Stop Guessing: How to Use Organic Social Media Content to Validate Your Ideas

Summary

Podcast Summary

The GaryVee Audio Experience
Episode Title: Stop Guessing: How to Use Organic Social Media Content to Validate Your Ideas
Date: February 10, 2026
Host: Gary Vaynerchuk (and guest moderator “Mark”)

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Overview

This episode centers on how major brands can use organic social media content as a fast, effective tool to validate ideas before committing substantial media budgets, especially in a rapidly evolving marketing environment dominated by AI and constantly shifting channels. Gary Vaynerchuk takes a deep dive into the shifting relevance of email, the reality of ethical marketing, and how brands should approach generative AI. Candid and actionable, Gary provides memorable insights for marketers eager to avoid wasted effort — and stay ahead of the curve.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Continued Importance of Email Marketing

• Email is Far from Dead:
  Gary asserts that, despite claims to the contrary, email remains an essential marketing channel — “If print and outdoor and radio have a seat at the table, how can't email?” (02:26)

• Personal Story:
  Gary recounts building a 60,000-person email list for his family’s wine business in 1997–99, which was game-changing for their success. Early email saw open rates over 80%, something Gary believes could return partly thanks to AI-driven customization. (02:26–04:39)

• Potential for AI-Boosted Open Rates:
  “Email titles... so uncomfortably specific to me... I don't think we get to ‘80s, but... everyone can get a 20 to 40% bump on open rates.” (03:55)

2. Omnichannel Execution: Harmonize or Fragment?

• “And, Not Or” Mentality:
  Gary rejects the idea that all campaigns must “match the luggage.” Both harmony and fragmentation can work, but marketers should let organic results determine which, rather than guessing in a boardroom.
  “I believe that fragmentation and cohesiveness both can work, both don't work.” (10:26)

• Data-Driven Validation:
  “We guess in boardrooms, focus groups... For the first time... we can actually measure it by organic views achieved.” (11:55)

• Experimentation & Iteration:
  “I've posted four different times with a slightly different variation. The first three got 70,000 views... the fourth one got 6.3 million.” (13:23)

3. Ethical Marketing & Long-Term Brand Building

• Don’t “Spray and Pray”:
  Gary cautions against volume-over-value:
  “Everything they do in campaign work, outdoor and television, is spray and pray, yell, scream, guess...” (15:40)

• Short-Term Sales vs. Long-Term Brand:
  “If the team is telling you to send more and more emails because we're going public next week... I get it. But if you're like me and you're playing long... become disproportionately empathetic to the person on the other side.” (20:18)

• Learned from Experience:
  Gary shares how, after initially ramping up email frequency for short-term sales, open rates crashed and long-term value suffered — a mistake he won’t repeat with SMS. (18:12–20:18)

4. AI in Marketing: Strategic Patience and Adaptation

• AI Stigma and the Adoption Curve:
  Many consumers and even brands are hesitant with generative AI, due to job security fears and unfamiliarity, but the stigma will fade (match.com comparison). (22:35–24:29)

• Urgency to Learn, Not to Rush:
  “You need to know it, friends, you need to touch it. Do not become your grandma that you made fun of for not having a smartphone.” (24:29)
  “Be careful what you commit to because there'll be better technology tomorrow. Unheard of.” (26:14)

• Execution Over Data Hoarding:
  “The data is the setup. What you do with the data ... that's the execution, that's the punchline.” (30:39–32:17)

5. Common Mistakes of Big Brands and Agencies

• Broken Reporting and Wrong Metrics:
  “Having a creative AOR that just thinks and makes decks is killing everyone... You can no longer pay an agency to come up with ideas and make decks to then later have someone else make it. The marketing, it’s over.” (33:32–34:57)

• Objective Measurement Over Subjectivity:
  “We need much more at bats ... This is not test and learn. This is make creative in the channels ... put it out, watch how it does. It’s science now.” (34:57–37:10)

• This Era Rewards Great Creative, Not Just Media Blasts:
  “A hundred years this industry has used good working media dollars to disguise bad creative. We are now going into the era where you can amplify — use good working media only to amplify good creative ... judged by organic content over-indexing organically.” (38:18)

6. How to Validate Ideas Using Organic Social Content

• Start in Social, Then Scale:
  “When something does well, Mark, we literally use the essence of that video to write the copy of the headline and the body of the email. And we've seen a 10% uptick... The mid funnel is the starting point of all marketing.” (38:22–39:31)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Email’s Lasting Power:
  “In 1998, we had 83% open rates. Mark, it was new, it was underpriced attention... It’s a supply and demand game.” (02:26)

• On Cohesiveness vs. Fragmentation:
  “Matching luggage, on brand. I believe that the data on growth in sales and long-term brand prove that fragmentation and cohesiveness both can work, both don’t work.” (10:26)

• On Guessing in Marketing:
  “Marketers, we guess in boardrooms, focus groups… A/B simple testing. Not enough... When I post organically in social, if it gets used I’ve confirmed relevance..." (11:55)

• On Playing the Long Game:
  “Become disproportionately empathetic to the person on the other side of the email. I would argue that's how I think about everything.” (20:18)

• On AI and Being Patient:
  “If you jump too fast, that elk and rabbit’s gonna get away… In this scenario, Mark, the CMO is the panther and the leopard. And our empathy... is that the panther, if it doesn't eat, dies.” (27:00–27:45)

• On Creative vs. Media Spend:
  “A hundred years this industry has used good working media dollars to disguise bad creative. We’re now going into the era where you can amplify — use good working media only to amplify good creative.” (38:18)

• On Using Organic Signals to Validate Ideas:
  “We post on Wine Library and WineText, Instagram and TikTok, Google YouTube Shorts ... when something does well, Mark, we literally use the essence of that video to write the copy of the headline and the body of the email. And we've seen a 10% uptick.” (39:31)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• Email’s Enduring Value & Gary’s Story: 02:26–04:39
• Lean-In/Lean-Out Channel Dynamics: 06:10–07:59
• Fragmentation vs. Cohesion in Campaigns: 10:26–13:59
• Learning from Email Overuse Mistake: 18:12–20:18
• Ethical Marketing & Long-Term Impact: 15:30–20:18
• Navigating the AI Revolution: 22:35–26:14
• Data as Setup, Execution as Punchline: 30:39–32:17
• Biggest Industry Mistakes: 33:32–34:57
• Validating Content with Organics, Then Amplifying: 38:18–39:53

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Actionable Takeaways

• Use Organic Content to Test Ideas: Don’t “guess” which creative will win. Use organic social to see what resonates; then amplify.
• Don’t Overdo Messaging: Even if sales spike short term, repeated email/SMS blasts can decimate long-term value.
• Adopt, But Don’t Rush Into, AI: Experiment with AI behind the scenes; don’t overcommit to solutions likely to be outdated fast.
• Empathy & Long-Term Thinking Win: Always nurture the community and respect customer attention.
• Rethink What “Good” Content Means: Awards and impressions are less important than validated, organic engagement.

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Final Thoughts

GaryVee’s practical, occasionally brash candor is on full display, urging brands to drop tired boardroom habits and embrace a test-learn-scale approach. The most successful marketers, in his view, are those who no longer “guess” but use real consumer signals from organic content to validate creative — then let tech and media follow. With the AI tidal wave upon us, patience, empathy, and a willingness to experiment (and admit mistakes) will separate market leaders from the rest.

Transcript

[A]

A hundred years this industry has used good working media dollars to disguise bad creative. We are now going into the era where you can amplify use good working media only to amplify good creative good is not judged by an award. The USA Today ad meter me and Mark seasoned veterans. It is done when organic content over indexes organically through the AI relevance algo and then you take it up for brand and down for performance. My email at wine library has exploded because the mid funnel we define as organic social. This is the GaryVee audio experience.

[B]

Gary, good morning. Thank you for joining us. So great to see you.

[A]

It's great to see you my friend.

[B]

We have thousands of folks who have signed up to listen to your perspective on how these largest brands in the world can do better. Human year in 2026 with AI, with engaging with customers and digital marketing, all the rest of it. So I want to get right to it and maybe work to cover off three different areas today. The first for us always is when we, when we think about all of the different tools that a marketer has to go and try and reach an audience, that email is only one of those tools. And to talk a little bit about during our conversation that the relevance or not of email as a channel, you know, for the marketer, follow that by something that for us is near and dear to our heart. We call it ethical marketing. Always trying to do the right thing when it comes to campaigns. Then finally we've got a whole bunch of questions from our brands about, about AI and about thinking about generative AI in particular and the tools around that in, in 2026 going forward. So that's our agenda, you know, for the next little bit. Sounds good to you?

[A]

Sounds pretty easy.

[B]

Awesome. Well, why don't we start with email. We have been, we're biased, of course. We spent a lot of time with some of the world's largest brands helping them with email and the delivery of their campaigns. But we've heard over the years, right, every time there's been more enthusiasm and virality around a new channel, the reports around this is the death of the inbox. Email's going away. You know, give us your point of view on this. Is email relevant still?

[A]

Yes. Because if print and outdoor and radio have a seat at the table. How can't email even me in my younger days before these gray hairs kicked in, brother, you know, I think and even like in my older age, you know, on the record, I think 50 is incredibly young. I'm working till I'm 99. So I'm only at halftime. Look, friends, for everyone's watching. I think you all know this as marketers in your soul, it may not be the thing you're most thinking about. There's the key here is of course it's relevant. But let me tell you my email story, brother. I launched an email service in 1997 for my dad's liquor store. It was the foundational channel that changed the course of my family's life. I built a 60,000 person email list for wine buyers by 1999. In 1998, we had 83% open rates. Mark. It was new. It was underpriced attention. You know, when I get excited about live social shopping, like right I am right now, it's because it's grossly underpriced attention because it's a supply and demand game. When I fall in love with social media back in the day, it was that same reason. In fact, social media at first was email marketing. Get as many followers as possible, post content that you hope they open and convert on email today with AI technology, as you know, and I'm sure you all are thinking about this, has the potential to get smarter and smarter, more and more targeted. We could actually achieve 80% open rates again instead of 20s and 30s and teens if the email titles are so uncomfortably specific to me, you know, and look, I don't think we get to 80s, but do I think everyone can get a 20 to 40% bump on open rates with what I anticipate is the potential of best practice email marketing in a year or two. Email is a central hub of information and attention. I 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. They'll make my mom super happy.

[B]

At the brands that we work with about the foundational nature of email in their programs and some of the fun conversations we end up having with a lot of the creative folks at these brands when they think about their campaigns can be across the channels. It's the difference between kind of reacting to a piece of content, maybe a video on Social or TikTok or pick your favorite platform. That grabs my attention. Right? And I want to go share that quickly with the network who shares with their network. And we vastly have this piece of content being exposed to and being reacted to by a huge audience. And then on the one side and then on the other, that great subject line that was personal over personalized to you, right? That got you to open an email. Maybe there was an attention grabbing piece of color content as well, some sort of a video grab in that email. But around that there's text, right? There's words. There's a requirement for the reader to actually go and process and engage with that content in kind of a lean forward way a little more. And what I wonder about from your perspective is as you think about the market or trying to go and bring a new offering to market or create demand for an existing product, whatever it is, how do you think about that different kind of lean back or lean forward dynamic about these different channels?

[A]

I view it as an and not or I will tell you. And this is with all due respect, Mark, I know how nerdy I am about this. I think the way you describe social is a yesterday nuance. Let me explain what I mean by that. I don't know if you know this and every marketer should know this. You cannot get organic reach in social unless people leaned in. That is a huge misconception. So the number one engagement metric that actually leads to a million views versus 50 views is not like share or comment. It's actually lean in, zoom in, stay on it. My best practices on social is writing five paragraphs to an organic social piece of content. So look, social is incredibly special for now. You know you can get both, you can get, you know, when you have an email. As you know, it's funny, I grew up in the era where people actually did forward their entire address book and email. That was, remember that was virality.

[B]

The joke of the day.

[A]

Looked everybody, look, when you understand how to do email, its conversion capabilities are remarkable, right? They're just remarkable. And SMS is similar now as you know, we've started getting into that era. So I think it's incorrect that we're in the era of social where it's only snackable. There is a major lean in. Email is lean in to me and I get why, because it's the darling now it hasn't been. But social's the wrong place to look at for email if we want to grow email's market share with marketers. It's kind of everything else to me. For example television, programmatic banner ads, pre rolls, outdoor direct mail, these are all mediums of conversion hopes that email can destroy when done right. And again, let me throw a curve ball. I can tell all. In fact, I'm going to tell all of you how to waste $5 million on social media right now. Make three pieces of content like you're doing television, post it. But Post it with a million dollars in media to support it because you want it to do well. Wasted money, Mark. So all these mediums are about execution. But I think to your point, email, we've been conditioned to read it. Some of my best conversion emails for WineText, in fact, I hope all of you sign up for winetext.com. there's a little right hook for me. What you'll see in the emails. We do text, but we also do email are very in depth nerdy. Talk about red Burgundy. Things that are very hard to come across in a lot of other mediums, like how many acres, how the yields are done. Like, I tell a story about the dog running on the yard on the vineyard and eating the grapes, and this is the best Pinot noir and you're gonna impress the boss or get the girl or get the promotion. Like, this is an email. Some of the other email is like, you better buy this right now or it's gonna be sold out in four minutes. So email also has its flexibility for snackable lean in and lean out. In fact, one of the coolest things I do as an operator, I have 2,700 employees. When I email the entire company, it is often the entire message in just the headline. Yeah, like nobody. So again, I get excited about talking about email because I think anything can be great in marketing and anything can be horrible. There are many people watching right now that are massively wasting money, time and energy on email. But it's not email's fault. It's their fault, Mark.

[B]

So when we think about that, Gary and those folks that are, that are looking not waste money, want to take that money and do good things with it. And they're, they've got a. These are the world's largest brands that are global organizations. They've got teams dispersed across the globe trying to further a brand that they probably spent decades, you know, fostering and nurturing and using omni channel approaches to get this done. So they're looking at making sure this campaign rocks not just on email, but also on SMS and also on social. What's your view? Does there need to be great harmonization in every campaign across these different channels, or is it totally cool to have email look this way and text look that way?

[A]

I'm of the belief that both can and do well work. Yeah, I'm a very and guy, Mark. I get passionate. Listen, I've been branded very aggressively much because of my execution over the last 10 years around social, because it's underpriced. I mean, I wish for this conversation, Mark, I was making videos in 97 to 2000 you would have saw 74,000 email videos about, you know and then it would have been Google search and you know, I think both work. I know everyone who's watching was taught for cohesiveness, you know, matching luggage on brand. I believe that the data on growth in sales and long term brand prove that fragmentation and cohesiveness both can work, both don't work. I'll tell you what I'm passionate about. I'm passionate about if everyone. Here's my argument with everyone here that does matching luggage across the board. They guessed, Mark. They guessed on the tagline, they guessed on the color. They guessed, Mark. We guess and we have to own this. Marketers, we guess in boardrooms, focus groups. You mean the ones that are always wrong in politics. A, B simple testing. Not enough bullshit metrics that SaaS companies have ripped off our clients with for creative X testing. This is my obsession about social, Mark, that when I post organically in social, if it gets used I've confirmed relevance and I can then understand the creative. For the first time in creative marketing history we can actually measure it by organic views achieved cause of how powerful these AI algorithms are. So if everyone wants to go cohesive, I'm looking at your backdrop, right? And it all has to be this scheme and this font and all that. I'm not against it, but I sure would have liked it to be validated by something that is true. And I have too many examples of things that have looked different and done well that are not as cohesive. And I know that it's based on academia, not on the streets, the hard streets of business world. And so that's where I sit on this issue.

[B]

I appreciate that. I think we've. We tend to slant toward do the right thing for the channel is the advice we tend to offer most of our brands. If you have a rocking campaign in text that interacts a certain way with an audience, don't match the luggage to email.

[A]

Well Mark, if I may. I'm sorry to interrupt and there's a nuance. That's why I got inspired. So I apologize sir. And then you can keep trying too. If I could eradicate the word or in marketing we would explode as an industry it's and brother, how about I've got a campaign working in social, I wanna take it to email and the first time I go I underperform on my open rates and conversion. I don't think that means you should not try again. Yeah, you know what? I Mean, there's just more at bats at it. I mean, there's social media posts that I've posted four different times with a slightly different variation. And the first three got 70,000 views on average. And. And the fourth one got 6.3 million.

[B]

Right.

[A]

We don't do enough post production, we don't do enough nuance, we don't do enough context. We don't do enough third bite at the apples. I'm telling you, Mark, I'm gonna. This is on my children's health. The subconscious inertia of television first hurts our industry, brother.

[B]

I wanna come back to this concept of dynamic content, trying and trying and trying personalization, particularly with AI, in a minute. But can I, can I take us there through a conversation around ethical marketing, please? You know, this concept always just do the right thing, period. Like it's that simple. Kind of how at least I was raised. I think you were raised and like, you know, you just do the right thing. You have your customers back. You don't spy on people in email. Right. You don't go kind of buy lists, kind of glom outbeat content all out and hope and spray and pray, like, do the right thing. Right? Do the right thing all the way through. I think about the, the long game, right. That marketers can go play here. Right. That I think a lot of the world's leading brands get. They must. But. But that it's always tempting. You get the hard sales folks in the room, you get the CFO in the meeting room, they're like, man, we need more. Give us more. Pike, let's go. Let's grow. Let's. Let's blast out another 4 million emails right, to a list we just bought from somebody on the street.

[A]

Yep.

[B]

Like, what's the, you know, what's your perspective here? Like, is this how. How should a marketer go back to that CFO and back to that sales guy and be like, dude, off the gas. Like, let us do what we do. We are cultivating and nurturing a community of folks who want to engage with our brand. Right. That we can go and build meaningful pipe around versus this just, you know, volume 11, blast out we go.

[A]

First of all, I agree, comma, I'm thinking about starting a fashion brand for about two years now. The brand is literally called nice guys finish first.

[B]

Love it.

[A]

So I agree, comma, I would argue that all of the marketers, if they're Fortune 500. How many Fortune 500 marketers do you think on are on this call, Mark? 490 of them, I would argue everything they do in campaign work, outdoor and television, is spray and pray, yell, scream, guess all the stuff you're rightfully arguing against. Which is why I have been who I've been on this issue. Other than super bowl, best ad in marketing. There's a lot there. First of all, one of the great disservices to our industry was that we call performance marketing, not sales. If I became the king of marketing and everybody had to listen to me, and it's a monarchy, It's a monarchy of monarchies, and it's the marketing monarchy, and I got chosen to be the guy.

[B]

King Gary.

[A]

King Gary. First thing I would, oh, heave from my top of my mountain is we must rebrand performance marketing to performance sales because we are confusing each other. Cause it is not marketing, it is sales. And that's what you're alluding to, Mark. Right? Yeah. I mean, look, I believe in brand over everything, which confuses people because they hear me talking about certain aspects of execution of traditional marketing, and they think I don't like the principles. I only believe in relevance to consideration, to purchase. I only think in lifetime value. When I was building my father's liquor store, I was building a brand called Wine Library because I knew I was gonna leave one day and I didn't want my dad to screw it up. So I had to build a brand, not just sales, right? So I believe in all of that stuff. What I would say is, look, it's funny, Vayner, we've exploded because I think CFOs like us more than CMOs. I actually, I only like marketing cause it's the offense of a business. So I would say a couple things. First, at our marketing worst, a lot of us push back against CFOs and business leaders and head of sales because we're not accountable. And this is why CMOs are struggling. We're playing a bullshit game. Too much. Mmm. Too much mma. Too much Cannes Lion. Too much ad. Age said it was good friends. This is business. We need it to perform. That being said, I can tell you I learned my lesson on email. Let me tell you how. Mark.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

When Wine Library launched its email service back in 1997, do you know what it was called?

[B]

I don't.

[A]

It was called the Wine Library weekly email newsletter. And I sent it once a week. And then one Sunny Day in 1998, I was like, wait a minute, what if I send it twice? We'll sell more stuff. And do you know what happened, Mark?

[B]

The opposite.

[A]

Nope, not yet. I sent it and motherfucker, we sold a ton more.

[B]

Okay, I see what's going on.

[A]

I know you do. I'm helping you here. Now I'm a shark with blood in the water. I'm like, okay immediately. It took me a year to add a second day. Within a week we're Monday, Wednesday, Friday, right? Within three months we're on the weekdays, can't bother people on the weekends. Within six months we're Monday through Sunday. And Mark, we are cooking with gas. But all of a sudden 80%, 70%, 60, right? And now it's costing me more to replenish people in. And then you know what happened, Mark? I said, what if we email people twice a day? And you know what happened? We made more sales. And then something happened. 24 months later we were in trouble because 80 became 60, became 40 became 30 and I could and the cost. And I was remember why I was winning Because I was acquiring customers from now Google AdWords to the email. I was cooking. This young kid was smarter than this old guy. Probably in some ways I was cooking. But eventually I started to understand lifetime value retention. How am I bringing people value? And I took the pedal off. And the reason, winetext. The thing I mentioned earlier, which we're doing in SMS and email has revolutionized my father's business is I am not making the same mistake on SMS that I made on email. And so what do I say? I say I'm empathetic, I'm a businessman. If the team, Mark, it's all circumstantial. You know this. If the team is telling you to send more and more emails because we're going public next week or next year, I get it.

[B]

Maybe you do it.

[A]

That's right, brother. If I know we're trying to sell the company and we want some more top line revenue, I get it. But if you're like me and you're playing long and you're running a marathon, then I highly recommend you become disproportionately empathetic to the person on the other side of the email psycho about bringing her and him value. And I would argue that that's how I think about everything. And I would say that sms, email and social. I'm specifically passionate about being great at that because you can be great at that there in a way that's harder in outdoor, harder in television, harder in other places.

[B]

I love that empathy piece that is, you know, we think about compassion, empathy, trying to be in the spot that our customers, our marketers are in every day thinking about A lot of these folks have spent their career and their team has spent their career fostering a brand in a world that was quite different, right, than what we find ourselves in today. And now here comes AI, right? Here comes. We have this great opportunity, I think no place more so than in marketing, right, to go benefit from AI. And at the same time, for sure, I mean, part of our business care is we work with the mailbox providers like Microsoft and others worldwide, right, to try and help them figure out is your mail should go to the inbox or should it go to the spam folder, right? And so part of that what we hear from them is yikes. You know, for the last couple years, the amount of content now finding its way in exponentially larger. Much of it's really lousy content, right? Obviously, yeah, I got terrible generative AI spam, right? And so now the market is like, all right, yikes. I've got to go figure out how to benefit from AI. I've got to go have my signal to noise ratio stay good even though the amount of noise just went through the roof. What? You know, again, these are the world's largest brands, right? These are folks that, that are working hard to try and keep pace, right, with the innovation and a lot of the upstarts. How do we offer them some perspective on how to win with the advent of generative AI in digital marketing and email?

[A]

Well, because this is a Fortune 500 crew and not startup, they get a very different answer. Let me explain one, you know this and I can see by your reaction you probably know where I'm going. If you're really sharp, you know that this is exactly what's happening. These next two to four years is challenging because the end consumer doesn't want AI right now because actually the reason they're pushing back against McDonald's AI ad is because they're scared to lose their job to AI. So the masses, gen pop are asking you all who are watching right now to not do it. But the ankle biters and startups that we're competing with are going to do it and, and are gonna outflank us. And then just like online dating. Mark, how old are you, brother?

[B]

I'm 55.

[A]

You look great. I'm 50, so you look good. No, I don't know about that. But hear me out on this one because you definitely are gonna agree with me. Remember match.com 2002, 3, 4.

[B]

Of course, sure.

[A]

If you had a buddy or you've met someone on match.com and that person became Your girlfriend or boyfriend. You told everyone, including your family you you met at a bar. Of course the stigma was extraordinary, right? Today it's the only way people meet. I mean, not really, but you know what I mean. The majority. The stigma of AI, creative and generative AI will go away because society will always evolve. This is an incredibly profound strategic moment for everyone on this call. A everybody on this call as a human needs to know. Claude Gemini chatgpt Perplexity. You need to know it, friends, you need to touch it. Do not become your grandma that you made fun of for not having a smartphone. That's what this is. I would say it's also a very interesting time. I've never seen this market. I've been in the game now for a little bit, you know, I was there early and invested in Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr. Those are the stock certificates.

[B]

Awesome stuff.

[A]

I lived through the Web.com, you know again email, website, search engines, first day on Google Adwords. Me a liquor store boy in New Jersey, not in Silicon Valley buying all the wine terms. I've watched it all. I watched the August 2000 crash of Pets.com, watched Amazon, PayPal and eBay go from 100 bucks a share to 3 bucks. The web is dead. No front page of the Wall Street Journal. The Internet was a fad. The web was a fad. No, no, we got to the end other side or Washington Post NFTs and blockchain. I'm living through it on that front right now. It's very important everyone listens to me on this. You have to understand it. There is stigma on the output. There are a lot of things you could be doing on the back end to be more efficient. That doesn't need to be the front facing thing to the consumer. But we must navigate this as Fortune 500 and understand we need to understand it. But I'm not doing much because I'd never seen in the 90s, mid 2000s. There's been three webs prior to this one, right? Web 1.0, late 90s, web 2.0, 2005, 678 and web 3.0 15, 16, 17, 18 Blockchain or nearly more 19, 20, 21 this AI thing Mark I've never seen anything like this before. Nanobanano makes anything amazing three days later Microsoft these super scalers meta Microsoft, Google this is an arms race that makes Russia versus America in the 70s and 80s embarrassed on their technology NASA, all those things like the Soviets like this is like happening on everyday basis. So I think one thing is be careful what you commit to because there'll be better technology tomorrow. Unheard of. Imagine signing up for Salesforce back in the day and then a day later there's a better Salesforce for half the price.

[B]

This is literally what our customers are faced with.

[A]

I know.

[B]

Overwhelmed. I think about this from the empathy side that, you know, they're for three and a half years now, every one of their core vendors. Salesforce, a great partner of ours, great company. Adobe, Oracle, SAP, all the big marketing clouds have been promising and maybe hiking a little too much. Right? Here's the Agentix solution coming for you. Our Fortune 500 customer around our new AI enabled cloud marketing platform. And a lot of those are gonna be awesome. They're gonna be awesome. They're just not awesome yet, right?

[A]

Or to be frank, they are awesome. I would say slightly different if I may. They're awesome now compared to what you're doing. They're just gonna get outflanked the next week.

[B]

And so what do you do? Right?

[A]

What do you do? You wait. You wait. I mean, you know, I don't know why this analogy jumped in my head. You know, all the big cats in the jungle, the puma, the panther, like, like, how do they eat? They're patient, right? If you jump too fast, that elk and rabbit's gonna get away. You know, I think that's awesome.

[B]

I think that's great.

[A]

Oh, that's a good one, right? That's a good analogy.

[B]

Well, what's great about it too is that it pairs nicely with the fear, right. Empathy that we're trying to go and provide for these marketers, right?

[A]

Or like, but in this scenario, Mark, the CMO is the panther and the leopard. And our empathy is not for the rabbit or the elk. Our empathy is that the panther, if it doesn't eat, dies.

[B]

Correct?

[A]

That's right. And so, you know, this is the hardest one I've seen. And by the way, what I think is gonna happen is great companies like yourself and others, I think the incumbents are sitting in a nice spot, right? They're intertwined. You know, it's funny. People are like, what's your AI strategy? And I giggle. It's fun getting older. I didn't realize it would be. I was there when it was like, what's your computer? Literally, what's your computer strategy? Like, does your company have computers? Wine library. My first developer, I gave him a business card because everyone had a business card back then. It literally said, Eric Kastner, computer department. You know, then it was, what's your Internet strategy? How many people say, what's your Internet? Then it was, where is it? Then it was, what's your mobile strategy? Then it's, you know, AI is oxygen. That would be like asking someone what their electricity strategy is, right? Like, this is omni. This is present in everyday life. Everything will be AI enabled and we need to think that way. And I just tell everybody on this call, do not rush into contracts. Or if you do have good outs, you know, like, don't sign some, you know, these freaking SaaS companies. You guys probably do it yourself. There's some poison pills in there. Like, you gotta be careful, everybody, like, all joking aside. Cause I know you guys are trying to do the right thing, but, like, I really am pushing my cmo, you know, I've been sitting in a really cool part of my career, Mark. It's probably not lost on you. When I came out the gate in Fortune 500 land, most of the people were kind of like, who's this joker? Because I've got a personality. I got a funny communication style. I'm a Jersey boy with a lot of extrovert energy. But now I'm in this cool spot where my stripes were earned not only by the success, but more importantly. And this is why I wanted to do this, because I respect this so much about your company. I'm a good dude. My mom. Not because I did it. My mom is all time. And so I have a lot of. And anyone here that wants to hit me up on LinkedIn, but there's no C before my last name. It's Gary Vaynerchuk with no C before the K. I'm having tons of conversations, Mark, with CMOs that are not my clients that I'm just doing karma with. And this is the combos we're having.

[B]

That, you know, that plays so well. I can't believe there's a spelling error on your name. Is. Thank you for catching.

[A]

No word. I'm not. I mean, I could care less. I'm having. I'm having fun.

[B]

That'll be able to make the highlights the, you know, when that. That hype, right? That AI. How do you differentiate like the. You know, for us, we try and tell our folks that, you know, in the. In the storm of AI, right, everybody has an AI thing. The differentiator that we believe is data, right? That. The. That if you got proportion proprietary data that's using.

[A]

I'm sorry to interrupt you. We're just jamming. I think it's the setup. It's the jab I don't think it's the right hook. The data is the setup. What you do with the data, right? Like, you know, right? Like, I'll just use fighting. Cause I guess that's the analogy. If I watch so much film on you as a fighter that when we fought that I saw you at a tell that your shoulder moved. Well, now I have the data, but if I'm unable to land a right hook to your jaw, the execute. Got it. So I think people get caught up. In fact, I'm obsessed with data, comma. I actually often find that it's the commodity. Now, to your point, it's a commodity that a lot of people don't respect enough. Like, to me, it's. Commodity's the wrong world. It's the essential. But a lot of times, you know, a lot of people come to my conferences, Mark, and I always razz them. I'm like, what are you doing here? I'm like, you know what I'm gonna say? You coming to this conference, wasn't you doing anything? You doing? What I'm saying when you leave this conference is you doing something. Data's the setup, but what's the execution?

[B]

Oh, that's great. That's an awesome perspective and that. Everybody does think they have data, right? 100%, by the way.

[A]

Everybody on this call does have data, brother.

[B]

For themselves, correct? For their view. So being able to go execute on global data, that differentiator, I think. But the execution of it, that's where the value comes in. That's the hook.

[A]

That's right. That's the punchline, right? That's the variable of success, the creative and the execution. The message is the punchline. But if, you know, strategically, that email, like I did in 97, had attention that was underpriced. If I executed great creative in a catalog, which is what my competitors were doing, by the way. Mark, I don't know if you were drinking wine. Do you drink wine?

[B]

Oh, my wife loves to. So then I do, too.

[A]

So, you know, happy wife, right? I was trying to compete with the biggest liquor stores in the country. Zacky's in Scarsdale, Sherry Lehman's in Manhattan, Sam's in Chicago, K and L in la. That's who I ended up becoming. They were all doing catalogs, brother. I had the strategy, the data, the understanding that it was email. I still had to have a good wine offer. I still had a good headline. I still had to have a good copy. But if I had executed my creative in the wrong strategy print, I wouldn't have grown, I would have been behind. So all these things mesh, you know.

[B]

It makes perfect sense. It makes perfect sense. When you see people make mistakes. When you see some of these big companies, like just whiff, like, what are the mistakes that are so avoidable that we can go and share with our audience?

[A]

How much time do you have? Look, friends, I say this with real sympathy. I know how you are all being measured internally. Right. I think the reporting has broken us. I think the CFOs and CEOs that yell at us as marketers are actually the problem. They have to change the scoring. But I think we as CMOs have to accept that and force the change. Les Miller, Brown Lift studies and Neil. The mistakes are rampant. Let me give you. Just. Let me just spray and pray that. Pray that one of these helps someone. Big mistakes. Personally, subjectively. But objectively, if you want to look at business health, having a creative AOR that just thinks and makes decks is killing everyone. Mark, we are. We're in the production era. You can't. I think Druga 5 and wine and Kennedy are incredible companies in our industry. But VaynerMedia let me. I don't even need to mention anyone else. When vaynermedia is hired and asked to just be the creative aor, I hem and haw and sometimes even say no. You must hire us to be who we are. Which is a production company that happens to do creative media and strategy. You can no longer pay an agency to come up with ideas and make decks to then later have someone else make it. The marketing, it's over. Huge mistake. Measuring.

[B]

That's a good one.

[A]

Thank you. It's a real mark. It's a big one. It's the biggest one. For everyone here. It's the biggest one. And it's tough because I'm really poking the bear. But like, I actually call a lot of these companies. I respect the creative agencies. They're my competitors. And I'm calling the leaders. Cause I like them as humans. Because you meet them at these things and I'm like, brother, sister, I'm telling you, you will not be able to survive. The gig is up. I know. Notice how you just reacted. I know everyone on the other side's like. Cause a lot of people are not talking about this. I have a feeling a lot of people are like, huh? 2. Measuring reach is destroying us, Mark. Potential reach versus actualized reach is killing everyone. The acceptance of GRPs, the acceptance of impressions digitally, a billboard. I mean, six times the amount of cars that go by. So potential Reach versus actualized reach. Huge disease, next. Subjectiveness. We must address that. All of this is subjective in the boardroom. It becomes objective when it goes into the social feeds and you can see how many views were achieved. We are an industry that loves to think we know in a boardroom and we, we do not don't know. We don't know. We need much more. More at bats. This is not spray and pray. This is not throw against the wall and see what sticks. This is not even test and learn. This is make creative in the channels that people live in, email included. Put it out, watch how it does build. It's science now. It's science now. Pandering to awards, trying to be the most creative agent. I mean top brand in the world. These are the Oscars. Don't mean it's the best film. Don't mean it's the highest grossing film. The awards are destroying us. Fear, Mark. Fear's killing us. We have one example of Bud Light doing a social media campaign that really hurt its business. Everything else was a 24 hour news cycle and didn't affect the brand. Yet many people here don't post enough or do things that have teeth in them because of fear under underestimating.

[B]

Can we go back to the fear one for a minute? Because this is one we, you know, we, when we think of the intersection of AI personalization in email, right? So trying to go and massively up the game in terms of dynamically putting the right content to the right created curated audience, right? And by doing all that, that through automation and agentic approach, we see lots of folks doing this is. And the fear that comes from the brand is like, dude, like I'm not in control of that. You might break my brain. You might actually take me back.

[A]

No, no, it's not.

[B]

How do we help those folks?

[A]

By showing, showing them the truth, Mark. They don't have the example. There's one. There's one. I'll tell you why this has been like such a meaningful combo and I'm very much in my karma. I have a ton of flights coming up and just messaging. Please everyone connect on LinkedIn and say hello if you got value out of this. Keep going, brother. Let's sneak one more in. We got one more minute.

[B]

I'm glad you did it, man. So the, I mean that's it, right? That's the hope that we.

[A]

Let me give you the last one. A big one. An atomic bomb to end it.

[B]

What's it gonna be?

[A]

A hundred years this industry has used good working media dollars to disguise bad.

[B]

Creative oh what a great quote.

[A]

We are now going into the era where you can amplify use good working media only to amplify good creative good is not judged by an award. The USA Today Ad meter, me and Mark, seasoned veterans. It is done when organic content over indexes organically through the AI relevance algo and then you take it up for brand and down for performance performance including email. Our email has exploded. Here's going Tactic city usa. My email at Wine Library has exploded because the mid funnel we define as organic social. We post on wine Library and WineText, Instagram and TikTok, Google YouTube Shorts and by the way, all of this social is now feeding the LLMs. So we're going into the AEO geo era. Social content more important than ever. But when something does well Mark, we literally use the essence of that video to write the copy of the headline and the body of the email. And we've seen a 10% uptick. 10%? Like meaning we've gone from 27 to 37% open rates. So not a 10%. Excuse me. That's exactly right, Brother Lyft. In the last six months when we've gone to this thesis, the mid funnel is the starting point of all marketing. Your super bowl commercial, your ad campaigns and all your promotions performance ads down below. If you understand the volume of content, strategic content that you need to fund properly and structure to be able to affect all your stuff. That's the punchline.

[B]

Gary. That was an awesome way to leave this group with some action. A big virtual round of applause for Gary V Man, who took some time out to talk to all of us here. Litmus Live. Gary, thank you very, very much.

[A]

Thank you. Bye bye 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.