The ONLY Marketing strategy you need in 2025 | GaryVee Fireside chat

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0:38Welcome back to another episode of the Gary Vee Audio Experience. On today's episode, we're sharing a fireside chat that Gary gave for MediaLink, a consulting firm serving the media and marketing industry. In this one, Gary shares his thoughts on how most brands are lighting money on fire chasing reach that doesn't actually exist and the importance of live social shopping. If you work in marketing, media, retail, or you're just trying to keep your brand relevant in 2025, this one's a must listen. Let's dive right into this episode and see what Gary has to say about all this. So I am so excited and honored that we have Gary Vaynerchuk here with us today.

1:11We're really excited to talk about the space, about how it's changing, about how everything is evolving. As you know, we're working with a lot of clients on the tech side. As we start to think about what we're seeing, what we're doing out there, we'd love to understand what is one of the biggest things that you see brands and clients sort of stumble over repeatedly? What's one of the biggest things you see out there? it's a really tricky question for me because my perspective on our industry is I really love our industry but I think it's we're in a very challenged place where we've become incredibly academic and very corporate I think the biggest thing we're challenged with is that I think our industry overvalues fake reports thank you have a nice night I really I think we're incredibly challenged if we're talking fortune 5000 marketing

2:11there's a lot I mean I think agencies in general especially at the holding company level and I have a lot of empathy for this because when you're publicly traded and you're held accountable to stock price but like principle buying are you fucking kidding me I think creative is incredibly misunderstood. I think almost all the money is being spent in media on potential reach, not actualized reach. I think we completely lack any sensibility as an industry for what actually is happening in culture and is cool. We do advertising. We don't do real life. I think it's a challenging time. I think there's a reason Fortune 500 companies, especially in a consumer lens, are getting challenged.

2:53I think there's a reason influencers can come up and start brands and do real business. I think we're in a real crossroads. I really do believe that. And I think we don't have enough authentic real talk. It's all a bunch of corporate jargon. And I think, yeah, I think it's, you know, there's a real opportunity for it to be better. When you say fake reporting or incorrect reporting, is that because you think people are looking at the wrong data? Yes, I think when you go into a meeting, when you go into a meeting and a PR company goes, great news, you got 87 trillion impressions this month. from these articles.

3:27Who the fuck in this room believes that?

3:35Yes. Like, that's on the PR side. I mean, media, like, if the media isn't being consumed, like, how do you buy impressions that not one human in this room believes a lot of those impressions are being actualized? Nobody here would spend the money if it was their family business and their kids' health depended on it, the way that the industry spends money. You wouldn't. So yes, I think the entire industry is predicated on fake reporting.

4:09I really believe that. Maybe they should report on data that doesn't actually matter. Maybe it got the impression, maybe it didn't, but if they didn't have an impact, does it matter? Yeah, and I think there's a lot of things I'm hoping. Actually, I think I saw somebody shared a headline with me this morning. I think Horizon started a creative shop today or announced it or was that yesterday. days are blurring, it's holiday time. But I was pumped. With VaynerMedia, I started the agency for very different reasons. I want to build a private equity firm on top of my agency long term. So I, from day one, wanted media and creative under one roof because I'm going to need that for myself.

4:43To be very transparent, I didn't even know anything about the industry, so I didn't even know that agencies had those two things separated when I started the company. I think creative and media have to come back together they're under one roof so that clients can hold a partner actually accountable. Yeah, look, I really, really, really think we're wasting an ungodly amount of money on marketing in the Fortune 5000 set. I really believe that. So, you know, you talk a lot about quality over quantity and how the world is changing and how the data and the posting. Talk a little bit about how you're thinking about that.

5:19You mean quantity over quality? because I believe that quantity is not debatable and quality is. If you have 4 ,000 ads, you have 4 ,000 ads versus three. But if you like it or not, it's very different. If it's, what makes it quality? This industry decided high production value, aka let's waste as much fucking money as possible on a video that not that many people are gonna see because, you know, it's fun to cast Michael B. Jordan so we can gawk at him on set. That's our industry. Is that quality? Because I think when somebody posts a mango gummy TikTok and it sells every pack of mango gummies out at Walgreens in the country, I would go with that being quality.

6:05But the production value was$17.09. Or maybe free. Or maybe free. So with that, talk to me about some of the brands that you think are actually doing it well. I know we've all talked about the ocean spray example and what they did, mango gummy. Well, they didn't do that well. No, that's my point. It worked really well for them but they didn't do it. The same thing you were recently talking about, the Chili's example where, I mean, they had a 40 % increase in Q3. 40 % of their Q3 growth for Chili's was based on one TikTok done by a human being, not even an influencer. 40 % of its Q3 growth. You know, I come to this industry and have been in it for 15 years loving business and I love marketing because I think that's the offense in business.

6:54I just don't know why we don't have more conversations about the business part of all this. We're like in the muckery of the ad world. That's why CMOs have lost so much clout at board members. You know, I spent a lot of time in business land. Business land, the top private equity firms in the world that own all these companies now, the boards, the CEOs, the CFOs, In the 15 years I've been in this industry, the clout of the CMO has collapsed. And I think it has to do with this conversation. CFO doesn't care, the board doesn't care that you want a can lion if your business is down 30%. We talk about things within ourselves that no normal human being, I love looking around this room, a lot of youngsters, a lot of OGs, like have you ever talked to your real friends about this fucking industry?

7:49Like they're like, what are you fucking talking about? Like they don't give a fuck that Jaguar changed its logo.

7:59And so, you know, I think our industry has a real opportunity to get more practical. I think it's gotten very, very, very academic and corporate. And so I think that's the opportunity for all of us. You know, and I think there's some tweaks. And I do think the media and creative thing together could be a monster because it's gonna help. because we built up so many proxies in this industry to justify things when we could just bring those two back together and really be in a much better place. It's funny, I speak to a lot of agency holding company CEOs and owners. I'm like, we need to bring back accountability because that's why brands are taking things in-house.

8:37It's all fun and games until it's not. But it's not gonna work out nicely because ultimately brands have to have a healthy business and they're gonna point at you eventually. And so I think that's a big theme for me going into next year. That's good. Let's talk about one of your other big themes for next year that I know you like to talk about a lot in social shopping. You mean live social shopping? Yes. Yes, obsessed. So let's talk a little about some of your predictions and your thoughts on that. We have a big retail media network business, meaning that a lot of the brands that are setting up retail media networks, they come to us and they talk to us and we actually help advise them on how to set them up and what to do.

9:14So we'd love to hear some of your thoughts about. I see. The retailers come to you. And then you advise them to set it up. Like CVS will come and be like. Yes, exactly. Brilliant. Because they'll all work. Because they have all the leverage. Obviously there's good ways to do it. And better ways. And to your point. I think that there's a lot of validity in that. But the good news for the retailers. Is they have all the leverage. So what was the question? Social shopping. Or live social shopping. And your thoughts about it. You know again. Kind of looking around the room. always thinking about like, why do I even do these things?

9:45Oh, because maybe I'll say something that might bring some value to somebody and then it'd be nice for them to send me an email and say thanks for doing that. You know, I could not recommend, you know, we go into the holidays, a lot of you just want to completely check out. I get it. Some of you over a couple of weeks might get bored or interested in like checking into something because that's how you're wired. If you're one of those people, could not push you harder than to allocate 10 hours, five hours, two hours, however you roll with a glass of wine or eggnog or however you like it, to really dig deep into what's going on with live social shopping.

10:17It is going to be a very big conversation next year. It's already happened. Most of what I get credit for, like you see around corners, you predict things. It's not true. I just watch what's happening and when it's happened, I go all in. This has happened. This is something I've been waiting for because it's happened in China 10 years ago. And I'm like, it's gonna happen, it's gonna happen, it's gonna happen. It finally happened. So if you look at what's going on with TikTok Shop, notwithstanding what happens in January with that app, but even you know Whatnot is an app that I would highly recommend you download if you want to learn about it it's just really happening and like really happening there are a lot of people making millions of dollars a month selling shit on social and I think Meta's clearly got to be looking at it I believe that there's like some smoke about Twitter and Shopify doing stuff like it's happened and so I think it's going to be a big deal and it's actually a big deal overall because it really opens up a whole new paradigm shift, resetting what I alluded to earlier, which is I classify retail and CPG as conflict channel warfare.

11:19Like, this is not sustainable for the brands, these retail networks. They're just doubled up slotting fees. There's no money left for the CPGs or the brands to market. This is not gonna end well for the CPGs. And eventually that then tips and affects the retailers themselves. And this new world allows brands to not even ever wanna be in Walmart and Target. and there's just a lot going on and just live social shopping is a real, real worthwhile thing to learn even as a side hustle for some of you on I don't know what you do or family businesses or things of that nature but it's really real. It would blow you away.

11:52I mean I sold$180 ,000 worth of VFriends ornaments on whatnot on Black Friday. 180 ,000. If I did everything perfect in Gary Vee Land, social media content, email, text, like me and I'm good at what I do, I would have never sold$180 ,000 worth of fucking ornaments you know in a month let alone in four hours. There's a reason QVC and Home Shopping Network still do billions. There's something about the format of just the way we buy we're just like it's live. It's better. So I would like sports. It's live. I don't know what to tell you other than get your shit together and learn it a little bit. So what are you really excited about?

12:35I'm like, what's the last thing? I mean, which platforms are you really excited about? I'll be honest with you. To me, this is macro. It's so big. I just assumed that, for Google not to have it on YouTube Shorts in the next 24 months, I couldn't comprehend. And as, again, with your retail practice, I'm sure this is not lost on some of you that are looking at this little narrow place. Amazon, Walmart have their lives. eBay, like, I met with the eBay CEO a couple, maybe a month ago. like they're working on making theirs better like it's here. Great. So what else are you excited about for 2025? In addition to social shopping what are some of the other things that you're really excited about?

13:19This is really interesting and I'm dying to get like I have enough of a sense of this company from afar that I know this is not what all of you are spending the majority of your time on because I don't think it's what your clients are asking but I will tell you the elephant in the room in our industry is the lack of focus Fortune 5000 has on organic social creative it is such a big deal every company I'm involved with that really matters to me I own it, my family owns it I own a big part of it it does not spend one dollar of media anymore without the creative being validated organically as an organic post not one dollar and if you look under the hood of Mary Roots Organics and Cakes the bras for Spanx and so many of these brands that are winning I'm telling you right now in the next 24 to 36 months it will be best practice to not spend a dollar in media until the creative was validated by the AI algorithms of the social networks there is no A-B testing framework that I've seen and I look at every DTC this is what I I'm very passionate about this there is no better practice than converting the creative that over-indexed it with the actual consumer and slightly tweaking it for performance.

14:39So I think the biggest elephant in the room is it's insane to not take advantage of the insanity of the technology that these seven platforms have created with their feeds. And I think it will become more standard practice in the next four or five years. And in these 36 to 48 months, the haves and have nots of which brands in our world to Fortune 5000, go deeper into that. I think it's crazy to support the classic creative AOR model. You know, we talked a little bit about this not too long ago. Like, to pay an agency to come up with an idea and then go spend a lot of money to produce it and run it on a television first with digital and social matching luggage is asking for trouble.

15:24Talk a little about the creative brief. I know it's one of your favorite topics. And how you think that's evolving. So we think, you know, we're a creative AOR for a lot of clients. We're a media AOR for a lot of clients. More digital, but getting into more traditional. We mix. We got a lot of different ways we do business. I think the craziest thing in the world is the creative brief. Like someone writing something and handing it to an agency strategist who then goes on Reddit for six weeks and comes back and hands it to a creative who then, like the whole thing's crazy. We think the brief is now the over-indexing piece of social creative.

16:00Come up with the idea, make it, post it. When that goes viral and or over indexes your norm, that's the insight. That becomes the brief to the campaign. So we think social, it's actually shocking. I said something yesterday. In the last 15 weeks, it feels like the last 15 years of work is paying off. We have a very strong Q1 coming creatively and the dollar amounts that we have clients paying for just social, creative and production is staggering to most of my employees. It's been a very big Q4 for me because I've had a lot of fun of I told you so to a lot of my key employees because most of my employees come from classic agencies and they just did not see the level of spend we're seeing from some of our clients that we've gotten there to go into creative social, which are much bigger line items now than the creative AOR line.

16:52I mean, as you all know, you're the ones that are close to this. Even the creative AORs are struggling to even get a year retainer anymore, right? They want a roster now, the clients, and ad hoc, it's becoming a very bad business. I think the new version of Creative AOR is always on social creative at scale, and then you do campaign work from that, and I think we're at the forefront, but I think we'll be copied pretty quick. I think in five years, a lot more agencies are gonna look like us than they do today. How do you talk to brands about... Nicely. And I'm gonna open up to a few questions, but how do you think about about branding and all of that.

17:28So you know brands talk a lot about how they have to have a brand persona and they have to have a value proposition. How do you think about that when in a lot of cases you're giving over a lot of the, obviously you green light it, but you're still giving a lot of the control over to other groups outside the four walls. Take any, so when we get into this 1991 how brands grow philosophy that people want to talk to me about from an academic standpoint, I just take their brand, put on the screen, can be any brand you want, I type in Nike, Schmeike, Sunkist, Chanel, whatever you want, CMO, brand person, I type it in, in the search bar on Instagram and TikTok and show them 87 ,000 pieces of creative that they did not make about their brand, none of which look the same, no same adjectives, no same colors, the concept that we still live in television baffles me.

18:22How do I talk to them about it? By telling them the truth, which is they're stuck in academia from the 90s in a distribution framework that does not exist anymore, and they're more than willing and able, because they write the check, to stay in that world, but it doesn't exist. And for what? To not make creative that's relevant to different consumer segmentations? Look at this room. Are you looking at this? look at how every look at the different faces genders races income levels I'm sure

18:59how would one video trying to sell these lovely shoes you're wearing how could that possibly hit everyone here and convert we need more relevance at scale to convert every brand's journey is to win on relevance at scale to as many consumer segmentations as possible. To hold up a book that was written pre-internet as the philosophy of brand is fucking asinine. Just like this industry.

19:33We are stuck, friends. I mean, again, what I like about talks like this is let's talk on a human level. You're a human being. You walk out of some of these meetings, you know that shit won't work. we need to have that combo more as an industry. I think it'll be healthy. There's a respectful, here I can be a big shot. We can have fun. We're great friends. I love being with all of you. Happy holidays. In a business meeting, I'm not like trying to curse them out, but I'm having very articulate, like I'm definitely not willing to fold on anything. And like I don't fold because I have no opinions. I just care what the consumer thinks.

20:11And I think our industry is loaded with human beings that have audacious opinions that are their opinions but are not played out with how the consumer's acting today. And so I have no feelings. I don't give a fuck about social media at all. I'm being dead serious. I'm actually looking forward to when we go to glasses or something else because the whole deck gets reset. I have no passion to social. I have passion to social because it's the most underpriced scaled avenue right this second. But I'll be in videos in seven years, probably no hair, and be like, you fuckers are still doing social? you idiots, you know?

20:48Like to me, I'm chasing attention. I'm chasing it at the best price I can get it for. It's why I love Super Bowl. I love to shit on television ads because they're ridiculously overpriced. But Super Bowl's grossly underpriced. Eight million bucks for 130 million people to watch 30 seconds, especially if you get the first half? It's a fucking steal. The problem is if you blow it because the creative is the variable, you're in for 20. you know you guys all know the media shit the fucking networks make you buy a bunch of dog shit to get a Super Bowl spot to begin with so now you're in for 50 like you know so the creative is the variable of success this is why I'm obsessed with social creative right now creative let it not be ever lost on any of you creative is the variable of success being able to validate if the creative is actually resonating with human beings for free on social with technology that is, do you know what the creative testing bullshit SaaS companies in our industry's tech is compared to, you know, Google and Meta and TikTok?

21:55No shot. Or worst of all, three people's subjective opinion in a fucking boardroom? That versus the best AI algorithms in the world? Are you kidding me? So, that's what I'm thinking. All right, so I know we've got some questions. All right, sure, Scott. Scott, how are you? First of all, can I give you some daps for the color of your sweater? It's a pretty color. Yes, clap it up. I agree.

22:27It's nice. The last time we met was CES and I was wearing a sweater with wine bottles on it and he gave me props then. We gotta keep this act going. But anyway, we were just having a conversation with one of our sister companies called NextGen who deals with NextGen within UTA. And one of the things he was saying was similar to what you said about validation on social media, if you will. And his issue was that the people within brands that are enabling the decision to be made about what creative is on social and what the decisions of, hey, balls up brand, go do this on social, aren't actually the decision makers within a brand that are empowered to make that decision.

23:11do you think that that is also an issue within a brand that the decision makers aren't as plugged in as some of the people inside of the brand and aren't empowering the brand to actually make those decisions about creative social, if you will? Yes. And how do you fix that? Do you just empower younger kids to make more decisions? If you're a brand? Yeah. I think it's dangerous to say younger kids. Okay. Like I know unlimited 20 year olds that are internal at brands that when I sit down in 15 minutes realize they have no fucking clue what's going on. And there's plenty of 50-year-old creative directors that I'm like, oh shit, you know how the algo works.

23:48But to your point, notwithstanding that hedge, yeah, I think it's a good idea to let people make decisions creatively that might be more intuitive to how the creative works within a medium. I would tell you that there are very few people currently outside of creator, you know, it's so funny, the creators themselves know because it's their life. If you're an influencer, it's your life to get organic views. But in business land, like that's the biggest issue right now in agency land. All the best talent doesn't go and become a copywriter at Ogilvy. They start their own million dollar brand on social.

24:29So yes, I think there's a lot of themes that I just heard that make a lot of sense to me. I think the decision makers are stuck in what Andre said, which is like, this is not on brand or I don't like this. It's like, I'll use this analogy. We have people making decisions on how we should fish when we're fucking baking a cake. Like we're not even in the same conversation. People are bringing television mentality to social creative. So how do you fix that? Pain. What's that? Pain. What I've seen fixes it is when brands start to feel the pain. It's all coming. The pain is coming. That's why you're reading about so many M &As, both on the agency side and brand side.

25:12Think about our headlines in our industry last 48 hours. The fuck you think is going on? We've been fucking around. And now the pain comes. So with the pain, you're still optimistic about 2025? I'm optimistic about 2025 in the way that I'm always optimistic. Winners win. Losers lose. like I believe the people that have the best actions. We must all, even at what you all do for a living, you must sneak in, because I'm very empathetic, you have to do what you have to do for big conglomerates on both the agency and the brand side. You must sneak in as much truth about the consumer as you possibly can in every deck.

25:52Even if you get one fucking slide in there of truth for the consumer, not what will sell, not what will work, not what corporate, it's just, it's all corporate. So do I have hope? Of course I do because I actually think there is a lot of pain coming which rewakes up everyone and says maybe we shouldn't spend$3 million on a TBC that nobody sees.

26:15Yeah, come on. Hey Gary. Hey brother, what's your name? Hey Michael. Michael, pleasure. Good to see you. I love your best practices about posting on organic and testing. I'm curious how do you talk about it? And by the way, I wanna make, this is a very important nuance. I believe posting on social is brand building. and the testing is added value for what you do next on media amplification or campaign work. Like when you're getting that level of testing quality for free as a byproduct of what you should be doing in modern brand building anyway, it gets intoxicating. But go ahead. My question was around best practices for social commerce and who's winning in that space.