In short
The GaryVee Audio Experience - Episode Summary
Podcast Details
- Title: The GaryVee Audio Experience
- Episode Title: The Death of Followers and the Future of Marketing | Marketing Against the Grain Podcast
- Description: In this episode, Gary Vaynerchuk discusses the future of marketing in 2025, focusing on the decline of follower counts, the rise of attention-based algorithms, and how AI is reshaping the marketing landscape.
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Key Themes
The Evolution of Marketing
- Shift to Attention-Based Metrics:
- The traditional follower count is becoming irrelevant.
- Emphasis on engagement and attention as key performance indicators.
- AI's Role in Marketing:
- AI is transforming how brands engage with customers.
- Businesses must adapt to utilize AI effectively to stay relevant.
Gary Vaynerchuk's Journey
- Impactful Content:
- Gary reflects on his career milestones, particularly a notable talk that propelled him to fame.
- His background in wine led to broader discussions about marketing, entrepreneurship, and operations.
- Crafting Authentic Content:
- Gary emphasizes the importance of authenticity and deep knowledge in marketing.
- Content should be driven by understanding the audience rather than conforming to rigid brand guidelines.
Importance of Craft and Strategy
- Continuous Engagement:
- Staying involved in the practical aspects of marketing is crucial for success.
- Successful marketers must be hands-on to understand current trends and audience needs.
- Creative Agility:
- Brands need to be agile and responsive to changes in the marketing landscape.
- There's a need for more experimental approaches rather than sticking to outdated methods.
The Future of Marketing
- Day Trading Attention:
- The concept of "day trading attention" where marketers must react quickly to shifts in consumer behavior and trends.
- Emphasis on creating content that resonates on various platforms.
- Micro-Targeting:
- The necessity of marketing to specific consumer segments rather than broad demographics.
- Tailoring content to different micro-segments enhances relevance and engagement.
Challenges for Fortune 500 Companies
- Disconnect from Reality:
- Many large brands are disconnected from current consumer behavior and trends, relying on outdated strategies.
- There's a growing gap between traditional marketing practices and the agile methods preferred by younger, innovative brands.
- Agency Dynamics:
- Vaynerchuk critiques traditional agencies for their outdated incentives and strategies.
- Highlights the importance of aligning agency goals with client needs.
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Key Takeaways
- Marketing is Evolving: Businesses must shift from follower counts to attention metrics to thrive in the future.
- AI is Integral: Understanding and leveraging AI will be vital for businesses to engage effectively with consumers.
- Authenticity Matters: Content should be genuine and provide value to the audience rather than simply conforming to brand standards.
- Adaptability is Key: Marketers should be ready to pivot strategies based on real-time consumer insights and trends.
- Embrace Experimentation: The willingness to test various approaches will lead to better understanding and engagement with audiences.
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Notable Quotes
- “If you love Smurf, Smurf it up.” – Referring to the need for authenticity in one’s personal brand and marketing efforts.
- “The reason Fortune 500 CMOs really struggle with today's marketing is they are so removed.” – On the disconnect between large brands and the marketing landscape.
- “The creative creates the reach.” – Emphasizing the importance of content quality in engaging audiences effectively.
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Conclusion This episode of The GaryVee Audio Experience is a deep dive into the future of marketing, shedding light on the necessity for businesses to adapt to changing dynamics. Gary Vaynerchuk’s insights provide a roadmap for marketers in navigating the evolving landscape, emphasizing the need for authenticity, engagement, and strategic agility.
Written by AI. May contain mistakes. Listen to the episode to check what was said.
Transcript
Automatic transcript. May contain errors.0:00Back in the earliest earliest days, probably episode 20, episode 30, very early wine libraries. I think I saw it on, I think I was doing web analytics on Crazy Egg. And there was some type of like cross promotion blog article or interview or something you had done promoting Wine Library TV. And I learned a bunch about wine from you, but I learned a lot about marketing from you. And you have done so much over the years that one of the places I want to start is like, you've written all these books, you've created all this content. Like what is, if you look back on it, what is the most impactful piece of content you've ever made?
0:36Like, what is that thing where you're like, you know what? I got the most leverage and mileage out of that more than anything else. It was probably, you know, it's a crazy story. There was a Web 2.0 conference here at the Javits Center, which I'm very close to right this second. And it was early. I might have done three or four talks at that point in my career. But I'd already been in the game and enough to like be one of the headliners. And because it was pretty quick for me. I did a talk in Miami at Future of Web Apps, FOA, and that hit. And then one more talk hit. And then you know this since you found me that early.
1:14There wasn't that many of us in Web 2.0 back then. There were no creators hardly at all. None. And the personalities were mainly bloggers that crossed over to video, right? Or social, like Robert Scoble and Guy Kawasaki and Kevin Rose and Dignation. Tim Ferriss, like there just wasn't that many human beings. No, we're talking pre four hour work week. Like this is early, early in the cycle of all this stuff, right? That's right. And so I gave a talk at Web 2.0 conference. And it was the one where I said, if you love Smurf, Smurf it up. And it was, I just kind of exploded and just said, it was my thesis for crushing, which was the book that kind of put me on the map in the business world from the wine world and what was really funny was two really iconic web people were in the green room right before I went on Fred Wilson, the most successful New York BC and Jason Freed, the founder of 37 Signals who was like a real player personality at the time and is one of my favorite people I met in web two and I said to them right before I took the stage They're like, Gary, two minutes, come and get mic'd up.
2:29And I looked at both of them, and I really go with my intuition and chemicals, and I look at both of them and say, huh, either this is gonna be the best talk of my career, or it's all over and I'll never be speaking again. And I went out there, I really felt like crazy, like overhyped, and I'm a pretty hyped dude. And I blacked out and did my thing. By the time I got to the wine store, because I still was doing the wine business. And we didn't have cell phone email back then. By the time I got back to the wine store and checked my email, I had like four book offers from people that were like, I'm in the crowd.
3:08I'm from Pegman Putnam or Simon & Schuster. And then Ted picked up that video and put it on the Ted Talk website. And that was it. And that was really the first time broadly I was discovered for Business Talk. Prior to that I had done an episode of Wine Library TV where I tasted wine with all these weird vegetables and fruits and cereal and candy. That made the front page of Dig and Slashdot and Metafilter, all those places where you could be discovered back then. And then that led to me being on the Conan O 'Brien show and the Ellen DeGeneres show doing the same skit. So that was my first broad thing.
3:54But this was my first, if you ask me impactful, like the Gary career that I have today, that piece of content definitely set it off. I got kind of a two part follow up on that. One of the things that you did amazingly well is you went from this like you were doing content around wine. You had a family business around wine and you expanded into business. Most people have a hard time going from one thing that they do well and kind of expanding it. I want to know, how the hell did you do that? You know, I think there are a lot of people here who feel like they're stuck in where they're at. Well, it was weird because I was getting, like, I'm very proud of my wine knowledge, and it's pretty significant.
4:34Very significant. But the reality was that kid that you saw, right, when you were a real kid, back in episode 20 of Wine Library TV, that was February. So that was March or April of 2006. Yes. That was now eight full years into me running the family business and 10 full years since I launched winelibrary.com, which transformed our family business. And, 1990, 16 years since I worked pretty much every day, every weekend, every summer vacation, and then Monday through Friday when I was in school, I was reading the Wine Spectator and talking to my dad at night about the business. 16 years into my wine retail career and 2006, call it 1986, 20 years into my true hardcore entrepreneurial career because in 86, you know, I already started selling baseball cards and making hundreds.
5:34You know, I was really in it. Like not in the way that I think people understand. Like I was a bad student for a reason. I was basically running a business since I was in sixth grade. Like it's all I thought about. It's all I cared about. I'd go to school to sell cards. I'd come home and study cards, and then that switched to wine. And so what was ironic was I actually wasn't adding another thing. I just started communicating about the core thing I knew more than anything. I know much more about operations and entrepreneurship and marketing than I do about wine. It's just that I came out the gate making a show about wine, and really, it's how the internet knew me for the first five years that I was out there.
6:14All right. One last question on this before we move on. So really that big talk that you said was the thing that really propelled you, that was like 25 plus years in the making of a culmination of a lot of experience. But like, how do you prepare and put something like that together? I think a lot of people see you and they're like, oh, he's just off the cuff. He just has all these ideas on the spot. I don't think that's necessarily true. You know, Kip, I got a weird one for you, brother. Yeah. It's a complicated answer. I don't prep for anything. Not even for like Wine Library business meeting, excuse me, VaynerMedia business meetings.
6:54I am so deeply in my craft that it's just incredibly easy for me to talk. Like if I had to go give a talk on healthcare, I'd have to prep for 100 hours. If I had to go talk, but if I have to go give a keynote about the New York Knicks right now, I'm good. If I have to go give a keynote about wine, I'm good. If I have to, Jets, forget it. I could give a 400 hour keynote about. And so when I go and talk or do an interview like this with you and Kieran right now, I'm talking about what I really deeply know. One of the things, actually I'm glad you brought this up. One of the things that I think propelled me in public speaking pretty quickly after that moment was I started going to conferences all the time and it was the same people in the circuit.
7:42The same 100 people had all the keynotes, right? and the same 25 really at the time. May you rest in peace Tony Hsieh, founder of Zappos, Biz Stone, one of the co-founders. Oh yeah, Biz Stone was on Circuit Hard. He was Circuit Hard. You know, Tim Ferriss who's amazing. But even like Dave Morin from Facebook and it was just the same characters, right? Robert Scoble, Guy Kawasaki.
8:07And I mentioned those people because these people weren't doing it but most of the people, including some of the people I just mentioned. They had the same presentation every time. The same one. I would see them at the affiliate summit. Affiliate marketing is quite different than Twitter marketing. I'd see them at the search summit. Like Google search is very different than winning on Twitter. And I would see them at these different things. I'd see them at LeWeb. What was going on in Paris and Europe was very different than what was going on in the US. And it took me back. took me aback saying, huh, they know this stuff, but as a presenter, they're just kind of like, this is it, slide three, same joke, same kitten from the internet on slide six.
8:55And I think what made me stand out was I was incredibly contextual. Like if I was going to France, I was gonna talk about what was going on on Web 2.0 in France. When I do the HubSpot podcast like I'm doing right now, I'm thinking a lot about the agencies, the individuals that are running within this ecosystem that may be different than if I go speak at a blockchain summit in Finland, might be different than if I go talk about intellectual property at IP conferences. So I think context matters, but to give everybody an answer, yes, I am shooting off the hip, comma, to answer you, only because I'm prepped to the max because it's my entire life.
9:39right that's the important part is that like it's it's not being unprepared you've prepared your entire life to talk about what you're talking about i'm a practitioner every day like literally we talk about this all the time if you're in the craft it's so much easier to talk about it i'm going to show you i i assume this is audio predominantly but like literally while like 9 902 literally as oh literally as we were getting ready it's kind of blurry but that green box you You don't have to zoom in, it's fine. Actually zoom in, it might be interesting for people. Like, this is me writing the copy to my Instagram post right before we started.
10:20You're like, I'm doing the work in the moment. I am literally the copywriter for my content. Still, at this point, you know what people think. They think it's all like, oh, he's got a team. I'm like, no shit. For 11 years I did it by myself. and then yes I got to a place where I have a huge team for my content but I'm still writing the copy it's still your voice no no it's my voice because it's me that's what I'm saying but you're saying it I'm saying it works because it is still you you're not farming this out you were like I got this razor sharp perspective and I got to make sure it gets out there but I'm also like analyzing the numbers and like thinking through the first second and like like it's why I wrote new book.
11:01Like, I feel like I'm at the sharpest I've ever been. And I know, because I've grown up in this game the last 15 years, as people hit financial success, as they go into different chapters of their life, which is super appropriate, by the way, everyone gets to live their life the way they want. Most people have, you know, delegated or walked away from the trenches, from the dirt, from the practitionership. I've doubled down on it. I would love to kind of dig into this point. You could, Gary, you could do literally anything you want to do with your life, right? Your latest book is on date, trade, and attention.
11:36You basically taught a whole generation how to do that in the Web 2 era. One of the things that we find with marketers, and I know you manage marketers or spend a bunch of time with marketers, is today marketers want to graduate to strategy really quickly, right? Like, oh, I've done a year's work. Now I'm a strategist. And someone else would do the actual craft, but I'll direct them to do the craft. What do you say to people like that? because you're deep in the craft all this time, you know, today, like each and every day you're in the craft. Like, what do you say to people like that? That's a great question, brother.
12:08Look, I'm obsessed with strategy, right? So first, it makes sense. Like, I couldn't comprehend not overthinking about this stuff. You know, like, you know, it's my favorite part. But I would say to people, the second you take your hand off the wheel, you become a worse driver. And so I do believe that, let's go very high up. The sole reason Fortune 500 CMOs really struggle with today's marketing is they are so removed to your point. So removed. So removed. They don't even have some of these apps on their phone, let alone consume the creative that works on it, let alone make the creative that works on it.
12:59Think about that. They are so uncomfortably removed. And so for me, the reason I like being in the craft, it gives me a currency, a pulse of its actual success with the end consumer. But this is also challenging. Here's why. First of all, if you're in the Fortune 5000, so let's include private equity-based owned businesses and series D VC-backed startups. You know, if you're at that level, a lot of your marketing isn't even in the trenches. Fortune 500 continues to overspend on television, continues to overspend on traditional things. I mean, it is flabbergasting how much Fortune 500 companies spend on print, magazines and newspapers.
13:49There are many companies in fashion and other areas that spend more on print than they do on social creative. Do you know how insane that is? So, first of all, if you're Fortune 5000, you're running on reports, not on truth, right? Internal MMMs, MMAs, justifying media spend that are fake. Creative is being done by creative agencies that want to make television ads on a good day and on a bad day want to make banner ads for the web. so it's a muckery there as you go underneath that you have a lot of founders that start companies doing all the social creative doing all the copywriting doing the website doing the email and it's great and then they get bougie especially the under 40 year old set I get it they want to get to the Lambos and the private planes and the vacations and the pretty girls and the pretty boys and all the things that they want.
14:45And, you know, they start to delegate. And they have fast dreams that also leads to quick vulnerabilities. And so, you know, I think you're right, my man. I'm pumped to see the way you jumped in and asked with passion. Because I do think it's the biggest variable out there. And I think in a world where money got expensive, right? Like, meaning raising capital is expensive. now and in a world of post iOS 14.5 and let's call it what it was the ones that figured out that Facebook when I was yelling and screaming it was true Facebook was so effective that if you just did a very simple CAC LTV ROAS cookie people and travel around the whole internet and sell to them and till they finally give up that and raise tons of capital you were able to make it look like on paper you had a great business and so um that era is also over and i i think this is also one of the reasons i wrote the new book i think we're going into an era where you're gonna have to be better to win um and uh and that excites me and i wanted to prepare my community or the people that have followed me or the people that are curious after they hear about it uh and i think i did just that with this new one well yeah so i want to talk i want to get into the book day trading attention First of all, we're catching you on a good day.
16:09Brunson just hung 41 points on the 76ers. The Knicks are up 3-1. 47? Was it 47? I think so. 47. Jeez, I forgot that. So we're catching you in a good mood. A great day. The Jets had a good draft this weekend that I was thrilled with subjectively. We'll see how it plays out. It is a sunny Monday day in New York, and I'm on with you boys. I mean, this is good stuff. So we're catching you at a high point. Most marketers right now I talk to, Gary, are the exact opposite. They're pretty freaked out right now. Yes. They're like, oh, my ads are getting more expensive. My traffic to my how-to blog post is going down.
16:51Yes. Nobody cares about my social media. My emails are getting open less. And guess what? And if they're really smart, like really smart, uh-oh, all my traffic comes from Google and and AI, things like chat, GPT. What if search goes away? Well, that's what we want to talk to you about. This is Kira and I's thing. It's like, hey, we're moving into an era of day trading attention where you need personality-led growth and different strategies to do that. And if you're relying on just paid ads and Google, you're screwed 10 years from now. That's not the right game to play. By the way, I had email and search figured out in 2000.
17:30I bought the day Google AdWords came out. I bought all the wine terms. I own the word wine without a bid up for three days. Incredible. I own the, and this was, I think it was like six to 12 months that the minimum bid was five cents, not 10 cents on Google. And so like, and then you're ready for, wait, this crowd's gonna love this. You ready for this one? 1999, winelibrary.com, over 100 ,000 emails, 91 % open rates. I remember reading that from your newsletter. It's good to be first. This is another thing you're incredible at. Like you're first to most marketing tactics. Because I day trade attention.
18:12I'm never scared. In fact, here's a good one. You can imagine given the life I live and how loud I was four years ago. There isn't a day that goes by that I don't get 13 questions of, so what are you going to do, Gary, when TikTok's gone? And I'm like, grow. And they're like, what? I'm like, what do you think is going to happen? If TikTok's banned in America, all that attention has to go somewhere. I believe that X is gonna relaunch Vine. Yes. I believe there's four to 50 good entrepreneurs right now building a TikTok competitor right now, right now because they're like, fuck it, the stakes are so high.
18:50If it gets banned, I'm gonna crush. I think Snapchat spotlight's getting better. I believe YouTube Shorts will be a winner. I believe Instagram and Facebook themselves will be winners. But what I know is the ultimate winner will be the best day trader of attention because she or he will spend that first two, three, four months really getting a sense in the gray because it won't show up in the math yet. In the gray, they will figure out where it's going and they will hit it hard. You know, what do I say to all those people? Tough shit. And here's why. Here's why I say tough shit, Kip. when I hear Gary you don't get it my email my Google search what you just said this sucks this sucks I'm like you know what sucks when you own triple a cleaners in New York and you were the first result in the yellow pages under cleaners and then Google and Yahoo came along and killed the yellow pages you had a 70 year business because you were why do you I don't know if people know this the reason there are so many companies named triple a cleaners triple a landscapers AAA is because the yellow pages were the source of finding things and they did it alphabetically and the people that own AAA showed up first.
20:04How about that for a history marketing lesson? There's probably like half the people listening to the show had no idea that was the case. So to me, it is what it is. Do you think that Hershey's is thrilled that Mr. Beast made chocolate you think Gatorade is super pumped that KSI and Logan Paul made Prime Energy drink do you think that Kmart was happy that Walmart happened do you think that QVC is pumped that TikTok shop exists do you think that Hollywood ABC was thrilled that Netflix happened do you think that Toys R Us was happy that Amazon had like what are people talking about everything changes all all the time, always and forever.
20:46And if you're crying that the thing that helps you make money is changing, well then you're a hypocrite of the history of how business works. And here's what happened. You got fat and lazy. Yes. And you're in trouble. Hell yes. And I say this not, I say this, I hope people hear it. Like it's framed as tough love, here's why. We can't complain about it because we were the beneficiaries of it at some point in our career. I'm not allowed to be mad that email and search got trumped by blogging, YouTube, and social media. It's why I ran at it so hard because I didn't want to be a hypocrite. I built the largest wine store in New Jersey because everybody else was doing direct mail and full page ads in newspaper when I outflanked them with a website, email, and Google.
21:39So when I sensed things were changing, I didn't want someone to do that to me. By the way, it happened to my dad. I got busy, started doing VaynerMedia and became Gary V, quote unquote and Wines to Sold Out came out and innovated a deal of the day Groupon style and really took and became the biggest store and took that business from my dad. Then I got mad because I love my dad and I invented WineText.com. By the way, everybody should sign up for it. It's crazy. and now it's deal the day in text form, better deals and even easier. You just reply with a number to the text and so like that's what I love about it.
22:18It's kind of like a trilogy in boxing, right? Like you don't win every fight. You might have won the first one, you lost the second one, the third one was a draw. Like it is what it is. This is the reality of marketing. It will forever change. What I struggle with is how naive the Fortune 500 companies are of what's happening right now. But it tracks with what you said, Gary, in that the CMOs, if you're not in the craft and you don't know how things are changing unless your agency turns up one day and has a bad report, because for the most part, that's all they look at, right? Like you actually, to really understand how things are changing in marketing, you have to be in the craft each and every day.
22:57You just talked about the thing that bothers me. My thing doesn't bother, the CMOs bother me, but don't bother me. What bothers me is the agency landscape. I am flabbergasted 15 years in how much agencies incentives do not align with their clients. Agencies incentives are to make TV ads and try to win awards and most companies don't need TV ads and awards are irrelevant. And if you look even deeper Kip, they sell things that they make margin on. Oh of course. So it's They make money on upfront buying on TV for sure. They make a ton of money on creating television. If you're a creative agency, for everybody who doesn't know what happens on Madison Avenue, you get paid a full year, millions and millions of dollars just to think of one commercial.
23:46You don't even make it. You outsource it to a production company. Literally to think. Make decks and present. And then even worse, programmatic digital. They make so much money in these black boxes justified by CPM. I'm caught, like, the whole ecosystem is really, really pissing me off. And I believe that the reason I'm still building an agency is a little bit based on my superhero syndrome, which is a problem and I got to fix it because, you know, you go too far and you start building resentment. That's my personal life and my professional life. Like, I really want to tear down Madison Avenue with VaynerMedia.
24:22And when I say tear down, I don't wish bad on anyone. I just believe that the interests don't align enough and I'm hoping that I inspire a lot of kids that are coming out of ad school to build an independent agency and not sell to a holding company because if you sell to a holding company it goes back to what's happening. I'm not even mad at the holding companies. They're publicly traded companies and they care about their stock value not about driving business results for their clients. And finally, it is the Coca-Cola and BMW's fault. If you're writing the check, you're in control. they are feeding this bad ecosystem they're the ones that can stop it so yeah for everybody who's listening knowing that there's a lot of people that might be considering getting into the marketing landscape the fortune 500 marketing thing is a major problem it's built on a book called how brands grow that was written in 1991 it's the thesis of how companies still run which is right in principle but doesn't take into account the practitionership of 2024 reach and frequency and being consistent is beautiful.
25:24The problem is the world is fragmented. People's attention is 9 ,000 places now. And so you need to win on relevance at scale. That's how you stay consistent. And so that's why I wrote Dave Trading Attention. I'm hoping very selfishly, but also selflessly, that I might write the current Bible of marketing and that's the attempt I'm giving. That's awesome. Well, first of all, I agree with you on the agency model being broken. And like, we work with you all at Vayner on social at HubSpot, right? Brian and folks on our team. We're killing it with you all. Thank you. But like, I can't imagine another agency moving and executing.
26:00And you know this. Let's share a little bit from behind the scenes that I think will help everyone. It is, thank you. And it's starting to go well. But you know, it takes, like, I'm sure you've heard from your team. I'm reading the notes every week. When you're doing it different, it takes a few minutes to calibrate it. like it's not the easiest thing for a HubSpot or anybody else to make that transition because it's a different model. Well, you have to move fast. And back to your point, you have to be relevant at scale. And to be relevant at scale, you have to say interesting and different shit.
26:34And it offends people. And people are a little uncomfortable about it. And they don't know how to act. And then you get some people who will send you DMs and be like, oh, I don't know if I like this. And you just have to be like, well, most people do. and the people I'm here for and the people I'm here to serve do. And that's ultimately what matters. I'm not here to make everybody happy. I'm here to make companies who are trying to grow and be the next Fortune 500 companies, I'm trying to make them happy. 100%. And you know, it's hard. It's hard for your most senior constituents. I know your founders very well.
27:06I'm sure that, you know, maybe they've seen a post and they're like, but then by the way, it's hard for my team. I always tell my team, if we're asking for humility and yes and culture from our clients, we have to be the same. I had to speak to a creative last week in Asia and said, you're doing to our clients what you cry about that our clients do to us. Because she was, like my model, our model, the model is we need to win on relevance to many different consumers. When the client has an idea, we need to make that piece of creative with the same gusto as if it was our own idea. And so my team's at its worst when they're like, oh client, you don't get it.
27:44No, no. every client usually knows their business better than us. And then on a flip side, sometimes it's a senior person, but then sometimes it's day-to-day people. Sometimes it's a 30 year old who says no to something we're making because it's not on brand in their mind. But on brand is to the different constituents, not to the subjective opinion of a human. Right. The it's not on brand is like the most awful, horrible excuse not to do something. This is not on brand is, I love you for this, this is not on brand is the great weapon of bad marketing. Right, hell yes. Because it's somebody invoking their political power on the meeting.
28:30Because this is not on brand would be like me saying that I, Gary, am universally correct in what attractive is. Right? Like I'm like every human on earth attracted to certain things. I'm not attracted in other people and certain things. I'm very aware that many people are attracted to those things including my best friends. And like I grew up with friends and they were attracted to certain girls and I was attracted to different. Like that's life. This is not on brand would also be saying lobster is not delicious. Or I'll go more narrow. I'm obsessed with West Coast oysters. Olympia, Kumamoto, but some people won't even eat an oyster.
29:18And then the audacity that you as a human, as a brand manager or somebody on the marketing team or social is the only person that knows what's on brand when in fact we are of the moment where we need to be more relevant to many different consumers than ever. We're not making a television commercial. I'm not interested in debating pink versus fuchsia. Let's post them both. Right. I mean, what we talk a lot about on this show is that with AI and AI tools gaining steam, the cost to ship ideas is approaching zero, right? Like if you are obsessed about pixel perfect or the perfect idea, you're going to lose because somebody is just going to out test you and out ship you.
Read the full transcript
30:03I just don't understand how people don't understand what's going on. Listen, Gary, this show is listened to by hundreds of thousands of marketers and founders every month. You have the floor. What do you want them to change about how they think about marketing? Like if you could just... Let me give a bunch of stuff and then you two jump in on the things that you think the audience will click on more. Here are many things that need to be digested, which are hard to digest. Number one, quantity does not come at the expense of quality. Hell yes. Number two, if you do not understand how the first second of a video works per platform, you cannot be successful at social media.
30:46AKA, how the first second of your video shows up in a TikTok versus how it shows up in an Instagram reel is already different. and I'm watching many of you not succeed in one or the other or both platforms because you have not understood the science of the art of the first second of a video. Number three, a comment on a social media post today that's clever, what I call Cassie, comments as creative, is a more effective marketing execution than almost every banner ad, billboard, radio spot, and print ad in the world. Number four, if you do not market to 40 different, 30 different, I'll let you get away with 20 different micro consumer segmentations every day.
31:3719 to 23 year old Hispanic males that live in California that are into skateboarding. 40 to 45 year old moms in middle America that have teenage boys. 60 to 70 year old men who are in the last five years of their career that live in Florida, that work in B2B SaaS. 21 to 25 year old women that only consume TikTok for health and beauty tips on the coasts. 150 ,000 to 300 ,000 income earning Asian males who are 30 and single that travel a lot. If you do not think in the way that I just talked about and have many of them for your coffee, for your SaaS business, for your automotive company, for your makeup brand, for your Fortune 500, 5000, or local flower shop.
32:28If you do not think in cohorts and then those cohorts are how you wake up in the morning and think about the 10 to 20 pieces of content you're going to put out on social media, you already are on your back foot and are losing market share without even realizing it. I mean, I've got like 30 more. Let's stop there for a second. What of those four rants got you going, man? I really want to talk about two. And then I actually have a question around brands versus creators because one of the things we've talked about on this show is the marketing channels growing today favor personalities versus brands.
33:02Let me just jump in right there, if you don't mind. Only because they're better at marketing. Let me explain. Agreed. Do lingo... which is killing your content as creative shit man that's right that's right yeah like uh they're commenting comments game is great poppy soda is building a multi-hundred million dollar and as you know it did it through the marketing and micro creators and then the founder started to show up in the content like there's a lot the only reason creators are dominating brands is because they're better at the marketing right but what are they better at gary specifically like i think they're more agile they're faster like what else is it that the first second the the beats the copywriting cassie like the stuff that fucking matters like they they don't put have you seen what brands put out on social media but isn't it isn't it because creators don't get the line thrown at them that that when they have an idea to put out there, they don't have someone throwing a line saying this isn't on brand.
34:09Correct. That is the great killer of creativity and creators don't have that. Yes. Yes, brother. And this is why until corporate America falls in love with yes and. Right. And. Actually, here's a big one. And then I'll let you go back to the four things. I know we're all over the place because I'm having too much fun. Until Fortune 5000 falls in love with and, they will lose. They're obsessed with or. Or, they love or. Eight hours of meetings for or. Eight weeks of debating or. And it makes sense. It's their DNA. When you had to spend all your money on a television commercial, it was smart to spend four or five months on figuring out or.
34:49Right. It makes no sense now when your market, here's what people don't, I'll go in there. I'll go on my next rant, but okay, you said two. Go ahead, Kieran. So I think video is an ever-growing, important, critical part of like how you market today And actually all of the channels are starting to skew much more heavily towards video. Like maybe Elon brings Vine back. You are a master of video. I don't think many people have their videos as we shared as much as you do. Teach us or teach brands how to be interested in relevant in video. Because I just think that 90%, 95 % should just not do video if they're going to do the videos they're doing today.
35:26Well, first, I said an important, thank you for the compliment. But this is why I started VaynerMedia. I don't think you need to be pop on camera. I'm aware that I have charisma and I'm a good communicator. I understand that helps me. I'm aware I don't have this. I'm aware that people, some people are just so goddamn beautiful, it's hard for us not to watch the video. Then there's people who are just so damn knowledgeable, right? I may be high energy, but as you two know, that also turns people off. There's other people that are very serious and we love it, right? We like it because it's good information.
36:00A lot of ways to win on video, but let's go back to answer how to make video. Let me say it nice and slow. If I am making, if I know I'm making content for Southern frat dudes 21 to 24 to buy my beef jerky, to buy my deodorant, to buy my bottled water, you can imagine here and where I'm going. This is the new brief. The new brief is the consumer segmentations. This is how you win on social. So if I already know I'm going after that, and then this is why, I don't know if you guys, did you guys get the book? Did you get to skim it? I'm sure you're busy. I don't know if you read it or skimmed it.
36:42Give me a reel. Did you skim it? Did you read it a little bit? Like help me understand. Great. When you skimmed it, you probably saw like, it's kind of textbooky. It's like, it's definitely deeper than anything I've ever done. And it was because there was no way for me to articulate what I'm about to articulate. So now I know I'm going after 22 to 25 year old dudes that went to University of Alabama and were in a frat, right? And I know I want to sell them deodorant. First of all, and I know I'm on TikTok. First of all, I know that the thumbnail and the first second is my life. Kieran, Kip, I know that 98 % of people do not obsess about the first second because 98 % of the content I consume every day waits eight seconds.
37:24And by the way, I do it wrong sometimes too. It's hard. It's hard, but it's true. It's just like sometimes I do push-ups wrong. I know what I need to do, but I'm tired. And so the copy, the slang, Kieran, as you can imagine, if I know that I'm going after Hispanic dudes in New York who come from Dominican and Puerto Rican families, can you imagine the adjectives that I'm going to use in the copy that's going to be different than frat, dude? This is what people are not doing. right and then I know it needs to not only the first second then around six to ten seconds I need to make sure that I still have them it's cadence of the video and then are we articulating it simple and then there's just a million things that go into it do I want this just to be brand if it once it goes organically well do I convert it slightly to performance I'm going to say a very big statement organic social media organic social media posts per day.
38:28What I call social media ads because if you don't call them ads, the industry doesn't take it as serious. Organic social media ads just posting is, this is, I'm like pumped to say this on this show, is now clearly and undisputed to anyone who's actually in day-to-day marketing the most important part of every marketing mix in the world and every Fortune 500 company on a good day has it as the 30th most important thing. On a good day. Why? Why did they think it's, I'm with you. It is one of the most important things that we do every day. I don't even think it's close and I'll tell you why, Kip.
39:10I'll get to answer why, but let me tell you why it's not one of the most important. It is now leaped to the most important. In the last three years, we've lived through the TikTokification of social media. Every single social media platform right now that has a staggering percentage of the world's attention now works with a for you page mentality including LinkedIn. Just launched theirs. Meaning the content itself finds the audience. For the first time in marketing history, the creative creates the reach. This is unheard of. I know this is a marketing crew so I can go nerdy. The creative creates the reach.
39:42Now, when you post organically 20 times a day, 15 times a day, 12 times a day, across five to seven platforms, might be three of the same videos, slightly post-produced per platform because on YouTube shorts it'll be a little different than it was on X and different on Meta. When you do that, when the content reaches an over-indexing number or a viral number, the data is so strong, the algorithm is so strong that there is 100 % affirmation that there's something there there for consumers. So what do you do next as a marketer? You then take that individual piece of content and you slightly tweak it in three different ways.
40:25Here are the three things you do, everybody, once you have a piece of organic social media over-index your norm. Number one, if you sell direct to consumer or on Amazon or Walmart.com, you take that video and you slightly tweak it and make it a brand formance ad. So it was brand at first, but now you take back the asset, you may add a headline at the bottom that it didn't have before saying, on sale, you may turn it into a selling ad. You know how on Meta, that little thing will pop up at the bottom and you can click to the shop. You may close with a code. You may say, click the link in my bio to buy.
41:04You turn it into a performance, not just brand, okay? That's one thing. Second thing you can do with it. And this is becoming one of the most advanced practices of the biggest direct-to-consumer brands and it works for everyone. you can spend an ungodly amount of money amplifying that individual ad. A video that is a minute or 30 seconds or 50 seconds that is seen by 9 million people on social media is the best commercial on TV. And so instead of just letting it die after it's done organically, we are seeing advanced startups, call them the hundreds of millions in revenue, still private, haven't sold or IPO'd.
41:47spend one to five million dollars amplifying that individual post. Could you imagine a Fortune 500? Could you imagine telling Coca-Cola or Wendy? They got their money all tied up already. They don't even have the agility to do it. It doesn't even cross their mind. Wendy's would never take a viral TikTok and then spend three million dollars the way they spend on their national TV ad. It's inconceivable. That's a practice that will become normal in the next five years. or number three, one of my favorite things to do. We did this with Jimmy Jones. You take it, that piece of content, and that becomes the brief to a campaign.
42:27What we call six, socially informed campaigns. So you take an individual piece of content or you do a couple more social media ads that are thematically the same and then you're like, wow, all of our grandma, granddaughter videos crush. now that's the brief let's go make a commercial for super bowl or for pre-roll youtube long-form video that would be our preference over regular television that's marketing now well your your thesis is actually very simple used to pay millions of dollars to people in offices to guess what people wanted and now you're like hey you have to ship 10 to 15 things a day and out of those you're going to find a handful that are way better than anybody in those offices could have ever come up with, not because they're more interesting, but they're more culturally relevant.
43:14They came up with it in the offices. This is what I tell all my creatives from Droga 5 and Wyden and Crisp. They come from all these fancy places and they're like, you know, they're a little weirded out because Vayner's different, social. I'm like, guys, girls, you're going to be able to come up with every idea you've ever had. You could make an ad. Let me break it down more classic because I think you guys will like this. This is going to help. This is, I see this helping a lot of very traditional marketers. all that social media ads are every day is like literally doing radio, print, direct mail and outdoor media and creative every day.
43:47Like I said this the other day and it completely unlocked a cynic in the room in this meeting. And she's very, I have a lot of respect for her. I was like, look, if your fashion brand 30 years ago could run print ads every day, every day. Every day. would you do it if you could have afforded it she goes of course I go that's social media like like I I believe that what happened is what happened with television television came out it was small it was not in a lot of households when it first came out because it was too expensive and every radio copywriter in Madison Avenue shit on the television commercial the television commercial was an inferior status in advertising because the radio and print were classic and more elevated.
44:42And all that's happening now is the social media ad has taken over the television ad, but the industry is still holding on to yesterday. This industry, my friends, is fascinating. It is romantic about yesterday and it's infatuated with tomorrow. Three years ago, I had people willing to spend $3 million to build a store in the metaverse that had nine people in it. And they weren't willing to spend$3 million a year on organic social media creative. Well, that's because all the legacy people are telling them that they don't want to lose the TV budgets, right, Gary? Like, if you're a marketer, one of the best things is just, hey, what are these people incentives that they're selling me?
45:27And are they incentivized in the old, lame way of doing things. And if so, I should open my eyes up and change to the present best opportunity. Romantic about yesterday, infatuated with tomorrow, and we suck at today. It's just real life. And let me say this, this is not a social media, day trading attention is not a social media only game. I would buy full page ads in the Wall Street Journal tomorrow if they were$4 ,000, but they're not. I think the Super Bowl is the most underpriced media buy in marketing in the world. At$8 million, I will get 110 million Americans to watch 30 seconds of a video.
46:05It is unbelievably underpriced. The problem is if my 30 second video is not good, then the whole thing's a loss. Creative is the variable of success. Nothing I talk about is changed from the history of marketing. The history of marketing is reach and frequency and the creative is the variable of success. Where's the beef? Just do it. The difference is the mediums have changed. And I argue that we have always bought potential reach, not actualized reach. Common sense is not part of people's boardrooms, unfortunately. I don't believe those banner ad impressions. I don't believe GRPs on television.
46:45I don't believe the PR company when it said this got 80 billion impressions in PR. It got nine. one of the things that's also happened in the same time that you know you're kind of making the case that that is the number one skill marketers need to have today we have to get in a little bit of ai it is like one of the passions of this show ai i played with so many tools that will help you do creative help you create video whether they're good or bad right now isn't the point it's like this is an minimal viable version today like think about where they're going to be in two years time do you know what cell phones look like 30 years ago exactly exactly We were using Yahoo web directory before we had Google, right?
47:23Like that's the way to think about this. How do you think about, like as someone who is a master of the craft of content, where is AI fitting into your process? Oh, it's an everyday conversation. The only thing that's holding me up right now is the biggest companies in the world need to be careful with AI creative because I don't believe that the trademark and copyright issues have been settled. so if your Mercedes and your agency or you make a full pledge 30 second video from AI and you run it on television be prepared to get a cease and desist and a legal action from a Disney from a anybody who owns intellectual property it has some real feelings about people siphoning off of their creative wisdom for their own good and nobody has figured out what percentage you know how in music we figured out well if you use three seconds of sampling that's okay but more than that's not.
48:19I'm a little bit concerned that we're in a five year window where we're gonna need to figure out a lot of stuff which again is gonna favor the entrepreneur these kids they don't care about. Disney's not suing Ron in Nebraska. Right? So but behind the scenes making decks for each other thinking using talk about strategy Kieran when you say strategy like using AI to be a strategy partner is incredible. When I, here's how my brain works. A hundred percent. A year ago, why is everybody starting to wear corduroy hats again? You know, I used to literally go to Google and social for that. The fact that I can type that in and every day I'm seeing that it's getting better at helping me think.
49:04I mean, this is a big deal. I mean, for critical thinkers like myself, for people who are naturally prompt engineers long before they even knew what a prompt engineer was, like myself. This is going to be a creative nirvana for people that are the actual creatives. The actual creatives are going to win big. The people that sat between an actual creative and the market who were doing the secondary creative work, the architect is going to win. The masons are a little bit in trouble. Exactly, the tooling. This is a boom for, this is what we've argued on the show. This is a boom for creators. like I was talking to a marketer over the weekend and trying they were like AIs will help all hype it's not that helpful it's like fine for research for a blog post but even just a tiny thing where you can have an AI create a hundred variations of something you ask a human to create a hundred variations of something they're out after variation 10 oh that's too much work it's too monotonous I don't want to do that I can just say like oh I have this creative idea of a campaign and I can say create a hundred variations of this and you know here are some guidelines to to iterate on each creation.
50:11That alone, I just don't think people get it, right? They underestimate having something that can do that for me at the click of a button. Well, I got a good one for you. Wait to the platforms that have all the attention, start creating the AI tool creations for the distribution on their platforms when they have all the information of what works on their platforms. Right. Let me say that nice and slow for all the kids in the back. Right. While everybody invests in AI tools and all this stuff, they're all gonna get completely wiped by the platforms themselves. And I'm not just talking social. When Netflix has commercials, let's just use Hulu.
50:52When Hulu has all the data of the kind of videos and first seconds and scripts that work on their ad breaks at their disposal to make you your ad, they're gonna have all the leverage.
51:09exactly yeah and they're going to create a hundred different variations for all the micro segments back to your point gary they're going to convert a hundred percent better than the stuff that you were doing before the when i say don draper's dead he's dead dead
51:25dead dead dead what what do you think that uh so one of the things that kip and i talk a lot about is the game of inches right that actually most marketers are kind of doing the same sort of stuff and maybe they're all kind of similar in skill sets but the best marketers have discovered like the game of inches the 10 the 15 that they just excel and crush everything else so in your next era of marketing like you're painting the book for it you've written the book for it what is the game of inches what is the to me to excel in the next era what should i crush it at like what should i spend my time do i have a fun do i have a fun answer for this let me give you the game of inches that I've always thought was a yard that is not a new phenomenon that everyone continues to miss.
52:09And I would call it a blind spot. I believe the game of inches, especially with the commoditization of many things, given AI is coming and other things, is this is gonna... I believe that almost every marketer on earth, when they make marketing, comes from such a deep, selfish place that the creative is already dead on arrival. I love this. This is so good. I believe the reason I've been able to outflank my inches in every medium, in every iteration, has been simply this. I have never sold anything or made anything that didn't start with the following framework. Fuck my cohorts. It starts right here.
52:59It starts with, why on earth would anybody watch this? When I tell you the game of inches is completely based on the selfless, selfish framework that is marketing in life, it is that, my friends. When I tell you that the reason everything has worked for me and when I see it work for others, here's the biggest problem. Everybody comes from the, including creators, I want more followers. I want to be famous I want this to go viral a couple friends of mine about three years ago when they sniffed it out said hey why don't you ever post anything like cool I was like I was like what do you mean they're like like I don't know like when you take a private flight to a Jets game or like when you drink a $5 ,000 bottle of wine or like when you like have dinner like I dinner like I show up and coming kids in my office, but I don't show the people that are big.
53:59They're like, why don't you do that? And I'm like, because it doesn't bring any value to the audience. To me, when someone takes a photo in a private plane, with a bottle of champagne there, and a pretty person to their side, they're doing that for themselves. They totally are. One guy came up to me at a private dinner where we had this talk, and I brought this up to this group, and he goes, you know what, Gary, that's bullshit. It's aspirational. and I'm like, I really don't think it is. I think that's the makeup you put on it to justify your insecurity that you need those posts. Yeah, you're just trying to prove somebody in high school that you're cool, not that it's actually valuable.
54:39Correct, and I think brands are worse than creators and influencers at this game. Everything they put out is for themselves. They think very little about why someone would enjoy this And that's why humor tends to historically work in marketing. It was like the one place where the selfish brands and agencies were able to meet the audience. Right? But there's so many other things. There's information, education. There's ponderings. There's insights. There's wisdoms. And there's escapism like beauty and humor. There's banter. There's so many things that could work. but marketing right now is incredibly not creative.
55:23I would argue the least creative, and I've got my hands in a lot of things. I would argue the least creative thing I know right now is corporate marketing. It's so not creative by today's standards. It is, there's no copy and art director and senior, there's no ACDs, there's no team of creatives that work in a classic advertising agency that are able to make their best work. I don't think they're not creative. I think they work in companies that suck out their creativity. I believe many of the people that have gone into advertising, including my own company, came in much more creative than they left.
56:05Right. It's because of the one thing you, like if you can take one thing from this show, it's because they don't start with what you start with, which is how do I make something interesting? They start with something like, this is our rigid brand style guide. This is our rigid brand formula. This is what we can and can't say. This is our product that we have to promote because that's what we're tasked with, right? I actually was going through some of them yesterday for fun, for different purposes, but just a litany of branded tech channels that have on YouTube that have like 500 people. And like the average video gets, you know, 100 views and they're doing it day in, day out, putting those things out.
56:41And they like, at what point does it drop? No one's watching this stuff. I think the most interesting thing, men, I think the most interesting thing about this entire conversation, and I've been having this conversation for 15 years, the most interesting part of this conversation to me personally is for the first time in those 15 years, I think shit's about to hit the fan. You know, when I was talking about it in 2005 to private companies as why I was getting wine and myself going, it wasn't even on people's radars. When I started VaynerMedia in 2009, my brother AJ's laptop literally created the NHL's Twitter and Facebook account.
57:23Campbell's Twitter and Facebook account. My brother literally registered Pepsi's Twitter account. Literally. So you're talking, think about how far we've come. They didn't even have the accounts. But there was never a time in the last 15 years of having this agency that I felt what I believed deeply was about to tip and have that moment. And let me explain what I mean by that moment. I yelled about Netflix for years in Hollywood to every single CAA executive, ABC executive. Anybody in Hollywood that had power from 2010 to 15, every dinner I had with them is, Netflix is gonna win this. Netflix is gonna win this.
58:05Netflix is gonna win this. And they completely dismissed it until they didn't. everybody who would listen to me in 2014, 15, 16, 17, 18 in Hollywood would also get one other thing from me influencers on social media are about to become more famous than famous people and no one believed me both of those things have now become true and all those people that have those dinners with me are like how'd you know why'd you know what's next I believe that we are within five years of the tipping moment in advertising in Fortune 500 land not because I said so not because of anything else because it's almost over like these brands are getting hurt you guys know this they're losing market share they've lost especially CPGs they've lost both their advantages they used to have a media advantage they could spend 50 million on television and kids could spend nothing but now they're spending 50 million 30 million on television kids are doing organic social and getting more awareness than they are this is by the way I'm gonna die on this hill I want every Fortune 500 marketer to hear this.
59:10Every single brand that is good at social media organic is getting more actualized awareness, actualized awareness, than you're getting for your 30 to$50 million media spend. It's not even close, by the way. That's number one. And number two for CPGs, they got another problem. You couldn't get into Walmart and Target and Sephora in the past. Now these brands are getting famous on social and the retailers are going to them and paying them to come in. Meanwhile, they're charging the CPG big brands to be in their stores and slotting fees and retail media. And these kids are sometimes saying no because they can sell enough on Amazon or Shopify.
59:49I don't know what the fuck people are thinking, but carnage, please Google it if you do not know this word. I know you all do. Carnage, carnage is coming and there's such an easy way to stop it. take organic social media creative seriously because even in the way I broke it down earlier there's something I didn't touch on and I'm glad I got to this rant the consumer insights that come out of making a lot of social media ads a year are worth the price of admission Kip, Kieran, do you know why VaynerMedia is the fastest growing independent agency of all time? We have better consumer insights than everyone because we make so many social media ads 20 % of them are made just to secretly ask a question to get insights from consumers.
1:00:35I love that. Hell yes. Gary, thank you. Thank you.
From the publisher
In this episode of HubSpot’s Marketing Against the Grain, GaryVee joins to talk about the future of marketing in 2025. From the decline of follower counts to the rise of attention-based algorithms, he explains why most businesses measure the wrong things and how AI is reshaping the landscape. If you want to understand what will actually matter for brand growth in the years ahead, this conversation is a must-listen.