful at transitioning from uh the physical wine store into a commerce environment early in your career and many of the members of the audience here today operate the branches because of the stores and are in the journey right now with that transformation into a digital environment that also lends itself to relevance in a different way, access in different channels.

5:43What advice would you give to this journey based on your experience? Being romantic about how you've made your money in the past is always the vulnerability, right? So I think first, knowing the audience makeup, you all know this has already happened. You're not talking about something that might happen. We're not sitting here, AI robots, mowing your lawn at a landscaping conference. The things that we're worried about have already happened. We're playing catch up. We need to be very real about this. And I don't think this is lost on anyone. it's just started meaning the profound impact that the blockchain will have on this industry is really still very misunderstood it's over it's overly focused on bitcoin and a couple other variables like you know look i'm not an absolutist i like a physical location i do think it's a world of and i don't think it's like you're dead if you have physical locations but you need to understand them.

6:58You know, the leases that you're paying are probably not as advantageous as they were in value 40 years ago. How do you program those physical locations to create higher touch things that this cannot create? What happens in seven years when this becomes, or nine years or 10 years, when this becomes the pager and we all live in a glasses world and AR, does that give our physical locations an opportunity to be more valuable? So I think there's, you know, in that answer, there's micro things and then there's macro long-term things. But I think my first answer is the biggest one, which is don't over-romanticize and try to come up with some ideologies of why you would go slower going all in on digital if you're over indexed on physical because the consumer has spoken and the consumer does not care how you make your money the consumer does not care how you make your money we are all going to watch google ads collapse in our eyes here the next 36 months how many you know people have built their entire businesses on the back of Google Ads.

8:16What Google Ads did to the yellow pages, OpenAI and chatbots are about to do to Google Ads. This is a forever game. And so I think the mentality of putting yourself out of business before someone else does it for you is always a good strategy. You talked about us as he fed an advantage. Yes. And that wants us all this way. That's a pleasure. Yes. So what do you see as the best companies that are executing at the speed?

8:57You know, there's a lot of brands doing it in a lot of different sectors. I would say that there's a common thread amongst B2B, B2C, even governments. there's just a different culture of valuing it. You know, I mean, do you know how much time everybody in this room, including you and I, spend in meetings that mean fucking nothing?

9:34People often ask me, why, how can I do so? so much and I'm like, it's called 15 minute meetings when my contemporaries are having an hour meeting for the same meeting. We are not thoughtful about our time and we are not, and I'm empathetic to this audience, meaning there are regulatory, like speed is wonderful and you know, I appreciated your sports joke to start this. I do think about sports where speed, it's incredible if you're nerdy about sports, how unbelievably impactful, just a little faster actually means to results. And I think about that in business quite a bit. That doesn't mean you don't check three times before you cut.

10:20And again, a lot of times in an audience like this, when you talk about speed, they're quick to bring out the excuse card of regulation and things of that nature. This is a cultural mindset thing. do you obsess over every minute spent on what? Or don't you? Do you understand that putting things out is actually knowing versus debating them in a boardroom, which is guessing? It's a perspective and I think it really matters. And it's very clear that it is one of the most significant competitive advantages. And I think the world we live in now is also conducive to going fast with the consumer at the same time.

11:05There's so much more opportunity to communicate with the end consumer and bring them along the journey than these never-ending meetings that often lead to, by the time you push out the product, the market moved on you. And how do you keep focus on the puck or ball or where you need to go while you still have a lot of other things to focus on? Like, what would be your recommendation or things like this audience seem to be there? Are you talking about... For balancing, moving with speed while still making sure that you're dining out the eyes, crossing the teeth. What do you do here? Let's break it down into two things.

11:51If you're talking about regulation, my big recommendation is don't break the law.

12:00meaning meaning meaning you know it's funny i grew up in a heavily regulated business i was shipping wine around the country in 1997 and it was uncomfortably regulated and extremely challenging and it was like i'm so fortunate that i grew up in that environment because to me it taught me that regulation is an excuse meaning no shit you have to follow the law that's just table stakes for everyone here i think the more interesting conversation here is 99 of things don't matter is the answer to your question what i what has worked for me the organizations that i invested in early on that have succeeded and built some of the biggest companies in the world the ceos of fortune 5000s or the startup founders the common thread that I've been able to kind of see here at this point in my career is there are just people who understand most things don't matter.

13:00A great leader really can really impact an organization, even starting in middle to upper middle management all the way up by her or his ability to prioritize and genuinely realize so few things matter. For me, the thing that matters is what does the consumer want? blindly. And I think way too many of the meetings in here are around what do we want our PNL to like. And that is where we get caught. Because we start doing things for us versus the thing that actually allows us to get what we want, which is what is the reality of what the consumer is looking for, doing, needing. And whether that consumer is the end consumer or your B2B consumer, that's the only thing that matters.

13:54You talked about the non-digitally native consumers. Yes. And reaching them into the thing that they want. And somebody in this room are still navigating how to figure out the two spaces. How do I engage with influencers? How do I get the right story and narrate any different channel that I want typically in a larger career? So maybe, could you give some advice about this? How do I navigate different planet orders and what works through those different followers, like LinkedIn or Instagram? I would argue, as we sit here today in late September 2025, the ability for a human being, you yourself on your personal LinkedIn, all the way to the largest companies in the world and everybody in between, that the ability to understand how to create creative, to fill the pipes of the seven social networks that staggeringly dominate the attention of society is probably the biggest requirement of a business and is still something most people don't think about.

15:05The way you navigate it is through skill, strategy, and understanding what's happening. I have 137 full-time employees right now, hopefully, working. on just understanding what the thumbnails on Instagram posts need to do to maximize organic reach. 137 full-time in place. The first three seconds of your video is LinkedIn overvaluing pictures with a lot of sentences or videos today, not even this week or next month. The companies and the human beings in this room today who most understand how to make the pictures and the videos and the words reach the most amount of people on these seven platforms, LinkedIn, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter X, Snapchat, TikTok.

16:00They will have disproportionate financial outcomes. And I will say it's slow. Almost everyone in this room continues not to prioritize it anywhere remotely close to the severity of it. There are people in this room who debate that social media has ruined humanity. And yet it has that power, but it doesn't have the power to grow your business. These are the most important channels in our society and the people that understand how to do it win. I'm very passionate about it. it's basically been my obsession for the last decade. And there's an incredible correlation, both on the B2B and the B2C side, on those who are winning on, and this is like very, how many people are marketers in this room?

16:55Just raise your hands. Hi, just raise it high, please. So not that many. So good news. This is just for you. So everybody else can not pay attention for a couple seconds. For the marketers in this room, we've the whole literally 80 years of marketing we've been using the media dollars to amplify creative often bad creative because we had to guess focus groups and other things like that weren't good enough we're now in the era where you post your videos and pictures every business here especially this room should be posting three posts on linkedin every day and when something does well organically so they post it gets 80 views.

17:38They post it gets 16. They post it gets 29 because you haven't been doing it. But then next week you post something and it gets 40 ,000. That's when you spend media dollars to amplify it. The social networks are testing the creative for us now because we no longer live in social media. We live in interest media. I think all of you know this. The era of you seeing content from the people you follow has been replaced with you seeing content of things you're into of the moment. I don't even think social media exists. I think we're an interest media. And I think every single person here as a human being and as a business should take this subject matter dramatically more serious.

18:22And when you think about story time and the posts that you're referencing, what makes a great story that captures it in two seconds, 10 seconds, 30 seconds? 10, 20, 30 seconds has to do with tactics, understanding thumbnails, getting to the point in three seconds. These are really the strategies, but the essence of a good story is as old as time when they sat around fires and spit game to each other. You know, the reality is you have to bring value. Humor works, but so does deep, deep, deep information. You know, like there's probably not a lot of people in here that are wildly funny. there might be people, you know, there's some people that are solid, I'm sure.

19:07But the reality is, is that I think you need to play to your strengths as an organization and as a human being. I actually desperately want everyone here posting on LinkedIn at scale, because I know that AI is coming and it's not fooling around. And all, like, I really do believe people are incredibly naive with their strategy of AI. I believe most people's overall strategy looks something like this.

19:37So I'm desperate for everyone here to start making LinkedIn posts about knowledge they have and things that they can share legally about just general knowledge, whether it's management style, things you learned, what a mentor taught you, something that happened, something about your subject matter, because I'm trying to get everyone here to build just a little bit of micro brand to be able to have their career advance. And then for the businesses, I'm obsessed, but it comes in all ways, funny, informational, infographics to 45-minute podcasts, nine-second clips that get to the point. There's a million ways to do it.

20:16It needs to be true, and it needs to provide value, and value comes in all shapes and sizes. Well, I see a question I got from a really close call. I'm really, really going to be to ask. Okay. No more personal. No. So he just wants to know how you stay up here all the time. Like, how do you operate at this level?

20:48I did very little. It's called good parenting. I think that my mother is disproportionately the best operating mother that ever existed. And I think that she found a way to instill a level of gratitude. That also came with my circumstances. I was born in the Soviet Union. When we came to America, I lived in a studio apartment with seven family members. I'm able to stay up here. and thank you for whoever asked that, if they're paying attention to how I roll, predominantly based on gratitude. I'm also very good at doing something that most humans are very bad at, which is I don't let politicians scare me.

21:44I'm, and that's not a political sentence. In fact, my biggest concern, and if you follow me on social, 40 % of my content right now is about parenting. I think politicians aren't the only people in the business of selling fear. I think modern parenting is really good at selling fear. And so a lot of you are fucking up. You know what my favorite meme is right now? All the young boomers and older millennials and Gen Xers that continue to shit on Gen Z. And I'm like, you fucking made them.

22:21Maybe if you didn't give out eighth fucking place trophies, they'd be okay.

22:34You know, I'm very detached from my success and who I am and all these, really, really, I'm going to an interesting point to answer you. I'm very detached from it. Because I know it's not me, I know it's my mom, my circumstances, my dad added some really good elements along the way. And so I'm just very grateful for the parents I had, the circumstances I had. And so it's just very easy to be here when every morning that you wake up, there's nothing here. I'd navigate with a level of non-anxiety that unfortunately I find rare these days. And I think it's because I live incredibly simple. I do a lot of stuff.

23:13I'm chaotic. My energy is what it is. I have absurd ambitions. I want to buy the New York Jets so I can fix it. So I have these big goals and dreams, but I don't need them. I don't care. I don't need to be validated by the outside, which keeps you very humble too. You know, if you can't hear the booze, you can't hear the cheering. And ironically, it's the cheering that's more dangerous than the booze.

23:51Nice. All right. Don't be lazy, get up.

23:59Over here. if you had one hour of a day to invest in bettering yourself, very diverse household teacher, family, et cetera, how would you spend it to mass measure time? I would consume practical positive stuff. I really believe that. If I had an hour a day, I'd probably maximize physical and mental value. I'd probably exercise for an hour and listen to podcasts and content that was both positive but practical. The issue with positive content at times is it's completely delusional. Right? It's just like an out, like, yay, let's all be nice to each other. Oh, no shit, dick, but what? Like, so I would say if you can find outlets, individuals, platforms, we are all feeling right now in our heart and our soul and like how we're waking up, completely dictated on what we're consuming.

25:05And so I would consume positive, practical content. Great, thanks. You're welcome.

25:15I can go a few minutes over if you want to. Sir. I'm a one-time follower. Thank you, brother. What's your name? Mr. Lopez. Yes, sir. And the experience of you that as the family and the wind content takes off, we've got like a follow-up, right? So thanks for that. And just to the kind of question that kind of impacts a lot of us here. So with influence right now, part A, or where our Gen Z's are looking, they're getting their content from influencers. what is one thing that we as banks need to do to stay culturally relevant for this agency's writing i would probably make a lot of content making fun of how bad the financial advice is coming from these influencers on tiktok

26:13i'm actually being serious meaning we're look we're not going to be 22 year olds in our room who are going to be as native but there's so many things you can do you could look at what duolingo did right i'm a very big believer in mascots i i think every bank should consider having a mascot made out of ai and you should have your jake from state farm or your duolingo owl that character can play in social and compete very aggressively with what you're seeing with influencers. I also think you can replicate it. You know, organizations, you know, first of all, this concept that the influencer game is just a young person's game is really crazy and just not true.

26:58There's unlimited opportunity for every demo. In fact, actually, and you follow me so you know I like to try to see around corners. I actually think one of the biggest influencer sectors of the next decade is the 60 to 90 year old crowd spitting wisdom. I think there's a huge opportunity there. So my answer is get in the game, whether it's through a mascot, whether it's through employees of the organization, we must communicate in these channels because if we don't, we become obsolete. Cheers. Nobody over there.

27:40thank you um so you talked about parenting and good and bad which really resonate with me with my own children door right now 21 and 27 and cut down the ice let's clap it up for keeping them alive the solid accomplishment

28:02The big thing I learned that is a financial literacy based institution that we make kids ages 0 to 21 to help them to be foundational adults. So I am combating that parenting style of others on a daily basis. how can we be that big for it? Because there's not enough parents that are switching financial furiously to their kids or really may even don't have the ability or reverse the badness that they need. So how can I help influence that? You don't. You go around them. Kids don't listen to their parents anyway. Like literally every 16 and 13 year old in the world is in my DMs on TikTok right now, except my 16 and 13 year old like it's just the way the game works we all know that i actually think you don't i i do not think the parent is going to be the influencer of the child to learn this i think what we just talked about with nestor is the punchline i think you go to where the kids are kids are you know again they are learning and consuming through these channels your bank needs to go there and needs to go there in a really big way.

29:22Like I, I, I mean, look, my favorite thing around children, your kids are actually right in the pocket of my favorite subject, my favorite financial topic that I talk about that has gained enormous steam in the last two years on social is I have a real, real wake up call for how many parents in this room by show of hands have a child that is 18 and older, raise your hands. Okay. And who has children over 22 and older? Raise your hands. Actually, if you're 22 and older, please appease me. It's good for your blood circulation. If you're a child 22 and older, please stand up. Stand up. All right.