The 2025 Organic Content Strategy That Actually Works

0:00I'm sure it is not lost on anyone how much advancements we're seeing in the AI space. and I'm sure it's creating a lot of anxiety and concern, I'm sure, for a lot of people in our industry. And the truth of the matter is it's super real. We can be self-serving and selfish and hopeful and delusional, grounded in our self-interest about why it's not this or is it ethical or emotionally ideological. but like the reality is like we are going to be making one hour videos for four dollars that take 19 minutes and that used to cost eight hundred thousand dollars and nine months and this has a higher likelihood of working than what we all do I mean this is like I feel so interested in that what I've been talking about which is like hey social media is real and like we have to stop putting television or bad reporting or awards on a pedestal and now i feel like what i was talking about is like minor leagues compared to what i think we're happening what's about to happen however what i would say is what i've been talking about will play out again in this ai forward world which is if you are not common sense centric if you you know we talk about this is like I want to talk to everybody in this room like humans not like we're at a business thing like this industry loves to talk about like we're consumer centric and does work and runs media that is the opposite of consumer centric I know you know that as a human you may not act on it or even talk about it as an executive or being in the industry but I know you know it as a human I know not one human being here has clicked the banner ad in a decade I know that right and I know that if your life depended on it your family's well-being depended on it and I gave you a million pounds or euros to make something sell that you would spend it differently than what we often in in this industry recommend and do.

2:20So, you know, I think what I'm most passionate about forever, how I got into this industry, is I'm most passionate about where the actual consumer's attention is. You know, it's funny, I wasn't academic with my marketing. I got into the industry 15 years ago on the back of doing marketing for my family's wine store and I could see that things were changing in 2006, 7, 8 and saw an opportunity. as I've been in marketing in the industry for the last 15 years I learned all the terminology I learned the core principles and I've I've smiled along the way because I realize in a lot of ways even though I've talked a lot about disrupting it and things of that nature my principles are incredibly classic like for example the main reason in hindsight I couldn't articulate this when I came out the gate because I didn't know the proper terminology.

3:15But in hindsight, the main reason I've always loved social media and the distribution of creative on it is it allows you to win on relevance. You know, I just can make 50, you know, when I look at this, when I look at all of you right now and I'm thinking I want to sell this PayPal beverage to all of you, it's inconceivable to me that one video can make it happen. I feel like I have to systematically put you into micro groups or even individual groups and create words videos and pictures that might compel you through relevance to consider drinking it so i i think we're living in the golden era of that i believe that what is very clearly starting to hit the ether of our industry is that social creative is now moving to the forefront i can tell you because i'm in the trenches with all of you like our company the scopes we signed in 2025 in fee for social creative are 1020x what we were getting the year before so the speed in which the dollars are going we are as a so to take a step back i'm making too many assumptions vayner media we are full pledge media and full pledge creative in every category social digital and traditional we have dozens of creative AORs.

4:37On that side of the equation, we have much bigger scopes for the social creative in fee than the above the line creative in fee. And I know all of you are starting to see that because I'm enough in the business world. And it happened fast. There are clients where we were the social partner getting$700 ,000 in fee for the year and the creative AOR, Anomaly, Droga, Wine, whatever, they were getting$4 million. And in 18 months, it flipped. and I think we're never going back. I would tell you all, I just think it's all wrapped up now, especially because I think it's the AI overlay on top of this. Just like anything in life, it takes like six things to make the thing happen.

5:18This isn't just that, though it was happening anyway, the industry was starting to get into a social first environment. I think the acceleration of what AI is gonna do for creative is just getting hard for a Fortune 500 to get excited about spending$1.3 million on making a single 30-second video and spending$5 to$10 million to amplify that and then do matching luggage and digital and social to support the idea that we guessed in a room like this, which is based on politics and insecurities and guessing. So I think that's where we're at. I think the craft, you know, it's funny, going through this industry, I remember maybe the third or fourth year I was at Cannes, It was like two in the morning at the Carlton and some extremely drunk creative director from a holding company came up to me.

6:09He's like, you know what? I really fucking hate you. I'm like, all right, here we go. I was like, here we go. But I'm like pretty good in that setting because I understand the context. I'm like, go ahead. He's like, you don't care about the work. and it was a really the reason I'm telling this story 8-10 years later is it's a really important moment in my career I looked at him and I'm like brother I'm the only one that cares about the work and it was funny he sobered up quick and we had this really interesting conversation I said the way our industry considers the work is for ourselves we're insular I'm like you're telling me that the awards that are going to be given today that is all politics and already thought out you all know like that's the work I care about someone actually seeing a video or a picture and actually buying something this is called marketing this isn't called second rate art and we need to consume that and be fucking accountable to that and one of the reasons that over the last decade so much marketing has gone in house is because we haven't been good enough that's real fucking talk and so I'm actually very passionate about this industry.

7:29I want agencies to succeed. I spend time with my direct competitors and try to add deposits and help them grow because I want it for us, meaning I don't view that as a negative. We're gonna go in and pitch and it's gonna be a subjective call. You know what I mean? Like I don't feel like that's hurting Vayner. I think we can all be there but we as an industry really need to wake up and the doors are closing in quick and we just need to be dramatically more consumer-centric and the information that is being consumed by the eight billion people outside this room, it is predominantly coming through this and the thing that is most dominant on this for attention is social networks.

8:11Yes, there's gaming and there's utility apps and until we swallow that pill that so many of us have not wanted to and understand that the creative that works in there is the work. And especially now, I don't think it's lost on anybody that's close enough to this. The algorithms flipped three years ago and now we're completely interest-based. Organic reach measures relevance. That's insane. We finally can measure creative. Like honestly, we can hold creative accountable. I think that's what I really am passionate about and like that's where it's going. And until we have a distribution change, which might be the metaglasses in six years, might be something else, but until we have a distribution change, this is it.

8:54And I think the people that most understand how to storytell in that environment and understand the best practices. At Vayner, we call it PAC, platforms, algorithms, and culture. I think it's really simple to understand. Like, if you want to sell something in this market, in Thailand, in Boston, in Rio de Janeiro, which platforms have the attention and how do they work? How does the algorithm work? So what creative units? I'll give you a real life example. This may help some of you. I hope it does. One second videos on Facebook proper right now are dominant. So most people will post a picture and you'll post it.

9:34If I made a picture right now and posted it on Pepsi's Facebook in Europe and posted it, and let's just say whatever the reality of how many followers in the algo, if that got 8 ,000 reached people, if I made the same exact thing, but I made it a one second video instead of a picture, which is a picture, it would get 100 ,000 views. And it would get 14 more comments, which would give me more consumer insights. And then I could do it again. That level of craft, people love to talk about craft in this industry. Craft. which for a common sense man like me equals let's spend a lot of fucking money on production that means nothing to the business.

10:24That's how, when someone's like, I care about the craft, I'm like, you have lost your way. You're in the ether, we're in the muckery of marketing for the sake of marketing, not remembering what we all do here for a living. And so my tough love, my pushback, my passions my different take over the last decade has been more about what is happening now which is this industry doesn't need to exist. Every one of us very likely I would go with now if we're in marketing in 10 years are working at a brand not an agency and we fucking blew it. Thank you. All right that's like the things on my mind in a macro I can go anywhere influencer marketing AI influencers gaming live social shopping I'm obsessed with let's just do Q &A yes what's your name I'm Maddie Maddie I'm from Tiffany & Co amazing and I'd love to have your take on creator content and and keeping up at speed for luxury brands is there anyone that's doing it really well I have a lot of kind of barriers around brand safety yeah and very much leading on and creative content as well at the same time.

11:45Yeah, I mean, I don't know if it's right. I think, here's a couple things. As soon as you said, I'm a Tiffany & Co., you know where it's going, right? This industry, Fortune 5000 companies with marketing and social first new environment, in general, I mean, we have some brands that are toilet paper and treat themselves like they're Tiffany's, right? So you have all those feelings, but then when you're actually one of them, it adds another level of complexity and now I'm sure not lost to anyone, especially for brands like yourselves, all of a sudden the Instagram grid has become like the TV ad.

12:19The emotion, I mean, I'm in meetings with high-end brands where they're literally treating a single post on Instagram like it's a fucking Super Bowl spot, right? And so have you all, like rounds of revisions. It's so against the way that social should work. So I would tell you that, I'm gonna throw something out here that might help a lot of you. the people that have really cracked this in my opinion in luxury have realized what handle strategy means creating another handle at casual Tiffany's and giving the creative team the ability to be a little more casual on that handle because as you all know no longer do we need followers to get reach so once we switched from needing followers this whole strategy has opened up for us it's been huge for us please take it, steal it, here it is like I think it will help you because what you're trying to get out of is the politics of the internal team.

13:13There's nobody at Tiffany's that is deeply grounded enough in PAC to know that the subjective opinion here's what actually let me say it this way this may help you here is my full presentation when we work with an extreme luxury brand. We do the meeting it gets to this point we all know what they care about like this is 150 year brand of luxury Gary fuck you okay fine I get it I then put on the screen take my phone, Airplay in, and I type in Tiffany's on Instagram, search, enter, and I show them 900 posts about Tiffany's in the last 24 hours. And I ask them, are you controlling the brand? Are one fucking post a week to the 900 posts?

13:59Like, this industry is stuck in a book that was written in 1991 called How Brands Grow. if you unpack the process of how people do creative, it is grounded in that. That book was written before the internet. Controlling the brand is just a fake ideology. It's, you know, and so we need to win on relevance, which means we need a lot more creative. And like, if you want someone who's just become newly found wealthy, who's 29 because they had a big exit of their startup and you want them in, that's a very different fucking picture and video than third generation wealthy gal from the Upper East Side.

14:49And we need them all to get them in. So I think handle strategy might work. I think having, so here's something again for people. I will tell you one of the other things in the last 24 months that's changed our company and we've had a lot of growth is that I finally put my foot down on something we call elephant meetings. The other thing that has worked for us is we're just telling the fucking truth with no wavering. And if you believe that there's a different way to do it, then you just need to have an elephant meeting and show them the 900 posts in the last day and be like, in a world of this, what do you want from me?

15:26You know? But I don't know if anyone's doing it right. I think people, there's two things that are slightly wrong in this world. they're treating social like print. It's really wrong. Again, even that one second video versus a picture. For me, we are trying to maximize on reach because it is earned. Here's something I talk about internally that might really land for all of you. This is gonna make a lot of sense to all of you. For the last 70 years, working media has been disguising bad creative. today working media should be used to amplify good creative we are spending billions of dollars in media at Vayner which is unusual for a creative shop right in when we have the client fully our way which is obviously 20 % of the time maybe maybe 10 we don't spend a dollar on media on a piece of creative unless it over indexed organically not a dollar We even have clients that are in year two that have taken down their working media budget and put it into creative because that's what actually happens in this.

16:42I actually predict that the split is at the next, maybe call it three years from now, which I think will be the apex moment of social creative at scale. I believe the mix will be 50-50 creative and media instead of 80-20 on a good day. So I think a lot of changes. I'm a cash I'm founder of Fable of Maine so it's a hair care brand at Sephora and I wanted to ask in the beauty industry you're probably seeing a lot of celebrity brands popping out and now when I'm working with the likes of Sephora it's all about following the founder of the celebrity so as a non-celebrity founder brand I'm trying to think about my own founder-led strategy for the business what tips do you have for founder-led brands for the founder social I mean there's two ways I think my number one piece of advice in this scenario is don't be half pregnant.

17:36Right? So, I'm entertaining myself up here. I don't think you need to do what I did. I really don't. I don't think everybody needs to build their personal brand. I think you can and I think it's a massive weapon but you also have to be self-aware. If you are like deeply like passionate about being the operator and you wake up in the morning and you love supply chain. And I mean this. I mean like I'm, not that many people do but like I like weird stuff. Like you might like supply chain or you like being a leader or you're more COO, right? Then personality. I don't think it's gonna work anyway. You can get to a certain place but I'm sure here we all know like there's things we're naturally talented at and our ceiling's high and there's things that we're not as naturally talented at.

18:26Now we may work on it like I've worked on my health and fitness. it's better than it was 10 years ago but I'm never gonna be a fucking Adonis superstar athlete. You know, like we have ceilings. So I think, but if you decide you can do it and you're into it, then you gotta go all in. You've gotta do a weekly podcast, interviewing people from the industry and influencers. You've gotta create a format of content that is replicatable for you. Like, you know, 10 years ago, I knew that this really mattered and I decided to film myself every minute. much to the chagrin of the entire human world and took a lot of cynicism and people really had things to say mainly behind my back but even occasionally to my face.

19:07But I knew that I was just working 15 hours a day and I wasn't gonna make content. But I knew there was content every second I was living and I knew that I was in control of the post-production and it really changed everything for me. Right now the most famous people in the world emerging to Gen Alpha are IRL streamers, fully streaming their life 24-7, the next level of what I did. Mine was filmed and then out. This is fucking live, live, live, right? And so, you know, I think you have to find a way. Another way is going on podcasts regardless of the size. One thing I did in 15, 16, and 17 that was confusing to a lot of people and now people that are really deep in personal brand understood, I would go on very small podcasts because I won twice.

19:52At that point, I already had a little bit of juice. So I was putting on someone, which is karma is a real currency, my friends. If you believe with anything I'm saying here, let me leave you with this. Doing good things is wildly ROI positive. So I was at a place where I could pick a podcast that was just starting and said yes and gave up my most valuable asset, which is my time. But it wasn't completely selfless. Yes, I would be on a show that then would clearly use my name and get their guests and many big podcasts today did that and it feels incredibly amazing. But I also got the 30 minutes of content.

20:31And I didn't have to do shit. Just had to answer questions, right? So, you know, I think finding a format, but I think you could go on a 25 to 50 podcast tour to tell your story over and over. There's some distribution from that podcast, but the clips that come out can become ammo for you to use on LinkedIn and Instagram and things of that nature. you mentioned about comments and taking the consumer insight for that just eat posts on social and you've got brighter issues cold food there's probably a few people in the same thing I've done it before I've done it what's your advice for kind of handling those we can't all be brighter and abuse people which is a good strategy yeah of course but any advice on managing that and trying to turn that in I'm looking for ideas to try and turn that into a tool and weapons and manage.

21:21Yeah, by the way, it's how I started my company. The way I built my dad's wine store in the Twitter 2007 era was replying to every person, good or bad. I think, look, some of us have business issues that are so massive, even if we accept accountability, it's not like we can change out of plastic if that's what they're complaining about tomorrow. Right? So, you know, for a business, I think replying to anything that you could be accountable to and owning that within social, that's an easy fix or a refund or like something clever, a t-shirt, like however you want to play it, I think you always do that.

22:00And then on the things that are like ingrained, you got to really sit and bring those to the boardroom or into your own head and be like, what are we doing about this? But like I will tell you that the consumer insights of a model that we do, which is for most of our clients, we're posting four, seven, and 15 pieces of creative a day in social. I would argue that the consumer insights that come out of that creative is worth the price of admission. In fact, we have been funded in our growth on our creative product from consumer insights P &Ls the second year because we're bringing actual consumer insights while our clients are paying for like bullshit reports from like Forrester or something.

22:46So I want to hear your insight about B2B influencer marketing. Ooh, thank you. So that's a great one. B2B influencer marketing. Yes. So that's epic. So that's probably the thing that I'm most excited about in my lab that hasn't really hit the ether. Like if I put out a lot of content, you won't find a lot for me on B2B influencer marketing because the last six months I've actually been very deep in it. So A, I think LinkedIn is disproportionately the most underrated social network. I believe if you sell food, beauty products, sneakers, you should be treating LinkedIn the way you treat Instagram and Facebook and Twitter and TikTok.

23:27There's just so much reach from content. That has always been a thesis of ours. I personally have felt the effects of B2B, you know, influencer life for my business and have been studying it for a lot of SaaS businesses and a lot of boards and investments I've made, I've done founder-led and non-founder-led content in LinkedIn from an influencer standpoint that has been remarkable. I think the single two most interesting things that are happening in influencer marketing is A, AI influencers, influencers that are not human beings. And that's a really important conversation because I believe everybody that owns their business is gonna be in the intellectual property business.

24:09They're gonna own 10 influencers, not rented out. That's a different story. And number two is B2B influencers. I think next year, this year, it's going to be a big conversation and I think a lot of people who've built audiences on Twitter and on LinkedIn are going to start getting big paychecks from B2B companies in the way that we've seen in B2C the last three to four years. Go ahead. Yeah, you can. Because I find, like the main challenge is finding influencers on LinkedIn and in Twitter. For example, I look at the marketeers to promote my platform. So I search on YouTube, it's easy, videographers, cinematographers, and then I get a whole list and I can see them according to views, according to engagement, according to a thousand things.

24:56But in LinkedIn, there are very few that have lots of followers. Even them, see that the engagement on specific posts, only now they've started videos on LinkedIn. and see that the engagement is very low. So it's not marketing millennials or their Z or. Yep. So who, how do, even hashtag, like so difficult to find them. Yeah, so look, I think first. Twitter, same thing. Yeah, I think what I tend to do when I need to find longer tail is I hire hand-to-hand combat, you know, humans to do the research. It's there. like if you use ChatGPT right now and Google and Perplexity and say who are the top 100 followed people on LinkedIn you will land on a page I've done it multiple times myself on a page that will show you the first 20 and ask you for money for the rest and is well worth your money for that so it's out there because I've spent some real time on this I think it's just it's 50 to 100 hours of finding them and then creating a constant flow.

26:04But I think the other thing, to your credit of why it's hard to find and why I reacted the way I did, it's also not a big conversation right now. What's about to happen is it's about to become a huge conversation and then inevitably Ad Age is gonna write the top 50 fucking B2B influencers article and that will help you. Somebody will build a database and it's just starting to bubble up. but yeah I mean I'm on the receiving end of it because I'm always in that top 25 list and the economic impact of a B2B influencer is no different to why B2B companies do more sales than marketing like it's going to be very ROI positive it is going to be very lucrative I think B2B influencers are going to make some real money I really do I think podcast is a good place for you to look too that's where I found a bunch because you can go to Spotify and Apple and look at the top 200 and there's some categories of like tech.

27:02Like you'll see, it's definitely bubbling. Authors, you know, people that are writing books that don't sell well, but there is a little bit of juice for them on LinkedIn. So I've done Amazon searches for like deep tech and SaaS and to see who wrote a book and then go look at their LinkedIn. Time to go already? Shit. Go ahead, sneak it in. Ash from TikTok Creative Agency my question is on are you going to see brands migrate away from creators to perhaps AI led avatars to have more control 100 % what the influencers did to celebrities AI influencers are about to do to influencers and they're going to cry about it and the hypocrisy is going to be fascinating it's by the way in a real fucking way every person here has interacted and consumed an AI influencer and has no idea there's the ones that you do know like those the sleazy you know OnlyFan type girls you can see you can see they're not real every person here has consumed an AI influencer piece of content and don't know they did and it's that's today in 24 months it's gonna be like pew why in the world would you not own your influencer no risk you own the IP you can monetize it you start off using it to build your business and then the fucking thing for some reason has a million followers you're like wait a minute I can get 10 ,000 from this fashion brand people are going to subsidize their marketing by owning their influencer now the issue is there's only 8 billion people on earth I think in about 24 months I'm going to have 8 billion influencers myself so I do think that we're going to learn what supply and demand means you know one of the reasons I was able to build my career was I was first on all these platforms.

28:55So I got to a million followers on Twitter when there was eight million people on Twitter. You know, if I, today, where I am at, tried to start my process of getting to a million followers on Twitter with 100 million people on the platform, good luck. It's just supply and demand of attention. So I think it's gonna be interesting. I think the people that move first, like this year, will get some real benefits, but every nanosecond it's gonna get harder. I'm really sorry, Gary. Sorry, bye, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, bye everyone. See ya.