The #1 Way to Win at Marketing in 2026

0:00Do not be scared of AI. Do not put your head in the sand about AI. In fact, if you want to be successful and enjoy it, the next 5-10 years is you taking the sword of AI and using it for you.

0:15my quick intro on gary is i'm thrilled to do this i've been waiting years to do this because i think all the questions that we all have and have been a little scared to ask are that things that work before marketing aren't working anymore please help us and so these are the questions we are going to be able to ask. As everybody knows, he is one of the big instructors and masterclass executive, which I'll talk about more afterwards. But if you think, what I want you to pay attention to is not how entertaining he is, because he's going to be entertaining, but it's the density of information. You're going to be learning, odds are to learn something from him every minute or every two minutes.

1:01And if you like that, you're going to love what's his masterclass executive. So, Gary, honored to have you here. Always good to be with you, David. Thank you so much. Hi, everyone. By the way, everyone, such a pleasure. Keep the chat going because it gives me feedback on where I want to go with this. So, good to see you, David. Awesome to see you. Okay. Gary, most people on this call either are in marketing or run a business that has a marketing function or team. What is, and we're all seeing the same thing. and acts are up, attribution is really hard, or organic, if somebody feels it's amazing, other times feels it's dead, if you were to put it in a couple sentences, what is broken, and what is it the most of us get wrong?

1:53Most of us have two things that are hurting us. One is our subjective opinions, and two is bad reporting that justifies marketing but not how marketing's actually impacting our business. Okay, expand on both those, please. Sure. Our audacity, lack of humility, political know-how, insecurities are making us think that we know how to do creative, right? We think our ideas are better, we like our video, we like our picture. And we lived in a marketing world where you couldn't measure creative for a long time. And so the opinions in the boardroom or of the boss or of us was we like this video, this is good, and I'm gonna run media against it and sell stuff.

2:46Then on the reporting side, we have impressions, brand health, awareness metrics, these classic Madison Avenue metrics that were built before the internet existed that we still trade on. And then on the extreme other side of reporting we're too math out. Right, David, we talk about this, you and I and this is where I think I'm really good. I respect the shit out of math. I like a good CAC and LTV and ROAS as anyone. But I know that there is emotion and lifetime value. Right, for example, let's just make this really obvious to everyone here. Even when you and I have talked about doing things, I'm like, hey brother, there's more value in me doing stuff with my NIL and my brand than just what the math shows.

3:33Which is why the math is gonna show out well because there's equity because I've given value. And that's not tangible. Measuring brand is like measuring love and measuring God. It's hard, right? And so, first let's make sure Kalina's echo is all set. Everybody good with audio? Yeah, I think most people are good. Dory's good. Let's just make sure. I want to make sure if Colleen is good. So anyway, I won't get too distracted but okay, I think we're good. So, what, the biggest opportunity in marketing right now is organic social media. Right? It just is. And most people don't commit the amount of money required for it, the amount of strategy required for it, nor the humility to let it do its thing.

4:18And what I mean by let it do its thing is when you post organically on social, if it gets views it was good and if it doesn't it was not good all the ai algorithms are written on relevance relevance is what leads to consideration consideration is what leads to purchase and everybody's marketing should start now in the mid funnel organic social and if it does well the video the picture the long video the short video the five dollar post the fifty thousand dollar post. If it does well, then media. If it does well, then debate what you want to do with it for more brand. And so the starting point of marketing is social media organic.

5:02Most people have organic social media as an afterthought and normally as a supporter or if they do social, it's always with paid and their random ideas up front. Most people get wrong not taking advantage that we finally live in an era where you can measure creative and we can measure creative as a byproduct of doing what we should all be doing which is committed very seriously to the seven to 10 social media platforms organic channels as a opportunity to get consumer insights, build relevance, produce volume of creative so we can win on relevance with different people. You know, in your MBA, like why not just me?

5:42Why Mark Cuban? Why other people? Because Ray Dalio, because different people resonate with different people. There are people that will sign up because of me that would never sign up because of Ray Dalio and vice versa. And gender, race, inclusion, all matter because you're trying to win on relevance with as many different people as possible when you're a business. Real quick, I want everyone in the webinar to answer this. Who here would like everybody to buy what they're selling? Let me just answer, me. Okay, so David, everyone was taught in marketing school to pick one campaign and go after one group of people.

6:18And one demo, yeah. Because that's how expensive television was when the world was television first. Now we are social first. There are$8 creative posts you can make because you took a photo and you wrote something and it worked. That can change your business. But you have to be in a volume mindset. You have to be in a platform mindset. You have to really know your social media because it's the starting point. I would never run television ads, billboards, run performance without going to organic social creative first. But most people don't commit the amount of money or the strategy for that. Got it.

6:55Okay, and then, so Gary, that's like fascinating. On the second part of what you're saying, of the, you know, not targeting one consumer, I learned in marketing class, right, which is in part why we built this, is that you pick the one consumer, I look at how big of a market they are and how much they want to spend. how now do you do do you think about it do you actually not even think about it anymore I think about it very heavily right I just wrote in the chat 18 to 35 year old males as if an 18 year old and a 35 year old have anything in fucking common I mean this is how marketing was taught so you know the thank you for the LOLs everyone so how do I think about it when Vayner gets a new client when I work on an investment or one of my companies like VFriends like with this, for example, VFriends, my Pokemon Marvel that I'm building, right?

7:46With this one, right, thank you. With this one, I'm thinking about moms with children, dads with children, black moms, black dads, Hispanic, Asian, white, income levels, interests, who's into surfing, who likes Disney to begin with, who likes Pokemon to begin with, who doesn't like them at all, who loved Jim Henson who inspired me and loved Sesame Street. that I'm thinking about 15 and 17 year olds. What are they into? They care about streamer. You know, I may care about Big Bird and Snuffleupagus and it hits my emotional heart and now I want to buy VFriends for my kids because that hit my heart.

8:20A 16 year old never heard of Snuffleupagus but they know who Rakai or Kai Sinet is so I need to know streaming, I need to social. So basically instead of this whole 18 to 35 year old females I'm thinking about 613, 139, 64 different subgroups, 29 to 32 year old Asian women in the Pacific Northwest that are into yoga and now if I want to sell them cereal or coffee or vFriends or a sweater I'm trying to make a picture or a video that would be relevant to her and then you're allowing the algorithm on organic and then on paid to basically find them then when you post for the first time ever in the history of marketing the creative creates the reach and finds the audience in social.

9:10So if I post something again about VFriends, I like that JT understands what I'm doing here. I'm bringing awareness right now to VFriends to this small group of people. Three people might be collectors and they may now go down. I just did it. I organically did it. But this is only a webinar and I can't track it. If I posted a video on social, I can see 80 ,000 people decided to consume it because it was relevant. and then I can decide to run media against it against the same demo that I was targeting with the creative. And so if I'm targeting Hispanic male skateboarder enthusiasts between 30 and 35 and I make a reference about Nickelodeon because that was their era versus Saturday morning cartoons which is my era.

9:53It's all relevance. It's culture, right? When it hits, I'm like, okay, got it. Now I can run a million dollars or a dollar or$10 ,000 or$1 ,000 on the demo that is most responding to it, it's most reaching. So you're running the media only after the fact and you're running media on good creative, not defined by my audacity of what I thought was good, but by the results because you can't get results anymore in social. We don't even live in social media anymore, David. We live in interest media. I have fucking 60 million followers that I've worked my ass off for 20 years for and a joker at Miguel here can literally have no accounts post one video and get more views than me if Miguel did a good job today and I did a bad job today.

10:39That is a level of merit and opportunity that should have everyone intoxicated. With Miguel, it wants to be clear that he is not a joker. And I want to be clear with Miguel. I'm a Jersey boy from the 80s. When we razz, it means we love. I love you, Miguel, with all my heart. Awesome, okay. So then when you're putting out things on organic, it's not about just everything gets 10 million views. You're looking, if it's 80 ,000, you're like, okay, but that, with the audience, I want to, now I can go. Yeah, and by the way, 80 ,000, if I normally get 600, is like 7 trillion. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, it depends on what your base is.

11:23If someone here is selling like concrete B2B, their videos normally get 40 views. So if they get 8 ,000, it's like, whoa, whoa, whoa. You know, you gotta be on your baseline, right? What are your thoughts, Gary, on using AI to help on those creative ideas? It's an inevitable outcome. I know there's stigma around it right now. There's educated needed, and I know the consumer doesn't, you know, the bigger the company is, the less we recommend using it right now because the world is so worried about AI taking their job, they're taking it out on companies that use it. But this is just like online dating, David.

12:01There was stigma on online dating in 2003 and four. Now it's the norm. There is stigma on the creative right now that will go away. Technology is undefeated. What have you and your team found it's most useful for? Well, I mean, this is my open claw. So it's most useful for my entire life. Like I'm in harness land, computer land. Like I'm off to the races. I have a Mac mini that runs all our ages. Um, I'm off to the races. I think organizationally, you know, we have a lot of clients' data. I've got to be a little bit different. Like, you know, process, note-taking, information, consumer insights, deck-making, rendering ideas.

12:44You know, like, you know, everything, all the foreplay. Not the main event yet. Like, we don't have a three-minute video that's all AI yet. But that's where this is all going. can we talk a bit about day trading on the attention side? sure you coined that term I believe it's true do you want to explain what that means and where you think the opportunities are now? on an everyday basis like for example right now me and my team are obsessed with two platforms this is going to blow everyone's mind if this blew your mind just say blew my mind the two platforms that I'm most excited about for my social media content

13:35is threads and Facebook blue. David. My mind is blown. My mind's blown. I don't even know what Facebook blue is. I'm sorry. It's my terminology for classic Facebook. Oh, okay. Got it. That one. Okay. Got it. Okay. Sorry. Threads and Facebook. Classic Facebook. Yep. Okay, because people aren't posting on there. Supply and demand of attention. Day trading attention is what I realized I do for a living. I don't know if I have, do I have a day trade? Can you find me a day trading attention out there? It's my last book. It's what I learned I actually do for the last 25 years. I am not romantic about anything.

14:21David, I will run television commercials and direct mail and newspaper ads and radio right now if they were priced appropriately. If Wall Street Journal was$18 a full page, this is what this is, everyone. If the Wall Street Journal was$18 for a full page, I'd be yelling at you for doing masterclass$18 buys all day long. I'm agnostic. In fact, watch this, everyone, if you know me. I don't care about social media. Social media just happens to be what Google AdWords and email marketing were for me in the early 2000s today. That's all. I could give a shit on the record. So this is never confusing to anyone.

15:02I could care less about social media. I care about where consumer attention is that is more underpriced than the alternative for me to get my message out, whether I'm selling VeeFriends or day trading attention or empathy wines or my master class class. I am agnostic. Fuck yeah. Okay. We got a little bit of time left, so I want to make sure everybody adds in all their questions. I'm going to go over to questions in one minute. Gary, talk a little bit about what is the thing that AI can't replace yet in brands? Is it flattening brands? Because one of the risks people have is it flattened it. Another argument is it expands the creativity and personalization it can offer.

15:52it look I think there's a lot of people that crusade on like it'll never replace our creativity it'll never replace our soul it'll never replace our heart meanwhile our harnessed our heart soul brain I don't the answer is I don't know brother I mean in the short term it's not at scale enough like people literally told me when I launched this company Wine Library this is my family business magazine back in 1996 they said people told me literally when I pitched winelibrary.com buy wine on the internet people were like why would I do that I'll go to the store you know you were all all of you were youngsters in this chat I watch your first things on YouTube yeah like people were like but that was 2006 that was 10 years after I launched winelibrary.com 10 you know and people like they don't get it like AI has just started it's gonna be able to replace a whole lot like i'm not gonna sit here and go on some soapbox and be like hell i don't know what i know right now is no one needs to overtly worry about that to the level they think because the number one thing i know david more than anything in the world is that the human being is uncomfortably adaptable it's why we're the great animal of society our adaptability is amazing i am a workaholic because i love it more than life if AI destroys all my businesses and society has to subsidize the world because the seven big companies made all the money I will enjoy my two day work week and I will have unbelievable leisure five days a week.

17:29Awesome. And I need, but I apologize, I'm staying on this. I need everyone to leave this call with one thing. A lack of fear of technology. Do not be scared of AI. Do not put your head in the sand about AI. in fact if you want to be successful and enjoy it the next 5-10 years is you taking the sword of AI and using it for you maybe later the sword will get crazy and kill you but for now you will kill many others kill it's an aggressive word but you will succeed I want to jump into questions because everybody has awesome questions one from Michael I have a physical trade skill that over 15 ,000 shops need.

18:14The bottleneck issue he's having is not on the market side, it's his hands because he's making this up with his hands. How can I use AI to scale something that still requires my hands? You can't on that action unless you're a genius and can build an AI robot to do it for you right now. You can use AI to make you more efficient with managing your time. Right? It can answer your emails for you. It can schedule your meetings for you. Like, there's a lot of, on the fringes that that person could use AI and if he gets an extra hour to use his hands, well, then he's one. But AI, you know, AI is not doing physical labor just yet.

19:01But it will. In fact, I have a prediction. Many of you are gonna have grandchildren that marry an AI robot. Whoa! And they will do physical things.

19:17This is not covered in Gary's class on Masterclass, but maybe that would, people would. I know Gabby. Listen, I mean, this is profound technology. We already know it. Some of you don't even realize this. Like you have an auntie or a sister that's already in love with her AI chatbot. Oh, I mean, the amount of I know that have names for the chatbot. Okay, I want to make sure to go through it for questions. Go ahead. From Dory, what is the best way to pull things from culture into marketing while not feeling like it's artificial, like I'm trying to make a reference? Yeah. I mean, just being, like, authenticity is kind of like being cool, right?

20:04If someone asks you, how do I be cool, the answer is be cool. you know like it's this real fucked up framework you know i the reason i do well and i and others do well and other brands do well and many brands that work with vayner media do well is we just say don't fake it meaning if you're referencing something in culture a slang term music something that's happening if you're about that life you're about that life and you should talk about it but if you're not you can reference it but acknowledge that you don't live that culture like back in the 90s everyone had to be hard and like people like made up that they lived in the hood you know like to seem like they were hard like faking it will never work but you can leverage culture and reference it even if you're not a part of it by acknowledging you're not a part of it authenticity is imperative to winning in culture what I didn't make so much sense what there's one question from Monsi, what is one thing that the new generation of companies are doing, and you're seeing they're doing an amazing job of this, but that people are sleeping on?

21:20One more time, my friend. I want to make sure. I was just also addressing Jen's comment. What is one thing that you're seeing that companies are doing that you think most other companies are actually sleeping on and actually not seeing? Like, is there something? Like, yeah. or maybe free yeah no no I just want to that you that you think other people don't and they should I think that every I think it's volume of content within social organic it's the biggest opportunity yeah like for masterclass your business right I think you should be posting 40 to 100 pieces of creative a day a day organic brand you know like and honestly I'm lowballing that because I don't want to scare everyone like I just you know I think that everyone here has an incredible opportunity to be far more relevant and create much more opportunity from their brand by being present in the platform that everyone on earth is on.

22:13And so I think, I don't think people here understand that the brands that are winning, Bruins, Gummies, right? Like, you know, you're talking about extraordinary amounts of content. You know, Poppy, the personal brands that are popping off, the streamers. you know I just don't think people understand the sheer volume that is needed to compete for relevance and awareness last my last question why did you decide to accept your invitation to teach a master class executive you know you and I have had a warm I've always admired what you're building and I think you took a space that was spammy when I was growing up in the internet information and cleaned it up which I always admired and then it was just you know I'm very intuitive I go with my heart and my gut, I felt like I had something to contribute.

23:04I felt the people that you were bringing into this was elevated and I appreciated the association. And I felt like I could really bring tangible value in the class itself. And it was really humbling when your production team was like really like, I could tell they were like blown away by it. They were blown away. We so already know is we have filmed 300, 300 folks to the best in the world. Most of the time, it takes days and days to get it. Gary was amazing that you could talk about the idea and then just like, he would just go and it was amazing and then we did have notes and we kept going. I got texts from our team because I was traveling then to like, holy shit, that he might be in the top three people out of the 300.

23:50I think it's because, and this is something that I hope brings value to everyone, I think it's important to talk about things you know. You know? And I think, To be a true master, you have to really know your craft. I think the reason I built a 2 ,000 plus global agency from scratch, one of the biggest in the world, is because I'm actually a practitioner of marketing. When I talk about marketing, I do it. You know? Just to show you how scary deep this goes, this is my WhatsApp with my Team Gary, with my team on it. I literally wrote the copy this morning for my Instagram post. That's me writing the copy.

24:30You know, I'm so deeply in it. I don't have the audacity to sit in front of all these lovely people that are with you right now and talk from an ivory tower. I need to be in the trenches and actually do it. Fuck yeah. Alright, let's leave. Leave for the chat all your appreciation and love and the huge thank you to you Gary for doing this. Taking the time to do it really means a lot. and that was really fucking wise thank you thanks Ashley and also entertaining bye John bye everyone real pleasure everybody else please stay on if you want to learn more about Masterclass Executive we'll answer your questions thank you that guy's fucking awesome okay I am here to answer any and all of your questions of Masterclass Executive that is a snapshot of well.