Why the Traditional Marketing Playbook is Dead (And How AI Changes Everything)

0:00In life, every one of us finds what we're looking for. When I tell you the thing I despise the most is when I am encountered with pessimism and cynicism, it breaks my little soul. Because people try to say they keep it real. You know how people are like, I'm just keeping it real. I'm like, yes, you're keeping it real negative. This is the Gary Vee Audio Experience. Well, hello. Hello, you wonderful people. Welcome to the virtual campus. I said, look, he's in the house. We have the remarkable, the one and only legend that is Gary Vee. So welcome, Gary. Thank you so much for joining us. You are very sweet.

0:42I do not accept legend. I only give that to my mother. But otherwise, it's great to see everybody. I'm going to be very active in the chat. So I already asked everybody where they're from. I'm very fired up as normal because if your family's healthy and you're healthy, what's there not to be fired up about regardless of your business or life headaches so I'm in good spirits and it's always lovely to be with you and I'm thrilled to be here yeah well we're absolutely thrilled to have you and so those of you in the room who don't know VaynerX have become a global partner of the Marketing Academy and we are loving their team they're supporting the alumni programs all over the world, all of our alumni programs all over the world we're doing a shit ton of stuff together it's all really really cool and next week Gary's hosting our graduation party in the US which should be fabulous in Manhattan in a private members club There's only Gary we do, right?

1:34So we're thrilled about it and today is really a Q &A So I've got some questions In fact, I've got a lot of questions, but it's not about me So to all of you in the room, get your questions in And when you look on the Q &A, you can see the questions and you can vote on them So if we get a load of questions, which I think is likely, just vote on the ones that are really resonating with you that we really want Gary to answer. And I'll ask for some of those. I will just do for some people in the room that might be a bit sensitive and have not logged on to a virtual campus event before. There's likely to be a lot of swearing.

2:11Right? He's going to say fuck a number of times. I guarantee it. So if you've got kids behind you and you've got the sound on, put your speakers in. put your earphones in so that they're not asking you what a wanker is or whatever right okay Gary let's start with you then let's start with your let's start with your earlier life right I'm quite keen we're always quite keen whenever we get guest speakers such as yourself to just unpeel a little bit about where you've come from I would love for you to tell us a few learnings that you you got early on in your life and career the things that your upbringing taught you that corporate boardrooms just wouldn't?

2:52Give us a few of those. Well, first of all, on the record, corporate boardrooms teach very little. That's interesting. Next, I was born in the Soviet Union and that was a great blessing because my timing was impeccable. if I was born in 1920 or 30 or 40 or 50 or 60, my life would be very different. But I was born in 1975 and I was very fortunate that some Soviets were able to get out of that atrocious country just to remind everyone. I see a lot of people from the UK and the US. I think a lot of people don't know their history very well. The Soviet Union, when I was born there, is more similar to North Korea than it is to Iran.

3:37Meaning, in Iran, if you live there right now, you can actually leave. You can go to Turkey. You can go to Canada. You can leave right now. But if you're born in North Korea today, you're not allowed to leave. When I was born in the Soviet Union, you were not allowed to leave. There was no passport. So I was born in the jail to the world's greatest mother who just celebrated her birthday three days ago. Happy birthday, mom. And that is really the story of my life. I immigrated to America when I was four. I we grew up very poor you know I lived in a studio apartment with five or six family members depending on who was coming through at the time and so we really struggled my dad got a job as a stock boy in a liquor store eventually became the manager of that liquor store and so we moved to Edison, New Jersey and I grew up in the streets of Edison, New Jersey which was lower middle class New Jersey in the 80s so you know very like humble stuff right like I had parents friends' parents who wore the same clothes every day that's the kind of neighborhood I grew up in we played a lot of sports we got into a lot of fights and I started to become a marketer when I was six and I say this very specifically seven when I was seven I started my first lemonade stand and instead of like standing behind the lemonade stand I would make signs and hang them all over the different trees and poles and this is true I literally would sit and watch cars drive by to try to figure out what pole or tree to put the sign on.

5:12Now, I didn't think I was a marketer then. I never heard, I obviously didn't know the word. In fact, I don't think I had the aha of the story that I just told until I was probably in my late 30s. But, you know, I think some people are born into things, whether it's singing or dancing or playing sports. I was born into being a marketer. I would argue everything I learned as a child. at the lemonade stands, at the trading card conventions I went to when I was 11 and 12. And then I really learned a lot growing up in retail. My father eventually opened a small liquor store in New Jersey that I grew up in and I worked there.

5:53And it all led to me launching the first e-commerce wine business, one of the first five e-commerce wine businesses in America in 1996. This is a plaque about my family business. and grew my dad's business from a three to a$65 million revenue business in my early 20s on the back of email marketing, e-commerce, and Google AdWords. And that's what really got me into the mindset of underpriced and overpriced attention. I think you know this about me. I'm not a modern social media guy. I'm not anti-traditional marketing. I'm anti-wasting good money on bad marketing. I'm anti-spending money on ideology versus practicality.

6:41I'm against making marketing for awards and fake corporate boardroom reports versus the consumer. And for context of this room, in 2009, I started VaynerMedia and then I wrote this book, Crush It. which kind of said the internet's gonna matter. And in 2000, I was really running the wine business and the agency from 2009 to 11. My brother was my co-founder. He was running it day to day with me. But in 2011, I really jumped on board. The business was doing a million dollars in revenue at that point. And I grew this business from a 1 million to a 400 million dollar revenue agency. I think we're one of the largest, if not the largest independent agency in the world now.

7:34We're a lot bigger than everyone in this call realizes. We have 2 ,000 plus employees. And we have a very substantial competitive advantage, which is we are not audacious. You are not audacious. We are not audacious. And here, I might be confident. No. But. You're only got your shrinking violet. I am incredibly expressive. I like, I have the gift of gab. But Daisy, who ran the UK for me, is in this chat. And she's now onto an incredible marketing career. I'm sure she's asked about me because she worked for me for a long time and now doesn't. And I'm sure she has lots of things to say about me.

8:19But back to my mother, for all I am, deep down I'm a nice boy. and I would say that humility has been our secret power at VaynerMedia. I am not Don Draper. I am not a chief creative officer of a holding company agency where I literally don't think my shit stinks and that my opinion matters over everything. It is humility and curiosity of how to bring value to the end consumer of our clients that drives me. I am convicted in our process of social media first marketing currently, while social media deserves to be first. Eventually it will not. If this was 1971, I would be convicted in my television first marketing approach.

9:10But I do not have the audacity, nor does any money in my company, that their idea for the campaign is right or brilliant. We do not measure based on headlines in Ad Age or Cam Lyons awards. We are committed to having marketing drive our clients' business. And we're committed to being gracious and kind to our employees first, the customers of our customers second, and then our actual clients third, in a way that I don't believe this industry does it. And I think that is the secret to the sauce. Hey everybody, I hope you're enjoying the podcast right now. Make sure you follow the podcast. That's why I'm interrupting.

9:50Let's keep going on this show, but follow the podcast. It'll make my mom super happy. Why, I get it. There is a bit of a dichotomy, though. Well, maybe there isn't. Maybe this is perception. Because your brand, so you as Gary Vee, your persona is strong, vibrant, really out there, and has been created or, I don't know, received over a sustained amount of time. Yes. During which I'm sure you've gone through changes in your outlook or your beliefs. I'm wondering what the differences are between Gary Vee as the persona or as the thing and maybe you behind that and whether there's a difference between you and Vayner.

10:39You know, I can see Daisy's cooking in the comments. she can probably add some color again because I think it's a third party and a non-incentivized third party. But my answer to that is, and I actually want everyone to answer this. This is very simple. This is a very simple question and I love engaging the audience. So please everyone say yes or no. This is a yes or no question. Friends, all of you watching, do you feel there's slightly different versions of yourself given the room that you're in? that as a mother and father, you're slightly different than a spouse. As a daughter or husband, you're different than when you're presenting to your board.

11:19As the manager, you're different than you are when you're with your best buddies in the countryside of the UK. When the camera is on and I am performing, there is definitely an energy boost that accelerates my natural truth. I don't think Gary Vee and Gary Vaynerchuk are different. I think the context of when they show up is different. When I'm talking to Daisy as a business owner about a strategy we have on our team or as a friend when we're flying back from a meeting in the UK and we're talking about marriages and children, those are different than me speaking to her right now as someone who's being interviewed in a fireside chat in the context of marketing.

12:05I also think that sometimes people get lost in the energy versus the words. I'm a very aggressive communicator when I'm in a public forum. But when the words coming out of my mouth are compassion and empathy and patience, I always laugh when people try to compare me to something a little bit more alpha than I am because they're unable to, and that's on me, I don't actually judge them, I understand, but when they're unable to separate the energy or the cursing or the conviction from the merit of the words. I know, I get it, I get it. I mean, when you and I first met, I think we only had about half an hour, but I had, I came into that first meeting with a perception that immediately evaporated within four minutes, well, no, not even that, within the first few minutes.

13:02So I was interested to see whether it's, is it a barrier or is it an advantage? Is it something that you feel you need or should do something about or is it solely in the eye of the beholder? I think it's a mix. It's such a beautiful thing you just said there. That last thing, I'm gonna stay on because I think it's going to bring a lot of people a lot of value. This is, talk about humbling. I'd like to say something that if you struggle with when I say it, I ask you to take a beat. this weekend and pour your beverage of choice and get in your feelings because there is no bigger truth than what you just said in life.

13:42And this is how politics is playing out right now. And it's how marketing works, which is why I think I'm good at it because I understand what I'm about to say. In life, every one of us finds what we're looking for. When I tell you the thing I despise the most is when I am encountered with pessimism and cynicism, it breaks my little soul. Because people try to say they keep it real. You know how people are like, I'm just keeping it real. I'm like, yes, you're keeping it real negative.

14:19I do believe that I, as a very heavy, let's talk about this little world of our world here in marketing. In this world, with how aggressive and loud I came out in 2009, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, and I was poking, and I mean poking, at the establishment, I do believe people saw what they were looking for in me. Right? If you were blindly in belief that it was the old world of how brands grow, and you spent 25 years becoming a creative director, and here's this loud mouth saying, you know, your subjective opinion is audacious, you know, 99 % of campaigns don't work. If you're the head of media at Publicis and I'm like 90 % of the media dollars that holding companies are spending is a waste, of course you're gonna see what you're looking for.

15:12And I respect that. However, what I really enjoyed was the thousands that would stop me at Cannes or at Adweek or hit me up on LinkedIn after a talk like this who would say, psst, I'm emailing you from my Gmail account but you're telling the truth. Keep fighting the fight. I know you're getting all the judgment and the hate but it's important what you're doing because we are wasting clients' money. I am upset with what I see happening in my own company. I don't like that the banks have taken over our creative industry. It is just about the P &L right now. We do need more heart. I do feel like just a cell on an Excel sheet in my big company.

15:56I could be fired at any time if we lose a client. You know, you know, and so I was willing to be misunderstood for a decade to be respected in the end. Ready to soundtrack your summer? With Red Bull Summer All Day Play, you choose a playlist that fits your summer vibe the best. Are you a festival fanatic, a deep end DJ, a road dog or a trail mixer? Just add a song to your chosen playlist and put your summer on track. Red Bull Summer All Day Play. Red Bull gives you wings. Visit redbull.com slash bright summer ahead to learn more. See you this summer. Where is Daredevil? A minor. Don't miss the return of Marvel Television's Daredevil Born Again.

16:43So what's next? We're going to take this city back. In an all new season. Now streaming only on Disney+. They're hunting us. It's time we started hunting them. I can work with them. This should be tons of fun. Marvel Television's Daredevil, Born Again. Now streaming only on Disney+. Yeah, and do you think it's really changed? Have you felt the shift in the last, I don't know, five or six years? I would say I have felt a shift in the last two years, but I will tell you that I also don't live for the admiration. no you know I'm much more you know if I look at what you know Daisy's writing when Daisy says I'm gonna scroll up it's true right like this is a former employee you know how former employees can be right like you know like it's hard to be appreciated adored respected by a former employee we can all we can all agree with that right and Daisy's a winner and like I'm humbled but I know even if Daisy was in here saying not true because she was let's say she was mad at me I still know the truth of who I was for her and continue to be and so you know I do feel a shift it'll be fun to see if people feel like their perception of me or my beliefs in marketing or social media first approach has that shifted say yes or no you know again somebody in here said I'm a Jersey boy Lori said I'm a fellow Jerseyer I understood you the whole time so you know you know it's a path I mean I think when you're well intended and I'm sure a lot of people here are well intended if you're well intended and you believe in what you believe in it will always work out in the end.

18:24Yeah, I agree with you. Okay, so let's talk about marketing a bit and we'll go to some Q &A in a minute too. I'm keen to know I mean you're not shy about speaking truth to power, right? And I'm keen to know what it is that you believe that CMOs should really be caring about now that they're not. Organic social media content production. It's the single most important thing going on in our industry. The mid-funnel as we define it, organic social, AKA every brand in here or every agency person representing a brand in here, I believe if it's a Fortune 5000, a top 5000 company in the world, you're talking about 20, 30, 40 pieces of organic ads, creative ads a day across eight to nine different platforms, across 10 to 15 to 30 different handles within the overall mix, meaning four different Instagram accounts, three different TikTok accounts.

19:22I believe that is a bare minimum. I'm aware that no one is doing that on this call. Number two, once you understand the volume of creative, because everyone thinks it's spray and pray, throw against the wall and see what sticks, test and learn. It is not. It is advertising every day in the modern world. And then And allowing the AI algorithms that show you if there's relevance with that creative to be a starting point for debate of taking that creative to the lower funnel performance or the upper funnel campaign. I believe that no one on this call should spend a single dollar of media on a piece of creative unless it has been validated for reach organically on social.

20:09I mean that's a big one. And if anybody wants to disagree with that, do so on the show. That's a big one. So what's the barrier? I mean, if that is a real solution to what CMOs need to do to ensure growth, what's the barrier? Are they not hearing people? Are the people that are actually doing the stuff that maybe lower down in the hierarchy unable to influence them? Are they just not willing to listen? What is it? What's the barrier? And how do we overcome it? I answered it in the chat. And I think a lot of people are going to resonate with it. It's reporting and it's corporate inertia and politics.

20:48Right? So what do we do about that? We look for courageous, common sense leadership. Okay. You know, it is very hard to convince your boss to do something you believe is true if the boss is being incentivized in their bonus based on measurement that overvalues television and programmatic digital. Uh-huh. it's a problem though right it's a problem so we we as you know we work with two layers of hierarchy for want of better words in our programs scholarship emerging leaders and they're not kids they're in they're in their like mid 30s to even early mid 40s and the cmos they're in two separate programs and what we hear time and time and time again from the scholars is that they find it really hard to get the board or their CMO to listen.

21:47And, you know, they're full of concern or anxiety about that. You know, that speaking truth to power is not an easy, that's not an easy skill and it's scary as shit if you think that you're going to get fired for saying something they're not going to want to hear. So are there any advice that you can give people that are experiencing that? All of that is true. everybody here has mortgages, college debt if they live in America responsibilities hopes and dreams and it would be audacious to sit here and say go in guns a blazing tear down the place because you will find yourself in the unemployment line right?

22:28So I'm very empathetic there's a couple things there is a respectful way there is a respectful way to have a conversation with anyone about what you actually believe in. So for example, Sarah says right now CMOs and boards are overvaluing AI above everything else. If TV's an afterthought. Now if Sarah thinks that's right, then that's easy. If she thinks there's a nuance to that, there's a respectful way for Sarah to communicate that. right there's everyone here there is a respectful way to communicate what you believe in i'm going to say something profoundly important at least to me i would like everyone charlotte on this call to die on their own sword because the thing that breaks my heart that is not you know one of the fun things about agency life is you become very friendly with your clients so a lot of these people become my friends and it has been devastating to watch my friends get fired because they thought they were appeasing the company by supporting tv or sponsorship or media spend or efficiency versus effectiveness or whatever it is deep down they saw it differently i know that because if i was their friend these would be the talks right and then when the business would decline with traditional marketing, they would be hurt or passed up on or even fired.

23:58And meanwhile, they never believed in it the whole way. And that's about to hit scale. So I would tell everybody here, there is a respectful way to be able to communicate what you believe the firm or the organization should be doing. Make sure that your boss, the board, the C-suite, your contemporaries, and the people that work for you know where you stand on what you think you should do with creative media. Right? And the reason that people don't challenge it and go social first is it doesn't measure internally properly yet. It also doesn't get the headlines. I'm more excited about a single organic piece of social getting 45 million views than I am about a TV campaign getting featured in campaign magazine or a can lion because I think it has more business impact.

25:01I can communicate that. That doesn't mean that my clients agree with me, but we can have the conversation. They know where I stand. And the reason I feel different in the last 24 months than I did the last nine years, is a lot of people are starting to realize that social first versus social last or even social with is becoming a winning formula. When you look at Gruen's selling to Unilever for$1.2 billion after 26 months on a social first framework, liquid debt on a social first framework, you know, when you look at these over and over and over, it starts to click in. Yeah. There's some, I think there's some, I think there's probably a number of questions in the chat, actually, so just go over there and just ask a few.

25:44Okay, this is about AI, and I guess we can't really have a conversation about marketing without talking about AI. Who shouldn't? This is Tyler. Oh, hi, one of my fellows. In a world where AI agents are handling the bulk of guest transactions and brand discovery, how do you keep a brand's soul from being filtered out by the algorithms? Who gets to decide what the soul is, is my next question to that person. Expand on that. Who is the judge and jury of the soul of a brand? it should be the consumer. The companies think it's them, right? It's a little bit more nuanced than that for me, but I understand what you're saying.

26:29Even if it was the consumer, how would we pull that? How would we understand it? I would argue the biggest issue in marketing is that we think we need to be on brand and consistent when the reality with the consumer is there's not a single consumer brand on earth that is actually consistent. people have very different perceptions of brands and nuances no matter how hard you push your tagline or tvc right you know and so you know a soul you know alex says shouldn't the soul be clearly defined as part of yes of course it should be defined on paper but alex i'm sure you're aware of the constitution of the united states of america i don't know if you've heard it's written on paper very clearly, but 50 % of our country in America sees it one way and interprets it one way, and 50%, I mean, the Supreme Court of America literally rules on clearly laid out burbage and clearly laid out arguments five to four, six to three every day of the week.

27:28So this ideology that we can put things on paper or in a brief or on a deck and that lays out the soul, the interpretation of the words is the issue that this industry has struggled with. Like how many times, you know, does something get written in a brief and then the strategist is mad at the creative because they didn't capture it? Or, you know, we need the humility to understand that this industry runs on the subjective opinion of four people, three people, two people. So look, and what is a soul? Like Sherilyn, people talk audaciously. They're like, Gary, the soul of Nike. I'm like Nike wants to fucking sell sneakers and apparel.

28:09Like we have to take a step back. Like we're often in marketing of products. Like thank you. Thank you. We had an end of that event last week. We had an entrepreneur on the talk. And you know they said what's your biggest learning anyway. My biggest learning is it's just not that deep. It's true. I thought oh my God. that's gonna be our new mantra for all the marketers but like like the soul of like Starbucks coffee like I get it but we're selling coffee and by the way like there's better coffee out there like you know like like you know I get it and I believe in like I believe in soul but I do not believe in the way we decide to measure or judge it and in that vulnerability of human subjectivity there's been a more important thing which is for the first time in marketing history, we can measure relevance.

29:06And the way we can measure relevance is through organic social media content. And by the way, I wanna say something. I want everyone to hear this, especially if you don't know me or my stuff. If this was 2002, I would only be talking about email marketing and Google AdWords, right? And the beginning of this new thing called blogging. And in 2041, I'm gonna be interviewing like this and being like, you're still doing social media marketing? It's so overpriced. The attention is shifted into VR, AR, whatever the world has in store for all of us. You know? And take care, Ben. And so, you know, the reality is is that we can measure relevance.

29:48Sherilyn, for the first time ever, so I don't know if people know this. Let's take a quick step back. There is no social media anymore. We now live in interest media. You know, when I post, on my Instagram, right? I have 11.5 million followers on Instagram, right? When I post this post this morning, you know, this post has 105 ,000 views so far. It earned those views. This no longer goes just to my followers. It goes to people that might be interested about envy and why my point here is revenge is a bad energy and envy and jealousy is going to get you nowhere, right? But then, just, you know, literally five posts earlier, this video about me talking about self-esteem if you have a daughter, this is only five posts earlier.

30:42Oops, I'm sorry. This is very important, so bear with me, everyone. This got, Jesus, six million views. Wow. Seven years ago, all my posts got 500 ,000 views. no matter what I posted. On average, you know? Now, your creative creates the reach. I need everyone to like really go there, you know? The creative creates the reach. All the AI algorithms in social media right now are being written on relevance. For the first time ever, where we distribute our marketing, the distribution channel, is aligned with our interests. Meta, TikTok, Pinterest, LinkedIn, YouTube Shorts. They want to keep people on the platform.

31:33That's how they make money. They want to show you and I things that we are actually interested in, not random stuff from people we follow. Got it? We, as marketers, get the benefit of what their interest is. The BBC didn't care if our creative was good or not. They just wanted our money. The Wall Street Journal didn't care. They just wanted our money, right? The radio station, they just wanted our money. These platforms want to keep people on so they benefit creative that is actually relevant. Everyone, listen, I might be a new guy, but everyone here agrees, me included, that relevance to consideration leads to purchase.

32:15The AI algorithms and social literally measure relevance. That is a profound breakdown of where we are in social that I hope people understand. The other thing that we have to understand is that this argument that people keep having that telly has more reach than social is laughable. It's laughable. The actual sheer consumption of social media advertising versus telly advertising is profound. if you just take the streaming consumption in the world that does not have commercials a lot of the platforms I don't know what and people are like well live sports yes people watch live sports but are they watching the commercials and then you get into what the cost is because listen I would run television ads I would buy billboards I would do full page ads in print if they were 80 % less and match the reality of the actual consumption today not were overpriced to keep them in business because the world's passed them by.

33:20Yeah. Yeah, I get it. Okay, I've got a question from Kate which leads into the platforms really. You were the first person Kate heard talking about how TikTok was going to blow up in a big way. What do you think is next? Kate, thank you. I don't have anything. I would say, I don't think it's going to be of that scale. I would say for a lot of brands here, especially B2B, Substack and Beehive are very big opportunities. so just put that on a shelf they will not hit the level of what TikTok is but the reason I've had a pretty good career of like seeing around corners is I don't predict I just wait for something to actually have meaningful mass attention that has opportunity for us to market in I would say the closest thing I would say to what's next is the thing I've been talking about which is the barbell the extreme of the analog and the extreme of digital so the two things I'm very interested in is experiential marketing in real live events and sampling and trialing product and live social shopping live social oh I see yeah you're purchasing immediately through live I'm talking I'll just do it right now when you go on whatnot like I will just go to a category right now like let's go to maybe Let me, this one, see if anyone's selling.