The GaryVee Audio Experience

Episode: How To Make Every Penny Work Like a Dollar | IFA Keynote Las Vegas, NV 2019

Date: August 16, 2025

Episode Overview

This episode features Gary Vaynerchuk’s dynamic keynote from the International Franchise Association (IFA) conference in Las Vegas, 2019. Addressing a room of franchisees, franchisors, marketers, and service providers, Gary focuses on how to make marketing budgets deliver maximum impact by capitalizing on underpriced consumer attention—a message highly applicable to both the franchise space and any business owner. Gary unpacks the shifting landscape of consumer attention, the colossal waste in current marketing practice, and why only unemotional, practical, and relentlessly contextual marketers will survive and thrive as media continues to evolve.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

The Wasted Potential in Current Marketing Spend

• Massive Inefficiency in Marketing Budgets
  Gary asserts that "there are 90 cents on the dollar in marketing budget in this entire room...going directly in the garbage." [03:20]
  He stresses that businesses often spend on overpriced channels (like traditional TV and radio) rather than where consumer attention actually is.

• Importance of Contextual, Results-Driven Execution
  Gary highlights that successful growth (e.g., scaling Wine Library from $3M to $60M in sales) comes from making every dollar count and chasing underpriced attention rather than being loyal to any specific channel or format.

The Shift in Consumer Attention & Historical Parallels

• Consumer Attention Is Shifting Fast
  Drawing parallels to the radio-to-television transition, Gary suggests today's move is from TV to social and digital— those who ignore this risk obsolescence.
  “All that’s happening now is that the attention of the end consumer is shifting.” [09:45]

• Reducing Overinvestment in Dying Channels
  He challenges the audience for continuing to overspend on TV commercials and print, given the rise of streaming, mobile, and digital-first behaviors.
  Quote: “The amount of money being spent on television commercials in this room makes me vomit all over my face.” [37:09]

Unemotional Approach: Trade on Attention, Not Tactics

• Unattachment to Methods, Focused on Outcomes Gary repeatedly emphasizes his lack of ideology about platforms:
  Quote: “I care about what’s overpriced behavior and I care about what’s underpriced behavior. And in that delta is how you can operate enormous growth or enormous decline.” [06:57]

• Measuring Real Business Results, Not Metrics He’s critical of marketers who focus on reports and impressions that don’t map to actual business results:
  Quote: “Are you happy to continue to be in meetings...where they show you the GRPs or impressions or potential reach that don’t map to your actual business results?” [26:10]

Branding in the Age of Voice and Mobile

• Brand > Everything, Especially With Voice Search Rising
  Gary projects a future where transactions are done via voice commands (“Alexa, send me a cheeseburger”), meaning only well-established brands will break through. [30:30]

• The Coming Upheaval from Last-Mile and Low Startup Costs New competitors with no physical footprints will rely on delivery, mobile, and strong branding— the franchise world will face more disruption than ever.

Social Media: The Unbeatable Return (For Now)

• Facebook/Instagram/YouTube are the Best Bet
  “There is nothing that compares for this room...to spending money in a YouTube, Instagram and Facebook world. And it’s not even close.” [51:43]

• Localized, Contextual Content Wins
  Targeted creative within even a mile of a location, exploiting social’s ability to build both brand and drive sales, is the key.
  Notable tactic: Congratulating local high school teams with small budget social ads to drive community engagement and foot traffic. [57:41]

• The Peril of Shallow Understanding & Headline-Reading
  “The problem we have in our marketing society right now is this room and the outside world is a bunch of headline readers. People read headlines. They’re not actual practitioners.” [20:30]

Competing in a Frictionless & Disrupted Market

• Build Brand or Get Left Behind
  The only way to survive the next decade is by creating brands people “need”; otherwise, new, delivery-only brands will eat your lunch using superior marketing.

• The Role of Education and Experimentation
  Organizations lack success because they underinvest, don’t test with enough scale, or hire marketers lacking practical chops.
  Example: “You spend 9 million on TV, 100,000 on social, then say social doesn’t work. Break it down for me.” [1:28:07]

Gary’s Overarching Philosophy

• Be Practical, Empathetic, and Relentlessly Self-Aware
  Gary roots his approach in being a “practitioner,” seeking real market feedback over theory or tradition.
  Quote: “I am not a scholar, I’m not a business philosopher, author. I’m a practitioner who’s on a path to buy the New York Jets. I need money, and so I’m a businessman. This stuff is ROI positive, period.” [1:15:00]

Notable Quotes & Moments

• The Great Attention Reveal
  [37:09]
  “80% of this room has just told me to my face that the majority of the television they watch is now Netflix. Not even regular television. And the amount of money being spent on television commercials in this room makes me vomit all over my face. 80% of you don’t even have a chance.”

• On Historical Shifts in Media
  [09:45]
  “Go look at the biggest 100 brands that dominated during the era of radio...who were not overinvesting in [TV]... That is where you will see the rise of Procter & Gamble and Budweiser...”

• On Results Over Reports
  [26:10]
  “Are you happy to continue to be in meetings... where they show you the GRPs or impressions or potential reach that don’t map to your actual business results?”

• On Facebook as a Sales Channel
  [57:41]
  “There has not been a QSR execution that we've had in the last five years where we have not significantly increased same store increase of traffic and higher receipt levels. Not because we're geniuses, but because when you target within a 1 mile radius of an address and you make contextual creative for who you're targeting...”

• On Failure and Accountability
  [45:30]
  “What I love most is the most practical thing to shift in a 2019 world for this group is marketing dollars... You pick the wrong locations and they don’t do as well. It’s on you. I love that.”

• Direct Hit on Platform Ideology
  [24:50]
  "'Gary, Facebook’s not cool.’ That’s nice, Sally. But hundreds of millions of people a day use it."

• On Future Disruption
  [1:08:45]
  “Please, please don’t rest on the laurels that got you or the current strength of what’s happening, because the speed of acceleration... you will be competing with more brands than you ever have because the startup costs are zero, the infrastructure costs are low, and the ability to get to a consumer’s home or office at no cost is going to be staggering.”

Timestamps for Important Segments

• [03:20] – The marketing waste: “90 cents on the dollar going in the garbage”
• [06:57] – Why unemotional, trend-responsive marketing strategies win
• [09:45] – How history repeats: radio to TV = now TV to social/digital
• [20:30] – “Headline readers, not actual practitioners”: The main marketing problem
• [26:10] – Challenge to marketers: Reports vs. business results
• [30:30] – Voice devices, Alexa, and future of branded buying
• [37:09] – Conference-bomb moment: 80% watch Netflix, not broadcast TV
• [45:30] – Embracing failure and accountability in business decisions
• [51:43] – Facebook/Instagram/YouTube as the advertising holy grail (for now)
• [57:41] – Tactical example: Local, contextual content drives results
• [1:08:45] – Coming disruption: Zero startup cost, brandless competitors
• [1:15:00] – “This stuff is ROI positive, period.” – Gary’s core philosophy

Q&A Highlights

• Engagement, Brand, and Results
  [1:15:00] – Engagement is good, but only as it delivers tangible store traffic and business outcomes.

• What’s After Voice?
  [1:18:00] – Gary is bullish on voice for the next 7-9 years, followed by text marketing, but encourages attention to where consumer behavior is actually moving.

• Convincing “Old School” Owners
  [1:20:00] – Results convert skeptics. When Gary grew his family’s business from $4M to $10M in one year, “that ended every discussion ever again.”

• Email’s Fate?
  [1:23:00] – It’s become less effective; text messaging as a marketing channel is “about to explode.”

• Surviving Regulatory and Political Change
  [1:31:00] – Don’t worry; as long as everyone plays by the same rules, focus on your own execution.

• Breaking Through Online Clutter
  [1:36:00] – “Contextual, creative. The end.”

Overall Tone & Language

Gary’s style is direct, irreverent, high energy, and grounded in practical wisdom. There’s significant use of humor, relatable analogies, sports references, and a repeated insistence on common sense and self-awareness. The episode is peppered with strong language and passionate calls to action, aiming to jolt listeners out of complacency.

Final Takeaways

• Audit and redirect every marketing penny to underpriced, high-attention platforms—don’t just follow tradition or “what’s worked.”
• Build brand now, or risk being made irrelevant by new, nimble, delivery-first competitors and disruptive technologies.
• Shift from reporting vanity metrics to ruthlessly pursuing business outcomes.
• Embrace change, test relentlessly, and become practitioners, not headline readers.
• Common sense, empathy for the end-consumer, and contextual content at scale are the keys to the next decade of business growth.

For those who haven’t listened: This episode is both a roadmap and a wake-up call for anyone in business, whether in franchising or beyond. It breaks down in tactical, candid detail why the future will belong to the adaptable, brand-building, context-driven marketers—and why everyone else should brace for disruption.