How to Do Social Media Marketing the Right Way (The Exact Blueprint)

Summary

Podcast Summary: The GaryVee Audio Experience

Episode Title: How to Do Social Media Marketing the Right Way (The Exact Blueprint)
Host: Gary Vaynerchuk
Date: December 11, 2025

---

Main Theme & Purpose

Gary Vaynerchuk lays out a contemporary, no-nonsense blueprint for social media marketing, challenging legacy thinking and highlighting how brands—especially luxury and CPG—should operate in a fragmented, attention-scarce world. The conversation, part keynote/part fireside chat with marketing professionals, focuses on creative quality, quantity at scale, the need for organizational courage, and actionable tactics for winning relevance and sales, not trophies or internal consensus.

---

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Marketing Has Changed—But Brands Haven’t Caught Up

• Social as the Creative Battleground:
  Gary emphasizes producing high-volume, platform-tailored creative content as the foundation for modern marketing, arguing that most brands are weighted by subjective, dated standards.

  "We must win on relevance, not just on our subjective opinions of brand." (04:36)

• Testing Before Scaling:
  Social’s power is in real-time feedback: test creative organically, use signal amplification, then invest media dollars.

  “We will not spend media unless the creative does well. All of a sudden the creative changes overnight.” (00:03, 26:19)

---

2. The Myth of ‘Brand Quality’ and Creative Approval

• Quality Means Sales, Not Artistic Consensus:
  Gary challenges the boardroom notion of “brand quality,” favoring content that actually sells.

  "Quality ad sells the product. It's a quality ad." – Jodi Spriggs
  "That is one of the most important answers I’ve ever heard." – Gary (13:30–13:40)

• Subjectivity is Killing Agility:
  Debates over what is ‘on brand’ are more about internal comfort than consumer reality.

  “Quality is subjective, quantity is not.” (14:45)
  “We fear things that don’t exist. There’s not a single post SK II can put out that’s gonna make somebody say, oh, this is so not premium.” (11:07)

---

3. Volume and Relevance > Matching Luggage

• Platform-Specific Scale:
  Post everywhere, as much as possible—across TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Snapchat, Pinterest—at low cost but high relevance.

  "I would produce as much content as humanly possible (...) not at the expense of the quality of the content.” (04:36)

• No More ‘Single Big Campaign’ Thinking:
  The “one message to rule them all” approach is dead. Segmented, relevant creative must be the norm.

  "Stop making a single commercial and making everything matching like luggage. All the trade, all the digital assets all like chopped down. Let's do a shoot for a trillion dollars and chop it down for social. Nobody gives a shit." (38:21–38:40)

• AI Personalization Is Coming, But Not Here Yet:
  For now, aim for 40, 50, 60 segmentations, not one-size-fits-all or a million-to-a-million.

  “AI will do that in 20 years. But...there’s something in between one and a million. And that’s really what we’ve been talking about here the whole time.” (38:45)

---

4. Marketing as a Practiced Craft

• Practice Over Theory:
  Gary positions himself as a practitioner, not a ‘thought leader’ sitting in an ivory tower.

  “I am a practitioner of this craft...Right now as we sit here Today, we sold 80 cases of a $90 Barolo on a Facebook reels marketing execution.” (09:46)

• Consumer Truth, Not Fantasy:
  "This is grounded on true consumer behavior. Not ideological consumer behavior that brands wish existed” (09:46)

---

5. The Organizational Challenge: Courage & Change Management

• Change Requires Courage:
  Existing bonus structures, reporting hierarchies and consensus-driven decisions block progress.

  “We need way more courage with this global team to make creative that’s relevant, not subjectively luxury.” (12:02)

• Legacy Systems Are Failing:
  Luxury fears mass media diminishes their brand, but evidence (watches, cars, art) says otherwise. “This is not 20 year olds on social anymore. The amount of 40 to 60 year olds that are completely living in these platforms...is profound.” (08:36)
• Modern KOL/Creator Threat:
  Influencers don’t want brand deals—they want to be the brand.

  “Emma Chamberlain doesn’t want your...$100,000 anymore. She wants your market share. This is going to happen at scale...” (19:40)

---

6. Measuring Success: From ‘Spray and Pray’ to Business Outcomes

• Testing, Holdouts, Accountability:
  True measurement requires segmenting, holding out controls, and being transparent about actual sales impact.

  "The model that I believe in is desperate to be held accountable to business. The industry has done everything it has and can to not be held accountable." (22:03)

• Optimal Spend = Unemotional, ‘Underpriced Attention’:
  Don’t commit upfront. Test across media, see results, then reinvest where returns are real, not assumed.

  “We know that anything that has an artificial floor of cost is already overpriced...Anything that is pure biddable has the potential to be incredibly underpriced.” (34:06)

---

7. Winning Attention in a Fragmented World

• You’re Competing With Everyone:
  “We're not just competing with Unilever or JJ. We're competing with the world.” (40:10)
• The Social Media Decision-Making Bottleneck:
  “Don’t take four hours or four meetings or 19 meetings with 19 people to make a subjective call on a single tweet.” (41:03)
• Consumers Don’t Care About ‘Matching Luggage’:
  Before obsessing about a consistent look, make sure anyone actually wants to engage.

---

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• Gary on Creative Before Media Spend:

  "We will not spend media unless the creative does well. All of a sudden the creative changes overnight." (00:03)

• Gary on Subjectivity of ‘Brand Quality’:

  "That's your field, that's your feeling. But that's a focus group of one." (27:34)

• Gary on Change:

  "We must allow our insecurities and egos and ideologies...leave them at the door and walk into these boardrooms and win on consumer truth." (20:26)

• Gary on Measurement:

  "Measuring brand is like measuring love. Measuring brand is like measuring God." (21:25)

• Gary on Detachment and Resilience:

  "I'm incredibly detached from my career...I always play out well. God forbid I make the wrong decision, I will lose money. Who cares?...I have passion for my professional career, as you can tell. I love my work...but it is not in my soul. It is my play. And so it's very easy for me to make challenging decisions." (31:44)

---

Important Segment Timestamps

• [01:46] How Gary grew a wine business 20X — lessons for today
• [04:36] Early digital wins (Google Ads, YouTube), how modern tools shift the game
• [09:46] Practitioner’s proof: Selling $90 wine on Facebook Reels
• [13:30] Definition of ‘quality’—switching from boardroom art to real results
• [19:40] Creators becoming competitors, not partners
• [22:03] How to test for true marketing ROI and accountability
• [34:06] Underpriced attention and unemotional media planning
• [38:21] Relevance means segmentation, not uniformity
• [41:03] How bureaucracy blocks creativity

---

Summary Table

| Segment / Topic | Key Takeaway or Quote | Timestamp | |-----------------------------------------|------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------|-----------| | Creative before media spend | "We will not spend media unless the creative does well..." | 00:03 | | Subjectivity vs. Performance | "Quality ad sells the product. It's a quality ad." (Jodi Spriggs) | 13:30 | | Practitioner approach | "I'm selling $90 wine on Facebook Reels... not guessing." | 09:46 | | Influencers becoming brands | "Emma Chamberlain... wants your market share..." | 19:40 | | Organizational courage | "We need way more courage with this global team..." | 12:02 | | Testing and KPIs | "The model I believe in is desperate to be held accountable..." | 22:03 | | Creative detachment | "I'm incredibly detached from my career... it is my play." | 31:44 | | Bureaucratic bottlenecks | "Don't take four hours or four meetings or 19 meetings... for a single tweet." | 41:03 |

---

Natural Flow & Final Thoughts

Gary relentlessly returns to the core message: most brands are stuck evaluating content through outdated, internally focused lenses instead of what really matters—relevance, sales, and attention from real people where they spend their time now. The risk isn’t in disrupting the norm; it’s in not adapting fast enough while creators, new brands, and the platforms themselves race ahead.

Brand leaders are urged to be courageous, move faster, test more, and reorient toward scale and relevance over internal consensus—before someone else eats their lunch.

---

Quote to Remember:

"Stop making a single commercial and making everything matching like luggage. Nobody gives a shit." (38:21)

For listeners: This episode isn’t just about tactics—it’s a call to action. Embrace the uncomfortable, adopt a practitioner’s mindset, test honestly, and measure what really matters. The future belongs to the genuinely bold.

Transcript

[Gary Vaynerchuk]

Social media is just a tool. If it is not done right, it can't be as effective as it can be. The last two years is more predicated on being unbelievably strategic about the creative variable so that the creative wins and then do the media planning after the fact, not in parallel or before the fact. Imagine you said to everyone, we will not spend media unless the creative does well. All of a sudden the creative changes overnight. This is the GaryVee audio experience.

Before you go to the podcast, I've got a big announcement. I know several years ago a lot of you bought 12 books of 12 and a half to get the NFT, the book games NFT. I also know that a lot of people have dropped off on their journey with veefriends, which is a massive mistake because what we're doing on Burn island and what we're doing on base with book games is remarkable. So you need to go to vee friends veefriends.com oldbooks go to vfriends.com oldbooks with an S. You will go to that landing page and we will help you explain if you are trying to figure out where your NFTs are, how to bring them over to the website and how to start activating them so that you can start using them for all the incredible exchanges and draws and raffles and experiences that we're doing for people that actually own the book games. So please go to vfriends.comoldbooks where you can start your journey on reactivating your book games journey.

[Moderator/Interviewer]

I'll start with the first question. So I know that Gary, you have been launching brands and businesses since you were seven and if you were to launch one of your businesses, like for example, your wine business today, in today's day and age, with this social landscape with the kols that you were mentioning, how would you do it differently, you.

[Gary Vaynerchuk]

Know, not too differently in the macro. So for context, I learned how to be a marketer because I ran my father's wine and liquor store at 22 years old and I had a very big passion to build my family's business. I was born in the Soviet Union and we immigrated to America when I was 3 years old and we grew up very humbly and my father got a job as a stock boy in a liquor store and eventually owned it. So very first generation son of a merchant since I was 14, 7 I had my own businesses. At 14 I started working for my father much to like actually how I think about SK II of like a premium product within a Category. My father's liquor store was called Shoppers Discount Liquors. So he sold beer and liquor and wine, but discount lower end. But the store was located in one side of it was very blue collar, but the other side was white collar and had affluence. And I started noticing at 14 and 15 that people were coming in and asking for expensive wine. And I thought that was interesting. Even at a young age, I cared more about paying attention to the customer than any rule that existed. And so in that I learned that people wanted these certain wines, I learned about wine. In 1997 I launched one of the first e commerce wine businesses in America. And I was able to build my father's business from a three and a half $4 million a year top line business doing 10% gross profit. So a very small business to a almost $70 million business and an eight year period with no money, with no venture capital, with not even a credit line. My dad didn't believe in it. And the way I did that is the way I do it today and the way I would do it if I started one tomorrow. And this is going to answer why I have so much anxiety about Fortune 500 marketing. With whatever money you have for marketing, you must squeeze it and it must work unbelievably hard to make the thing happen. You can't create growth without new customers or without having such a great service that you create word of mouth. So back then it was having a website that was revolutionary. Back then it was doing an email newsletter which was profound because it didn't cost me any money. I was doing direct mail and it would work, but that costs money. Hey everybody, hope you're enjoying the podcast right now. Make sure you follow the podcast. That's why I'm interrupting. Let's keep going on this show, but follow the podcast. It'll make my mom super happy. Email. I was able to send an email. As a matter of fact, I sent so many emails in the mid-90s because I thought by the year 2000 they're gonna charge for this.

This is true. Late later, what really took the scale was Google AdWords came out. I bought every wine term for five and ten cents a click. And it was five cents for a few minutes, then it was ten cents. And I owned that world for two, three years. Then email. And then my career changed when YouTube came out. I started a wine show on YouTube in February of 2006. A 20 minute me sitting down doing content which is now like, considered like best practices today. This was 2006 that created brand. I was not paying for that. And so today the big elephant in the room, and you know this because you're in this sector, because every kol is doing it. But we're not doing it. We're doing it. But I, you know, I come here to want to really do it. And I understand why we're not doing it. I understand that subjective opinions of is it on brand enough? I know what your pain points are, but we must have this conversation together that the scale of volume of creative we need and we must win on relevance, not just on our subjective opinions of brand. And we must do it at scale. So what I would do today is I would produce as much content as humanly possible on TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Snapchat, Pinterest at scale, at the lowest cost possible, which is not at the expense of the quality of the content. And I would do that. And then when I would get the signals, quantum qual signals, I would then amplify true consumer insights into more meaningful. And that is the model that I believe in. I believe in above the line activities. I just think they're overpriced and I think we guess and I'd prefer to use social media as a proxy. And I don't believe posting on social media is spray and pray. I don't believe it's test and learn. I believe it's marketing. Why is a social media picture any different than a print ad? As a matter of fact, a social media picture done properly will be consumed by more people than a print ad in vogue. But in social it's like this lightweight think and it's maybe test and learn. But in print, because it's yesterday. We put yesterday on a pedestal. We'd rather pay $4 million for a celebrity than $400,000 for a KOL. And the impact's not even close. In 2023, we'd rather run a print ad that takes us four months to decide that's on brand with our brand positioning, then post a proper photo on Instagram. We don't treat them the same yet the latter is actually more impactful in 2023. And so I view marketing and social as you do marketing for the sake of doing better marketing. So I would make a pot commitment to social media, organic, creative. And once the signals played out, I would then use media to amplify to create brand building and sales. And that's what I would do today. And then when I would do above the line work, I wouldn't do commercials, I would do pre roll YouTube. I would do connective TV. I would do the new streaming service options because they are more built on social where I can target. And again, I would try to mitigate my cost of the creative. I came from Silicon Valley world where the biggest companies in the world, Facebook, YouTube were making videos for their company commercials on the Internet and they were spending tens of thousands of dollars to make it. Then I came into Madison Avenue and smaller companies like yours, compared to those companies were spending millions of dollars to make a video. And it was a very big culture shock for me. I promise you, a video that's 30 seconds long should not cost $500,000. I promise, I promise. But the reason we all laugh is that's the rules of the industry. And the industry has done an incredible job justifying it. And so we must talk about this. And everything I just said enhances luxury, doesn't decline it. But luxury is super struggling with what I'm saying. There's this subconscious in their stomach reaction to this modern that feels like it's diminishing the luxury. When you look at the data watch, premium watch industry has exploded because of social. Premium car companies, premium art, all exploding. Yet in CPG consumer luxury there's this biases that the modern communication channel somehow diminishes the brand which is really detrimental because this is no longer and everyone here knows this, this is not 20 year olds on social anymore. The amount of 40 to 60 year olds that are completely living in these platforms and all their consideration is coming from these channels is profound. And we must recognize that. We must accept that truth.

[Moderator/Interviewer]

I was actually looking at one of your posts on Facebook reels and you were saying that a lot of the 60 year olds or 50 year olds are on Facebook.

[Gary Vaynerchuk]

The thing that's different about me than a lot of the people that do what I do for a living is I'm a practitioner of the craft. Most CEOs of large multi global agencies live in an ivory tower in France. I am a practitioner of this craft. When I say you can sell $80 stuff, I'm selling $90 wine on Facebook reels for my father right now. Right now as we sit here Today, we sold 80 cases of A$90 Barolo on a Facebook reels marketing execution. I'm not sitting up here guessing, I'm not regurgitating what Meta and Snapchat and YouTube are saying to me. I'm not looking at where my margin is and then selling that to you. I'm living this and then speaking to it. And that's why it's worked for us. This is grounded on true consumer behavior. Not an ideological consumer behavior that brands wish was existed or consumer behavior that's being pushed for profit by platforms and agencies.

And the reason there's a lot of head nodding and accepting is because when you all leave this building and clock out as a human being, the words that are coming out of my mouth are incredibly intuitive. Because you're a human being living in the world, you know this to be true.

What I'm trying to do is create the freedom for incredibly talented individuals to have conversations, conversations of the truth in boardrooms, to challenge the reporting and the bonus structures and the things that are actually forcing you to do what you're doing and make the bosses feel comfortable, to give latitude. We fear things that don't exist. There's not a single post SK II can put out that's gonna make somebody say, oh, this is so not premium. I'm never gonna buy it again. As a matter of fact, your product is so good we can almost do anything and are gonna still keep buying it. And so I want to create more. Can you go back to the last slide? This is the only thing I care about. We need way more courage with this global team to make creative that's relevant, not subjectively. Luxury.

Right. All of you know. And so we need to help you get there. Yeah.

[Marketing Team Member]

That's a lovely perspective. So I'm going to take the cue from what you just said, please.

Courageous now team has been.

Having a tick tock day today.

[Gary Vaynerchuk]

Yes.

[Marketing Team Member]

I'm going back to what you said earlier. Right. That we need to do it at scale. Because I think the email marketing that you were doing and today morning you said that. Yes, 92% of the opened your email.

[Gary Vaynerchuk]

Yes.

[Marketing Team Member]

Today we are struggling to get even point or 0.09% to open. Right. So that means we need to do things at scale. We still have to do it with quality. And let's take case of TikTok. Right. And my thumb is working faster than my brain.

[Gary Vaynerchuk]

Yes.

[Marketing Team Member]

So I don't know what, what is getting into my brain. And if the brand has to do brand building on TikTok in such fast paced environment, building the scale, still trying to maintain the quality, what is going to be your guidance? Because it's the same people who are doing that.

[Gary Vaynerchuk]

Yep.

[Marketing Team Member]

And yes, I think some aspect is you have to be a hands on practitioner.

[Gary Vaynerchuk]

Yes.

[Marketing Team Member]

But beyond that, if you are to manage that.

[Gary Vaynerchuk]

I got it. Let's start with the most important part of that question. Can someone here Define quality for me. Right? Because you asked the question of how do we maintain our quality. I would like somebody here to raise their hand and define. Define the quality of what SK II must maintain to on a post on TikTok.

[Jodi Spriggs]

Quality ad sells the product. It's a quality ad.

[Gary Vaynerchuk]

So that's interesting. You've just realized we need to be friends immediately.

That is not the first thing I expect that just completely went. I wish you could see what's happening through my body. I believe that is one of the most important answers I've ever heard. And if you 13 years that I've done this, I agree with that. I agree that quality. One of the absolute things we should judge when we say quality is does it sell the product? Now I get to do a Procter and Gamble example of this. Based on what just happened. Why are we sitting here today? I will tell you from my perspective why we are a gentleman by the name of Chris Hyart who worked in the US And Randolais had the intuitive belief after hearing me speak at a conference that I might not be crazy, that I might be onto something and asked us to go to Cincinnati and have a meeting. So we did. We talked it through after. Because he is an operator business, not an ideological marketer. He gave us a chance.

Because I was selling it. I didn't compromise in any step of the way of the model. Thus rendering us to do the model which is consumer segmentation at scale, volume at scale. Because quality is subjective, quantity is not. We did the model we were building up. Olay.com Very easy to measure on Olay.com Very different than selling a Tesco or Sainsbury, right? Or at Walmart. You could see it. The piece of creative that changed our relationship. Vayner and Proctor. A single piece of creative changed our relationship forever. Not a commercial that won a Cannes Lion. A single Facebook post. Do you know what that Facebook post looked like? It was a picture of a cat. Lasers with lasers coming out of its eyes. Olay has a standard, not SK II standard, but just to give you the preview. A cat with lasers coming out of its eye was below the standard if it was to be in a subjective meeting. But because the model was built on we can do it our way. That ad sold the living Gizus out of Olay was converted into outdoor media because it was proven to be working and became a conversation that we were able to continue to build from. So you threw me a tremendous curveball by answering in a way that is so dear to my heart. I do believe quality has to factor in it achieving the mission at hand, which is to get someone to buy it. I agree with you. I also believe that the way quality is debated in every boardroom in the Fortune 500 CPG landscape is completely based on someone's opinion. If it is hitting luxury enough, funny enough, irreverent enough, their personal opinion. And so I think that to answer your question, we must define quality first. I think everyone here intuitively understands, if they had to bet their children's health on it, what the TikTok would look like to make it SK2 sell probably looks very different than what would be approved by everyone in here. And that becomes the debate that I would like to have because why are we emotional about what is relevant? Why are we emotional about what is relevant today? Luxury around the world requires for growth to do partnerships with streetwear brands. Do you understand 25 years ago if you told Louis Vuitton or Gucci or Hermes that they would be doing collaboration deals with street kids from Queens, they would laugh you out of the room. But they got to a point where they couldn't win on relevance enough anymore without them. We must learn from what's happened prior to us. There is absolutely a place for this brand to make undeniably very expensive, high luxury mass production videos and pictures. We're never going to get off that for a little while. But there has to be a place for and relevant, just human, just authentic and contextual. Especially if you do not want this brand to completely die with 45 year olds. If you do not acquire 25 and 27 and 20 year olds who, as you know, every day are requiring more and more from their formulas. So much so that our point of differentiation on the massive, incredible formula we have continues to close the gap. If we do not become relevant under 35 and yesterday, we will all wake up and realize that it was our era that put the executives that are dealing with the issues five years from now in a precarious spot. While you are the custodians of this iconic brand, I ask you to not put the next group in a precarious position.

[Moderator/Interviewer]

Any thoughts on any, like a luxury brand that you think is really winning on this, like, quantity, but yet with, you know, skill and quality, like today.

[Gary Vaynerchuk]

Every brand that companies like yourselves end up M and A ing because they went from 0 to 100 million in revenue by doing this model. None of your contemporaries are doing it. That's why all the holding companies and all the fashion brands keep M and A ing. All these brands I prefer you not pay 50 times EBITDA for a brand that started three years ago and do it yourselves.

That's where you could imagine that the boards and the CEOs of the companies I work with buy much more into what I say than the marketers because they know what I'm talking about. And I know this room knows this is a very specific category. You are in a very dangerous era. The KOLs now understand they don't want your brand dollars. They want to be your competitors. They're coming and they're really coming. Gatorade has a problem. It's called Prime. Right? Emma Chamberlain doesn't want your cockamanian $100,000 anymore. She wants your market share. And this is going to happen at scale and wait at the platforms, decide to become their partners. My friends, we don't have a lot more time putzing around.

We must get much more relevant very quickly, grounded in platform and culture truths. And we must allow our insecurities and egos and ideologies. We need to leave them at the door and walk into these boardrooms and win on consumer truth. We must, we have to challenge and we must talk to our bosses, bosses, bosses with respect, but with candor of what's actually happening with the consumer. And you all know it. That to me, you know, that's the part that's what motivates me to do stuff like this. If I can get one person in here to just say, you know what, I am going to say something in the next meeting. I don't believe I. That the circulation of this magazine is actually how many impressions we're getting.

Yes, enough. I believe in marketing and branding over everything.

But measuring brand is like measuring love. Measuring brand is like measuring God. I understand that you have reports to justify, but it doesn't mean it's true. So we need to bring common sense back to the table. You know, we do a lot of this work that is very black and white. Let me explain how we do it. When we have media and creative together, which is a whole nother conversation that has to happen in this industry, we must bring back media and creative together under one roof for one agency, so we can hold them accountable. Because this whole game of this is doing nothing for us.

If you do that, and we get that a lot in social media and creative together, what we start to do is we actually take your biggest retailer in the market. You could say, let's test this in Japan. We take your biggest retailer. Let's say that retailer has 200 doors. We take 55 doors that act like 55 other doors. We run 5 mile radius ads to those 55 doors, we don't do those doors. And we look at incremental sales black and white. The model that I believe in is desperate to be held accountable to business. The industry has done everything it has and can to not be held accountable. And so that's how I would do it with brand. Because you know, you're affecting them. Not because of discounting, not because you're good sales organization. You have incredible placement within the store. It's because you've proven that messaging has compelled brands more people to buy something than not. And so that's how you would do it.

[Yuan Minh]

I have a question because what's your name? Yuan Minh.

[Gary Vaynerchuk]

So such a pleasure.

[Yuan Minh]

Nice to meet you. Because the point that you talked about relevancy versus what's quality or on equity as we call it, I feel like I feel that tension in my work because I'm doing exactly what you said on the volume, right? Which is producing paid media ads on TikTok or the China version going every single day. And if you want to talk about relevancy, obviously what's relevant to everyone would look different. And therefore I can create, you know, a thousand or a million different types of copies and types of visuals that will work for different individuals and sell.

[Gary Vaynerchuk]

And are you doing the media with the creative up front or are you letting the creative post organically look at the quant and quality feedback is how strong the algorithm is to show intent and then amplifying the media.

[Yuan Minh]

So I am seeing the content first before we push.

[Gary Vaynerchuk]

Not that to the point that matters. Is the creative being posted first letting consumer intent and insights drive the decision to allocate creative media against it? Or are we making decisions like old advertising where we just look at the creative and then we're running media against the target segmentation?

Correct. That is the answer to whatever you're about to answer. NAS X Because the other thing is social media is just a tool.

So you know, if it is not done right, it can't be as effective as it can be. So I think one thing you should absolutely try immediately. And China's like the dream world for me because it's fully integrated and horizontally integrated and there's no debate. That's why everyone's like, oh, China's different. Like China's the same. It's just that they can see it and here we have fragmentation that doesn't allow us to see it. Thus we make assumptions that it's not True. So the vertical and horizontal integration of China and the way the consumer behavior plays in it has so much more attention for this kind of work. I just want the whole world world to do that kind of work. However, even in China, there is variables of how to maximize its execution. I think what you need to do is add a very strong rigor in parallel why you keep doing what you know is working or what you're comfortable with, where you base it on really focusing on the organic strategy of the creative and letting the relevance become the reach and then amplify that reach. The the problem is when you plan the media upfront with the creative, the media is forcing the reach, but we have no idea if the creative is absolutely driving relevance or conversion. We're forcing it. We can see it in CAC and ltv, but we don't know the variable difference of could the CAC be $13 instead of $63 had the creative been different? What's so powerful about modern social, unlike social four years ago, is the algorithms now are incentivizing because they want to keep the actual attention on the platform, the creative that is best. So now, unlike the last seven years, the last two years is more predicated on being unbelievably strategic about the creative variable so that the creative wins and then do the media planning after the fact, not in parallel or before the fact.

[Yuan Minh]

I got what you're saying, which is we get the feedback first before we try to then amplify, right?

[Gary Vaynerchuk]

That's right. But what will happen there? There's something more important and deeper what I'm saying. That's right. But imagine now, if that's true, imagine you said to everyone, we will not spend media unless the creative does well. All of a sudden the creative changes overnight, Right? So there's a proxy there that's incredibly powerful in that framework, which is it forces creatives and strategists to actually be good at the creative. Media has been the band aid and the makeup of creative for 70 years. We don't need to do that anymore and we shouldn't. So yes, I am saying that, but there's a bigger thing. It then requires a rigor and a capability and a strategic framework that is so much more profound than what you're getting right now in creative. And the creative is your variable on your CAC and ltv.

[Yuan Minh]

This is second part of the question, actually.

The tension is also that if we do go big on relevance, then I feel, and perhaps maybe some of my colleagues feel, that there is a concern on what is true or iconic to the brand? Meaning if I think of the brand, I would think of certain elements and a certain feeling that's consistent.

[Gary Vaynerchuk]

That's your field, that's your feeling. But that's a focus group of one. You know, I understand because you guys and gals all sit in boardrooms and take a brand positioning that you spent a lot of money for, which is in essence a sentence or two, and hold it up as a North Star.

But that means nothing to the end consumer.

You know, I understand that people have convinced me, convinced all of you, that that's schizophrenia, that that's, you know, not on brand, that that is the essence, but that's not how consumers work. That's a, that's what professors say in universities based on books written in the 90s. You know, people can say that Nike means just do it to them, but it's not true.

People buy Nikes because they want to have Virgil Abloh collaborations on their shoes because they want to signal the same reason he's wearing that modern art hoodie. It communicates to me who he is. And I had a closer affinity to him because I like streetwear.

And so I think that, you know, I think, I think we need to have a much stronger conversation of consumer psychology. And I think our industry is behind because we're holding on to things of the past that made it easy for corporations to do things. And your partners reinforce it because they make margin on it.

You know, reach and frequency is insanity. It's potential reach. It's not actualized reach. Do you really think all your programmatic banners are being consumed?

So I get that. And it's, and it's very religious. It's also just uncomfortably proven to not be true when you look at the business landscape over the last 15 years.

That's why so many fashion brands do collaborations at scale. They need relevance.

And, and, and then more importantly, the question, what's really fun about this conversation is the chest a bit meaning.

Okay, so now let's say I am your right down the line consumer that you're talking about, that you don't want her to be confused, right? You want her to understand what the brand stands for. Do you believe that if, God forbid, somehow she would see an Instagram post that had a boxer on it holding up an SK II bottle, that she would say, well, that's it. They'll never use it again? One could say, yes, I believe that. I would be like, okay, no problem. Here's the problem. Can somebody pull up the hashtag sk2 across all the platforms on China and the US and the rest of the world. We're not in control of our message anyway. The consumer's posting so much scale. We're not in control of this narrative anyway. The cat's been out of the bag on this. If we don't post it, it's being posted. So we're living in this ideological framework that doesn't exist. The schizophrenia that everyone's so scared of has already happened. The brand is showing up at scale that is not us in any way in shape that they want. I'm saying let's control some of it, you know, so it's I have a lot of compassion for your series of questions and I have incredible amounts of passion for the business. Results of the last decade prove there's a huge opportunity to go the alternative of what we've been doing. And I think it's a worthwhile debate.

[Victor]

Hello Gary, this is Victor. Victor, I'm from Human Experience Operation Team Focus on my best experience at SK2. Thank you for sharing. I'm also a small fan from you from a few years ago. So it's a dream. Kind of like a dream.

[Gary Vaynerchuk]

Thank you so much.

[Victor]

One question is like I also read your book like saying how to start your wine business from scratch and now to this scale. But through the process, when you face some really big challenge or crisis from a business wise, how would you like motivate yourself and keep resilience to move the business forward and make it even better?

[Gary Vaynerchuk]

I mean, thank you. It's a great question. I'm incredibly detached from my career. I don't think because I don't care is the answer to your question. The reason I'm able to deal with very tough challenges, the reason I'm willing to put myself out to ridicule or you know, when you're a public figure, you get a lot of emotional baggage of opinions and thoughts. It's because I don't have my self worth wrapped up in my businesses. The reason I've been able to really navigate challenges is I always play out well. God forbid I make the wrong decision, I will lose money. Who cares? God forbid I make the series of many bad decisions in a row. I will lose my business. Who cares? And then I play the reverse. What if I did everything right and became the most successful businessman in the history of the world? But the next day after I achieved that, my mother passed away. Would I be happy? The answer is no. And so I keep my life incredibly simple, detached from my professional career. I have Passion for my professional career, as you can tell. I love my work. I love this game. You know, I love thinking through the. I love this, but it is not in my soul. It is my play. And so it's very easy for me to make challenging decisions.

[Jodi Spriggs]

Hi, I'm Jodi Spriggs. I was Chris's analytics and insight leader. So I got the pleasure of seeing you first come and then talk about stuff, words, and the number of conversations about laser cat eyes breaking out the rest of Cincinnati, png, ivory tower, which is crazy. One of the hot words right now is sufficiency and how much money do you have to spend on different types of media to be sufficient? And we don't ever have good answers. And GV and I have been talking about this for years. How do you think about being sufficient.

[Moderator/Interviewer]

In, like, the wine business?

[Jodi Spriggs]

Or how do you decide how much money to spend where and how much?

[Gary Vaynerchuk]

Too much. It's really funny. So I'm going to give a keynote at Cannes and I'm going to unveil something that I'll preview with you. Right now we are launching something called the Modern Comms planning, which is the answer to this question. So the slang that I've used in entrepreneur land and within my organization is buying underpriced attention.

Again, similar to a lot of the convo we're having, much of it is grounded on a hypothesis of common sense and consumer behavior that then is verified through holdout cluster against business truth.

We know. So for media spend, we know that anything that has an artificial floor of cost is already overpriced.

A television ad, a billboard, a print ad is already overpriced because the merit of the consumer behavior behind it isn't factored in. We know on the other side that anything that is pure biddable has the potential to be incredibly underpriced.

And so this becomes an early framework right away. Then you have all sorts of things that have the potential to be extremely overpriced and extremely underpriced on the creative variable, like a Kol, like an event marketing campaign. Right. So we kind of are really starting to put pen to paper, cross some T's, dot some I's. I'd love if you want to reach out for you, to get with the team that's been working on this for two years in a Batcave and let them show it to you. It's really exciting. For me, it is the media planning version of our creative argument.

Because when you put those two together, it becomes everything we've seen from why Tesla to Netflix to many other brands have gone from zero to substantial players. You know, ELF cosmetics, completely built on modern comms planning and creative like variables that we believe in and isn't even doing it super well and has like is doing it at a four in a world of ones with the ability to get to 10 and so really exciting times. So the way we do it is by being utterly unemotional about where we plan our media and commit to nothing up front. Right. So what that allows you to do is have incredible flexibility to take advantage of truth, including things that have artificial floors, for example. I like buying outdoor media. I just like to buy it when it's remnant for two months and instead of 80,000 for the billboard, I can buy for 3,000 drive time radio, an incredibly sneaky underpriced medium for certain demos. But then the creative variable is such a factor. And so what you do is you market, not test, not spray and pray. You market at scale across the board with low cost investment upfront, get business and consumer insight affirmation and then scale backwards. No different than the little nuance we just talked about. Especially, you know, China's a different veil, but especially in an iOS 14.5post world in Southeast Asia, Europe, America, the lazy cac ltv retargeting thing is gone. And so it's required a whole new framework. Attention is the only currency.

Half a third, 25% of that audience went to TikTok for. So you lost attention. More people are posting on Instagram than three years ago. Less are consuming it. And so organic reach is struggling on average. Of course there's good creators who can. Right. So the fact that Facebook reels especially for this brand.

Back to what I want you to get to. In my dream world, if you're buying Facebook reels for this brand property as a media play, post the creative reels that you're posting four times a day, getting quantum qual feedback, finding the three pieces a month that actually are meaningful laser cats and then amplifying on Facebook reels for this brand would significantly grow this brand. And that might work for seven months or three years depending on market dynamics.

He talked a lot about relevant. Yes, but then I kind of feel.

[Jodi Spriggs]

That relevance is also very subjective because.

[Gary Vaynerchuk]

Of course it is. Relevant for who? Correct?

[Jodi Spriggs]

Right.

[Gary Vaynerchuk]

But think about what, think about what you do. We're agreeing. I'm saying make relevance for 40 to 50 to 60 different consumer segmentations at scale. You're saying let's make one commercial and interpret it everywhere else.

You're misplaying relevance. You're absolutely right. So stop making a single commercial and making everything matching like luggage. All the trade, all the digital assets all like chopped down. Let's do a shoot for a trillion dollars and chop it down for social. Nobody gives a shit.

You like that one?

So we're in agreement. Relevance is so individual. To me, this is where AI creative long term is going to be. Woo. And to your point, it's going to be hard to do a million for a million, like, but there is something in between. I loved when people took it more extreme than me. They're like, we're going to make a million personalization at scale. A million pieces for a million. I'm like, cool. AI will do that in 20 years. But like in this next decade or two during our careers, there's something in between one and a million. And that's really what we've been talking about here the whole time. You're absolutely right. Relevance is perfect. Social media in 2023 is the thing that can get us to 60, 40, 29, 13, 61. Consumer states, we call them cohorts, consumer segmentations, demand states, whatever you want to call them, you can get there. And if you're willing to make your creative and media model work tandem, you actually create some sort of weird in between version of AI and humans because you're actually smart constantly. You're marketing every day to do smarter marketing.

[Tony]

I'm Tony, by the way.

[Gary Vaynerchuk]

Pleasure. Nice to meet you.

[Tony]

You know, it's a very noisy world.

[Gary Vaynerchuk]

Yes.

[Tony]

Where you know, all the consumers have time. Their time has been really like fragmented.

[Gary Vaynerchuk]

Right, Correct.

[Tony]

And everyone's trying to get everyone's attention.

[Gary Vaynerchuk]

That's right.

[Tony]

Like Internet or social. Social media.

[Gary Vaynerchuk]

Correct. We're not just competing with Unilever or jj. We're competing with the world. Exactly. Correct.

[Tony]

And you know, so much things going on.

[Gary Vaynerchuk]

Yes.

[Tony]

Every brand, every kol, you know, celebrities create assets.

[Gary Vaynerchuk]

I've heard Tony.

[Tony]

Yeah.

It's all of these.

[Gary Vaynerchuk]

Yes.

[Tony]

How does the brand trying to, you know, kind of evolve with this trend and you know, millions of dollars be spending by a lot of the brand.

[Gary Vaynerchuk]

You should be winning.

[Tony]

How do we get the consumers attention?

[Gary Vaynerchuk]

By doing every single thing we just talked about. You should be winning. You have more money than these KOLs. How does it do it by stop doing above and push down by not taking four hours or four meetings or 19 meetings with 19 people to make a subjective call on a single tweet.

I mean, Jesus, like that's how. By creating a process to take advantage of Everything we just talked about, you just said it perfectly. Everything you just said is right. And how do we combat that? By making a single piece of creative for a lot of money with a very expensive celebrity and try to push it down to the world and make everything match so that it's on brand.

[Tony]

But does that in that way that even the consumer care, like whatever that we're creating and we are pushing to them.

[Gary Vaynerchuk]

If you make good stuff, but you can't make good stuff when you're trying to make one piece of content to mean something for everyone, which immediately means it means nothing to no one.

If laser cats is not something we thought of, we had a process to get to great ideas. We didn't think we had a great idea. When you do a creative AOR pitch in this building, globally, for every brand, for P and G, literally, you're pitching three agencies where two people actually worked on it. I know they had nine creatives in the room, but only one was actually gonna make the decision of what your brand person was gonna say. And then one brand person makes a subjective call, and you bet the farm on it.

And then you spend super amounts of money on the production of one singular piece of creative, and then you distribute it in an overpriced attention framework because you're buying reach. But a GRP means nothing if it's not consumed. And then you go to digital, and you got tricked again to do digital at scale, AKA Programmatic, which is a black box for your agency to make nothing but margin on horrible income inventory on the Internet. And then you kind of passively say, oh, we should do social.

And 80% of the time, you're like, well, it has to be on brand to what's over here. Which means no customer cares, because it knows nothing about the platform and nothing about the culture.

And then we stand around and wonder why, like, it feels different. Thank you so much, everybody. If you enjoyed this podcast, please go back and look at the prior episodes. They're loaded. I appreciate your attention and thanks for being part of this journey. See you later.