POV: You're An Intern At VaynerMedia & I'm Sharing My Social Media Marketing Playbook | GaryVee Q&A

Summary

Podcast Summary: The GaryVee Audio Experience
Episode: POV: You're An Intern At VaynerMedia & I'm Sharing My Social Media Marketing Playbook | GaryVee Q&A
Release Date: June 6, 2025
Host: Gary Vaynerchuk

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Introduction and Setting

In this engaging Q&A session, Gary Vaynerchuk addresses interns at VaynerMedia, delving into essential aspects of social media marketing, the evolving role of AI in the media landscape, and career development strategies within the company. The episode fosters an interactive environment where interns pose pressing questions, and Gary provides insightful, experience-based answers aimed at guiding the next generation of marketers.

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AI and the Future of Media Marketing

Ariana, a resident on the Tubi team, initiates the discussion by inquiring about the impact of AI on media and the necessary skills to stay relevant. Gary emphasizes the shifting value from executing tasks to creative and strategic thinking:

Gary Vaynerchuk [02:44]: "Everything that AI will do is force more value on thinking and less value on commodity executing to become great at media."

Gary critiques the current state of the media department, highlighting a disconnect between traditional metrics like potential views and the actual engagement AI can optimize. He underscores the necessity for marketers to leverage creativity and strategic planning over mundane tasks:

Gary Vaynerchuk [04:00]: "AI is gonna force everyone to realize it's the thinking that whether that's creative or whether that's strategic, that all the value in the world is about to go to thinkers."

He warns against relying solely on automated tools for design and content creation, advocating for originality and idea generation:

Gary Vaynerchuk [06:07]: "Like, why do I need a designer to spend four hours making something that I can make in nine seconds?"

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Skill Development for Interns

When Jathan asks about enhancing specialized and overall skill sets to become experts in digital media, Gary stresses the importance of practical experience over theoretical knowledge. He encourages interns to take initiative and seek mentorship:

Gary Vaynerchuk [08:13]: "The concept of getting one no being the end of your journey is hurting you so much. Ask 13 times until someone says yes nicely."

Gary advocates for entrepreneurship and leveraging AI tools to amplify individual capabilities, suggesting that interns should consider starting side businesses to apply their marketing skills in real-world scenarios:

Gary Vaynerchuk [10:30]: "You may need to seriously start a side business where you do all the marketing. Because all of a sudden marketing is not about reports or theory or politics. It's about the merit of the execution."

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Company Culture and Mentorship

Addressing the importance of mentorship, Gary highlights VaynerMedia’s open-door policy and the supportive culture that allows interns to learn directly from senior leaders. He emphasizes perseverance in seeking mentorship despite initial rejections:

Gary Vaynerchuk [09:44]: "There is a much bigger appetite to just help you than you will find in 99% of businesses."

Gary encourages interns to persistently reach out for guidance, assuring them that building relationships with higher-ups can lead to valuable learning opportunities:

Gary Vaynerchuk [10:27]: "Ask 13 times until someone says yes nicely. Different people, different things."

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Handling Elephant Meetings

Sam and Ursula inquire about "elephant meetings," which are critical discussions to address client issues before they escalate. Gary outlines his philosophy on these meetings, advocating for proactive communication and transparency:

Gary Vaynerchuk [15:07]: "There is 0.0 expectation that you're gonna drive an elephant meeting. That being said, I think it's incredibly powerful for you to practice in your career."

He explains that while senior executives may hesitate to initiate these meetings, interns and lower-level employees should cultivate the skill of identifying and addressing problems early:

Gary Vaynerchuk [16:37]: "Fear is the currency right now. ... I believe the reason that we are different ... is I'd like to think that already you've realized that I don't lead with fear."

Gary emphasizes trust over fear, fostering a culture where open dialogue and honest feedback are valued over maintaining the status quo:

Gary Vaynerchuk [19:59]: "I've just not been as successful to get the leadership team all the way there yet. Those elephant meetings are strictly for the VPs and the SVPs in this company."

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Vision for VaynerMedia's Future

When Jathan asks about Gary’s five-year vision for VaynerMedia, Gary articulates his goal to revolutionize the marketing industry through common sense and socially-driven strategies. He criticizes traditional marketing expenditures that prioritize outdated methods over effective social media content:

Gary Vaynerchuk [21:24]: "If some of you have worked or interned in other advertising environments, like we are very different. So my goal is to change the way marketing is done by every company in the world, in our industry, by us having continued success."

Gary envisions a future where social media-centric approaches dominate marketing strategies, aligning with the inherent strengths of the younger generation involved in the company:

Gary Vaynerchuk [21:24]: "Common sense. ... you can never unsee what you're about to go through. You'll always know this information."

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Conclusion

Gary Vaynerchuk wraps up the session by reiterating his commitment to nurturing future leaders within VaynerMedia. He highlights the unique relationship he shares with the interns, many of whom have been lifelong followers of his work, enhancing the mentorship experience. Gary remains optimistic about the interns' potential to drive transformative changes in the marketing landscape through creativity, strategic thinking, and leveraging AI advancements.

Gary Vaynerchuk [21:24]: "I'm so happy all of you are here because you can never unsee what you're about to go through."

The episode concludes with a motivational note, encouraging interns to harness their unique perspectives and skills to shape the future of media marketing.

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Notable Quotes

• Gary Vaynerchuk [02:44]: "Everything that AI will do is force more value on thinking and less value on commodity executing to become great at media."

• Gary Vaynerchuk [06:07]: "Like, why do I need a designer to spend four hours making something that I can make in nine seconds?"

• Gary Vaynerchuk [09:44]: "There is a much bigger appetite to just help you than you will find in 99% of businesses."

• Gary Vaynerchuk [15:07]: "There is 0.0 expectation that you're gonna drive an elephant meeting."

• Gary Vaynerchuk [19:59]: "I'd like to think that already you've realized that I don't lead with fear."

• Gary Vaynerchuk [21:24]: "Common sense. ... you can never unsee what you're about to go through."

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This episode serves as a comprehensive guide for interns and budding marketers, offering Gary Vaynerchuk’s unique insights into leveraging AI, fostering creativity, embracing mentorship, and driving meaningful change within the ever-evolving landscape of media marketing.

Transcript

[Gary Vaynerchuk]

Hi. Hi. Hi. Hi. You see? This will be better, I think. Yep. Hi, everybody.

[Zhang]

What's up, Gary?

[Gary Vaynerchuk]

Hi. Hi. Hi.

[Zhang]

Thanks in person. Love it. Gary, thanks for joining us. I just kind of gave everybody the spiel. I know you love the Q and A portion. I'll give you the floor. And I asked everybody kind of think of questions they want to ask.

[Gary Vaynerchuk]

Great. And introduce yourself. And real quick, I think Olivia and Lee, I think some of you are actually in the building. I couldn't recommend for you to come to the Empathy elephant conference room more. So if you're in the building, please head over. All right, Zhang, thank you. Great to see you as always. How's your fantasy baseball starting off?

[Zhang]

It's good, thanks for asking. I draft yesterday. I'm in first place right now.

[Gary Vaynerchuk]

All right, good. Hi, everybody. Great to see you all here. Hi. All right, Gary.

[Zhang]

I think the one thing that might be helpful. Ursula asked a couple questions last week in the all hearts about the elephant meetings. There's been a little bit of just thoughts in general about, like, how should residents think about when it's time to have an elephant meeting? Obviously, it's a little bit of a more nuanced conversation with their positioning on their team, still trying to get to know everything.

[Gary Vaynerchuk]

But yeah, I would say, yeah, I would say to kick that off. I mean, look, I'm struggling to get SVPs who are 40 years old and have had 20 year careers to call elephant meetings. So, you know, let there be no confusion. There is 0.0 expectation that you're gonna drive an elephant meeting. You know, that being said, I think it's incredibly powerful for you to practice in your career. There is a gracious, humble way to maybe raise your hand if you're in a meeting where you can hear that the client's not going the way we're going. And maybe you ask in your slack or for your direct report or Zhang, or like, hey, I think XYZ is not doing what I think Gary's saying we want to do. You know, how do we go about it? So, you know, I think that's how I think about that. Zhang.

[Zhang]

Appreciate it. Appreciate it. Okay, guys, raise your hands.

[Gary Vaynerchuk]

Yeah, raise your hands on screen. There we go.

[Zhang]

Ariana.

[Ariana]

Hi. Hi, I'm Ariana. I'm resident on the Tubi team in LA.

[Gary Vaynerchuk]

Amazing.

[Ariana]

And just saw your LinkedIn post about AI. And AI will kind of doing a robotic job if you're not creating new things like creative thinking. So my question is like, in relation to media, what do you think the future of like AI in that space looks like. And as someone, what skills can I kind of up level in to make sure I'm well positioned in the next few years?

[Gary Vaynerchuk]

Everything that AI will do is force more value on thinking and less value on commodity executing to become great at media. I believe it's based on the biggest thing that I'm pushing as we go into this next chapter with media. I believe my relationship with our media department is really interesting because a lot of things that the media department currently believes I don't believe in because they are forced to believe it because the way the client measures awareness is based on potential views, not actualized views that I believe a lot of you even given the head nods in here now that if your life depended on it, you would not buy programmatic trade desk garbage, digital inventory with ugly banners and pre rolls to sell a thing. I think what's gonna happen is that AI is gonna force everyone to realize it's the thinking that whether that's creative or whether that's strategic, that all the value in the world is about to go to thinkers. This is why school is such a bad framework. This is why I've always challenged school so much. School, which all of you are so close to at this point in your life. I don't think anything is lost on this with any of you. You're not being rewarded to critically think or to be creative. You've been taught your whole life in school to do something that AI is now gonna do. It's really true. Like what? Like you were taught to memorize facts. I can get the facts in a second. You were taught math. I could do math in a second. All of the value in the world is headed towards creativity and strategic thinking. So if you're in media az, do you know where attention's shifting? Right? Like for example, people are like, gary, what about Reddit? I'm like, Reddit doesn't have good ads. I love Reddit, but I don't like what we can buy on Reddit. It's not gonna do anything. I'm aware that people go to espn.com I'm sure you looked at your brackets to see if we're gonna win anything. You know, like, I get that you go there. Raise your hands. You've never clicked the banner ad on purpose. Raise your hands. That's it. I just want you to know our industry, the industry you're doing this with spends more working media dollars on banner ads than social media. Yeah. Are you fucking kidding me? So I think az, it comes down to are you a thinker? Right? Do you use common sense and truth? Do you know where trends are going? Do you understand the thinking? It goes back to planning. Everyone's gotta be the best planner. If you're using a historical term, you're a planner. I'm giving you a million bucks. I want you to sell this hat. What are you fucking doing? Influencers, Facebook, Instagram, pre roll buying a placement on Pat McAfee's show. Like, what are you doing? So whoever here is the best at thinking at how to spend the money to make the sale in the short and the long term sale in the short term, brand building in the long term, that's who's going to win. And AI will take away a lot of the jobs of like what you do in a fucking Excel sheet or on tracer, like hand to hand bullshit. Can I ask a follow up really quick?

[Jathan]

Answer the question. So how do you think? Creative. You said creatively. But what do you think about ChatGPT? Like creating images? Or like, how are you using it as a tool? Like, do you think that's going to take over as well? Or no?

[Gary Vaynerchuk]

Yes. Like, why do I need a designer to spend four hours making something that I can make in nine seconds? Like, if you're a designer today who doesn't have her or his own ideas, you're in trouble. But if you were the leading salesman selling yellow pages in 1999, you don't even know what Yellow Pages are. How many people here have no idea what the yellow Pages are? Yeah, so yeah, bro, like the Yellow Pages used to be a book that every person had that you would look at for information in your general area because there was no Internet. The telephone hook. Well, when Google came along, Yahoo. Search engines on top of the Internet, there was people who made their living, paid for their family's mortgage by being salespeople for Yellow Pages. They went out of business. You're going through it for the first time. So you're like, oh fuck, my cousin John is, is dead. But like, that's what always happens. When the tractor was invented, everybody worked on a farm. This is just evolution. And if you're a designer, if you're a creative, by definition, the first requirement is ideas. Otherwise what are you bringing to the table? So AI is gonna put a lot of pressure on the world. You guys are in it. Congrats, you picked a good time to be born. But I would argue it's the biggest opportunity for a lot of you. It means you'll end up not being an employee Means you'll end up being an entrepreneur because you're going to learn how to use these things. And instead of getting being an executive here, making 150,000 a year, you'll do something around something you love, making 150,000 a year because you'll be able to. Because your AI infrastructure and capabilities will be the power of a workforce of 10. So pros and cons to everything.

[Amir]

What's the best way to improve our either specialized skill set or overall skill set to really become those people of like, note and become, you know, the experts in the field of digital media.

[Gary Vaynerchuk]

Well, what do you think, Jathan?

[Amir]

Oh, I think the start is listed.

[Gary Vaynerchuk]

You know, I agree it's a pretty.

[Sam]

Good open door policy.

[Amir]

I've been making the best of it, trying to get as much feedback and insight from everyone up the ladder as much as I can.

[Gary Vaynerchuk]

I think that is a remarkably smart and strong observation. The only reason that this is a good program is because of the culture we've created for the last 15 years where you have senior people that are willing to spend time with you. Now, of course, some of you just heard that and you're like, no, not true, Gary. Fuck. I reached out to like two people and I haven't been able to get a response. There's gonna be always moments in time, right? Like if there's a fucking account on fire and you happen to be on that account and like, you want like, hey, teach me. And they're like, fuck, we're just trying to save the business. That might just be the luck of the draw, but as a whole, including what I'm doing with you right now, from the top down, there is a much bigger appetite to just help you than you will find in 99% of businesses. And so I'm proud of you that you've sniffed that out. And like, you know this like, like Amir in your office, he's fucking smart as shit. He'll tell you, he'll tell you everything.

[Amir]

Amir is my manager.

[Gary Vaynerchuk]

Makes sense. So like, to me, if you're like, Amir, will you. Can we get like drinks from 7 to 10 and talk about things in detail? He'd be pumped to do that. This is just a good life lesson for all of you. The concept of getting one no being the end of your journey is hurting you so much. Ask 13 times until someone says yes nicely. Different people, different things. So there's a lot of, there's a lot of no's here. Circumstantial people, busy. Three people are out on mat. Leave and that person's got a. Like there's just a million things that could be going on. But don't let a no to getting some one on one mentorship deter you from asking the next person. Sometimes you can get the boss of the boss to give you a half an hour versus your direct boss just because of the nature, just the serendipity of just how work works.

[Amir]

I want to be Gary or be past Gary.

[Gary Vaynerchuk]

That's good for you. As you should. As you should. Let me tell you that. Let me give you the answer of how to do that. Get out of being in a marketing agency and get into actually doing something. Gary's Gary, because the first 20 years of my career was using marketing to build things, not being in an agency. I'm a practitioner. Right. So you may need to seriously start a side business where you do all the marketing. Because all of a sudden marketing is not about reports or theory or politics. It's about the merit of the execution. Zhang will tell you and he should do a follow up of this. He's been here from day one as we brought in fancy math people and seemingly me as the DNF student should not be of that ilk with the media department. They could never beat me because they were playing in media for the sake of media, not the true goal of growing a business. Marketing is a proxy, it's not an actual thing. It is a part of a thing called growing a business or an entity, a nonprofit, a personal brand, a campaign. It is an energy of offense.

[Sam]

Hello.

[Gary Vaynerchuk]

Hello.

[Sam]

First of all, Gary, finally, nice to see you through a fireside chat. I wanted to say this has been a great opportunity to in the residency and it's taught me a lot. One thing. Oh, so just off. I'm a media analyst resident based in the EMEA locations of London. I think you're going to be joining us this week.

[Gary Vaynerchuk]

Yes, I'll see. I'll see you in a couple days.

[Sam]

Yeah, so yeah, you'll see me in a couple of days. I actually want to bounce back to Ariana's question and kind of like the question that's been going on around in regards to like AI, how do you feel about AI and how it's kind of developing the marketing field and how will VaynerMedia in possibly the near future implement that into its ecosystem? Because that's one thing I'm very, very curious about.

[Gary Vaynerchuk]

Yeah, I mean I view. So I'm old enough to remember when companies were asking this question about Internet. Yeah, right. And everybody was like, I was just with Pearson and the head marketer at Pearson, she said to me, gary, you know, Pearson is going to be an AI company. I'm like, no shit. I'm like, just like Pearson said 25 years ago, we're going to be an Internet company. A year and a half ago or a year ago, everybody was wondering in the company why I wasn't making all of us learn midjourney and like use, you know, like. And it's because of what you just saw GPT do last week. Like we're still early. Like, how am I gonna implement it? It's oxygen. It's not even how I'm gonna implement it, it's how AI is gonna implement itself. In all of us, there is nothing. AI is not a thing. It's like a process. It's like oxygen. Yeah. You know what I mean? So we will use all the codes. Excuse me, we will use all the platforms. It will just be fully ingrained back office. Every single way that project managers take notes will be AI. Every way we do media execution will be AI. Every way we make creative will be AI. It's just omnipresent which platforms. What I did well that other people got caught on is we're not in a five year contract with technology that's now already old. The amount of agencies last year that locked into two, three, four year scopes on SaaS, businesses that are now can't get out of, not to mention the AI tools that Facebook Meta and TikTok and Instagram and Twitter and all these companies put at the forefront of the places we do the marketing are gonna be better than the tools that are in the market. Like what GP does for making imagery. I'll be able to do just inside of X and Meta and TikTok and it's gonn a propensity to know it gets more organic reach because it has the data ChatGPT does it. Wouldn't it make sense that if meta made me an image inside of meta that more understood the propensity of engagement that that creative is going to outperform me doing it in a silo on Adobe or chat? So look, I'm always me. If I'm not moving fast on a technology, it means that it hasn't fully baked yet.

[Zhang]

Gary, I think the one thing that might be helpful. Ursula asked a couple questions last week in the all hearts about the elephant meetings. There's been a little bit of just thoughts in general about how should residents think about when it's time to have an elephant meeting. Obviously It's a little bit of a more nuanced conversation with their positioning on their team. Still trying to get to know everything.

[Gary Vaynerchuk]

But yeah, I would say, yeah, I would say to kick that off. Look, I'm struggling to get SVPs who are 40 years old and have had 20 year careers to call elephant meetings. Let there be no confusion. There is 0.0 expectation that you're gonna drive an elephant meeting. That being said, I think it's incredibly powerful for you to practice in your career. There is a gracious, humble way to maybe raise your hand if you're in a meeting where you can hear that the client's not going the way we're going. And maybe you ask in your slack or for your direct report or like, hey, I think XYZ is not doing what I think Gary's saying we want to do. You know, how do we go about it? So, you know, I think that's how I think about that saying, all right, let's keep it going, Sam, go for it.

[Ursula]

Hey, Gary. I'm Sam. I'm a media resident out of Toronto as well. I had the pleasure of working with Jason. I'm following up on the cnc, the elephant meetings. I'm super curious, as the agency grows that as you have less ability to touch everything, what's the balance between escalating up to you and cultivating that ability to handle elephant type situations at every level? How can we kind of develop those skills so we don't necessarily have to have a higher level?

[Zhang]

Or would you prefer that people do?

[Gary Vaynerchuk]

I prefer that people do. Here's why, brother. I think this is similar to the Jathan answer. I like people to taste things in real life versus theory. Another reason why I struggle with school. You know, it's theory. Like you could read about doing pushups, but you've got to actually do them for the thing to happen. I can do more in 15 minutes than a lot of our team can do in three months because I lack the fear of losing the client, which is uniquely mine more than anyone's. I have to be empathetic to my SVP's and my leaders. They believe that it's all good in theory that I say that. But if they walked in my room and they're like, so, Gary, I had the elephant meeting and Bose fired us, so we lost 10 million. Thanks, see you later. That that would be bad for them. I know that that would never happen if they had an elephant meeting. In fact, I know that if you don't have elephant meetings, that's how you actually lose the business. So what I've seen, Sam, is that more people are affected and being good at it by seeing me do it in the room with them. It's not like I'm having the elephant meeting by myself. Some of you may be in an elephant meeting. Cause I want you to learn, so. I do. Yeah. It continues to be an ideology for those people that make six figures a year and have a VP or an SVP title that say, my job is to keep Gary out of it, and it's my job to keep telling them. That'd be fine if you were keeping every client. So the proof is in the pudding, ultimately. So, yeah, I mean, you'd be. Let me go even further, Sam. Nobody asks for it. I just interject myself when I can smell it at my level. We are still not good at this at all, brother. People are predominantly driven by fear. That's why politics means what it means. It's how your parents parented all of you. Don't touch that. You'll burn your hand. Don't do that. Like it's. Fear is the currency right now. I'm sure it's not lost on any of you. It's at scale. That's what's really going on with politics. Occasionally politics will use hope. And that's why you've heard about Obama or JFK or, you know, but predominantly it's fear. And parenting is almost all fear, and corporations are. Are almost all fear. And I believe the reason that we are different and we've been special and we're just starting and we're gonna get very special is I'd like to think that already you've realized that I don't lead with fear. Doesn't mean I'm naive, doesn't mean I'm stupid, doesn't mean I'm delusional. It means I just know that it's the second best way to get people to do things. Fear is good at getting people to do things in a short term, but then trust is lost and it doesn't become awesome. Yes, Sam. I've just not been as successful to get the leadership team all the way there yet. Those elephant meetings are strictly for the VPs and the SVPs in this company. I'm hoping to affect directors that become VPs that they've heard it for a long enough time. But it's. I'm telling you these, especially people that have worked elsewhere, when Liz B. You know, or Connor Bryant or Jonathan Murtaugh, when they grow up in different places, it's the old, you know, that old adage of like, tough to teach an old dog new tricks. It's hard. They're like ingrained, Sam. They don't believe me. No, bullshit. They don't believe me.

[Ursula]

Maybe through this residency and the faces around you from that ground level, you can start to build that up.

[Gary Vaynerchuk]

Yeah, it's exactly what's happening. And obviously I have a very different equity with people here than I did when I started the company. There's a lot of people here who've known of my existence since they were in middle school. That's a different relationship I have than when I started this company where nobody had ever heard of me, period. Outside the wine business and definitely not in advertising. Some of you have literally had my videos or books part of your curriculum on your journey. So I have a lot more leverage to your point, Sam, that's why I'm so optimistic. That's why I care so much about this program. I'm obsessed with this program from one of two things. One, it's the thing that showed you that it can be like this in a company and the skills that come along with that. Common sense. Or two, this room has the future C suite in it. Like I'm going nowhere. Like 15 years from now for me is like cool. Like that's tomorrow. And so that's exactly right. That's why this exists. Otherwise we just hire people from one year in and other places.

[Jathan]

What's your vision in five years? Like, how can we contribute to that? Like, what's one word that you see Vayner going to it that we can like embody.

[Gary Vaynerchuk]

This will be hard to land because a lot of you don't have context elsewhere. But let there be no confusion, like hi, we do marketing very differently. All of you are younger and you're more naturally your day to day lives are more social media centric. So it may seem like very common sense to all of you what we do. But again, if some of you have worked or interned in other advertising environments, like we are very different. So my goal is to change the way marketing is done by every company in the world, in our industry, by us having continued success. If I was thinking about one word, I would literally say common sense. It's probably the biggest thing that makes me think like most of our, like think about this clients genuinely around the world that are, let's say Fortune 5000 companies think it's a better idea to spend way more money making a television commercial than making any social media content. How is that possible? In 2025, for example, let me bring in politics. You know, I'm sure this hit everyone's radar. There was a lot of conversation of how Kamala spent so much more money than Donald Trump. And I'm sure all of you hear like the podcast did. Well. And she that's the same conversation. Many companies spend more money on making billboards than making social media content. I'm so happy all of you are here because you can never unsee what you're about to going through. You'll always know this information. Whether you're here or somewhere else. You will be grounded in this information. And for a lot of you, you've used social for real life, not from a business lens. So for a lot of you, it's also been a great. It'll be a great learning experience or was great learning experience because you thought you knew things cause you were about it every day. But now you're looking at it from a different angle, from a business angle, and you're seeing different nuances, which is also valuable. So common sense. Yeah. I unfortunately have to go, but it's a pleasure and hopefully we get some more time together and thank you for all your contributions, everyone. Thank you. Thank you. Cheers.