The Death of Followers and the Future of Marketing | Marketing Against the Grain Podcast

Summary

Podcast Summary: The Death of Followers and the Future of Marketing

Podcast: The GaryVee Audio Experience
Episode Title: The Death of Followers and the Future of Marketing | Marketing Against the Grain Podcast
Date: September 3, 2025
Host: Gary Vaynerchuk (B), with co-hosts/contributors (A, C; likely Kip and Kieran from Marketing Against the Grain)

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Overview

This episode features a high-energy, deep-dive conversation into the future of marketing in a post-follower count, AI-driven world. Gary Vaynerchuk (“GaryVee”), joined by the Marketing Against the Grain hosts (Kip and Kieran), unpacks the transformation from traditional, reach-based advertising to a model focused on contextual, high-volume, creativity-led content. Key themes include the irrelevance of legacy media mindsets, the need for practitioners to remain “in the dirt,” the strategic and creative advantages of micro-segmentation, and the seismic ripple effects that AI and social platform shifts have on brand relevance and agency models.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Genesis of GaryVee’s Influential Content

• Gary pinpoints the talk that launched his business persona:
  • A pivotal Web 2.0 conference speech where he let his intuition run wild ("If you love Smurf, smurf it up"), which transitioned him from wine expert to business thinker ([01:43]).
  • Immediate result: Book offers from major publishers and a feature on the TED site, shifting him into the spotlight for business audiences.

Quote:

"Either this is gonna be the best talk of my career or it's all over and I'll never be speaking again...By the time I got back to the wine store and checked my email, I had like four book offers."
— Gary Vaynerchuk ([02:07])

2. Bridging Domains: From Wine to Business Thought Leader

• Gary’s shift wasn’t really a pivot, it was an unveiling:
  • Decades of practical business, operations, and entrepreneurial know-how were present long before he started talking tech or business.
  • His content traces 16+ years of wine business and even earlier—flipping cards as a child ([04:27]).

Quote:

“I actually wasn't adding another thing. I just started communicating about the core thing. I knew more than anything.”
— Gary Vaynerchuk ([05:20])

3. Context-Driven Speaking & Lifelong Practice

• Preparation is living the craft, not memorizing scripts:
  • Gary’s success comes from deep, continuous immersion in his subject, enabling rapid, contextual adaptation depending on audience/location ([06:38]).
  • Most speakers stick to the same slides; Gary customizes to each context, increasing relevance ([08:40]).

Quote:

“Yes, I am shooting off the hip comma to answer you. Only because I'm prepped to the max, because it's my entire life, right?”
— Gary Vaynerchuk ([09:33])

4. Staying in the Trenches: The Strategist vs. Practitioner Dilemma

• Warning to marketers: Stepping back from execution means losing touch and effectiveness.
  • Fortune 500 CMOs struggle due to distance from the craft—many don’t even use or understand the platforms they sponsor ([12:06]).

Quote:

“The second you take your hand off the wheel, you become a worse driver.”
— Gary Vaynerchuk ([12:22])

• Corporate marketing’s inertia:
  • Despite ROI shifts, corporations grossly overspend on legacy media and rely on second-hand reports, leaving themselves vulnerable ([13:15]).

5. Day Trading Attention & The Death of Followers

• The landscape today is about personality-led growth and real-time adaptation:
  • Reliance on paid ads and Google is a dead end ([17:09]).
  • Gary shares his history of early tech adoption: buying ‘wine’ on AdWords on Day 1, building large email lists before it was mainstream ([17:26], [17:41]).

Quote:

“You know what sucks? When you own Triple A Cleaners in New York and you were the first, first result in the yellow pages under cleaners. And then Google and Yahoo came along and killed the yellow pages…Everything changes all the time, always and forever.”
— Gary Vaynerchuk ([19:05])

6. Agency Model Brokenness & Misaligned Incentives

• Agencies’ interests rarely match those of brands:

  • Most agencies optimize for their own margin and awards, not client results ([23:17]).
  • “Agencies incentives are to make TV ads and try to win awards. And most companies don’t need TV ads and awards are irrelevant.” ([23:17]–[23:24])

• Gary hopes VaynerMedia and independents inspire a new, less status-quo-dependent agency model ([24:30]).

7. Micro-Segmentation, Cohort-Based Marketing & Rapid Experimentation

• 21st-century marketing must address countless microsegments at scale ([30:36]):
  • Brands should target highly detailed consumer cohorts and ship high volumes of content for each ([31:06]).
  • “Quantity does not come at the expense of quality” ([30:35]).

Quote:

“If you do not think in cohorts...the 10 to 20 pieces of content you're gonna put out on social media. You already are on your back foot and are losing market share without even realizing it.”
— Gary Vaynerchuk ([31:49])

8. Why Creators Are Outpacing Brands

• Creators win by being nimble, understanding what ‘culturally relevant’ is, obsessing over the first second and copy, and not being hamstrung by bureaucracy ([33:47]).
• The “this is not on brand” mentality kills creativity and is rampant in corporate settings ([28:04], [34:13]).

Quote:

“'This is not on brand' is the great weapon of bad marketing.”
— Gary Vaynerchuk ([28:11])

9. Creative Is the Ultimate Variable of Success

• Organic social is now the most important channel:
  • Social media’s 'for you' feed means content finds the audience—so creative becomes the reach ([39:08]).
  • Successful brands must act like they’re running daily print/radio campaigns in the past—high volume, rapid iteration ([43:14]).

Quote:

“The creative creates the reach. This is unheard of ... the content itself finds the audience for the first time in marketing history.”
— Gary Vaynerchuk ([39:08])

10. AI’s Impact on Marketing

• AI’s biggest boon is for practitioners and creatives, not middlemen:
  • AI expedites creative iteration but legal/IP issues are unresolved for big brands ([47:32]).
  • The true disruption will hit when platforms themselves start offering native AI ad-creation tools leveraging their own performance data ([50:18]).

Quote:

“The architect is going to win. The masons are a little bit in trouble.”
— Gary Vaynerchuk ([49:16])

11. The Game of Inches: What Sets Great Marketers Apart

• Most marketers operate selfishly, producing dead-on-arrival content:
  • The best marketers begin with: “Why would anyone want to watch this? What's in it for them?”—Selfless, consumer-first creation ([51:56]).

Quote:

“I believe the game of inches...is this: I believe that almost every marketer on earth when they make marketing, comes from such a deep, selfish place that the creative is already dead on arrival.”
— Gary Vaynerchuk ([52:36])

12. Looming Tipping Point: Carnage Is Coming

• Legacy brands are losing both media and distribution moats:
  • D2C upstarts build audiences and brands on social, then have retailers running to them—reversing the power dynamic ([56:44]).
• Gary predicts that within five years, data-driven, creative, organic social at scale will finally overtake legacy TV-centric agency thinking…and corporate “carnage” will result for laggards ([57:00]).

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• "Creativity is the variable of success. Nothing I talk about has changed from the history of marketing. The history of marketing is reach and frequency and the creative is the variable of success." ([45:37] – Gary Vaynerchuk)
• “Romantic about yesterday, infatuated with tomorrow, and we suck at today.” ([45:37])
• “When I say, Don Draper’s dead, he’s dead, dead.” ([51:19])
• “Please Google it if you do not know this word. I know you all do. Carnage. Carnage is coming and there’s such an easy way to stop it. Take organic social media creative seriously..." ([58:08])
• "The consumer insights that come out of making a lot of social media ads a year are worth the price of admission." ([59:45])

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Key Timestamps for Important Segments

• [01:43] Gary’s career-inflecting Web 2.0 talk and the “Smurf it up” moment.
• [06:38] His approach to “prepping” talks—contextual, deep practitioner mentality.
• [12:06] On marketers rushing to ‘strategy’ and the cost of leaving the trenches.
• [17:09] The risks of betting on Google and email—tools always change.
• [23:17] The broken agency model and misaligned incentives.
• [30:19]–[32:51] Gary’s “digest this” rant: quantity ≠ loss of quality, the art of the first second, creative comments, and deep cohort segmentation.
• [34:13] The “not on brand” excuse as creativity’s killer.
• [39:08] Why organic social is now the #1 channel in marketing.
• [47:32] AI will disrupt creatives, but the IP issue remains for big brands.
• [50:18]–[51:19] AI platforms will drive the next creative explosion; Don Draper is “dead.”
• [51:56] The game of inches: selfless vs. selfish marketing.
• [56:44] Legacy brands at a tipping point; "carnage is coming."
• [59:45]–[60:35] The hidden value of social creative: invaluable consumer insights.

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Takeaways for Marketers & Founders

• Stay practitioner-focused: Being in the trenches is essential for relevance and innovation.
• Embrace micro-segmentation and high content velocity: Speak directly to dozens or hundreds of specific consumer cohorts.
• Treat organic social as the main event, not an afterthought: It’s the ultimate testing and scaling ground.
• Beware the "not on brand" excuse: Rigidity kills creativity and relevance in a fragmenting world.
• Align your incentives with results, not awards or tradition: Legacy agency models are failing clients.
• Integrate, don’t fear, AI and new platforms: Use tools to amplify, iterate, unlock scale—but watch for evolving legal/IP risks.

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Summary Tone:
Candid, energetic, no-nonsense and sometimes irreverent—mirroring GaryVee’s signature style and the hosts’ willingness to challenge industry dogma. The episode serves as both a tactical playbook and a rallying cry for marketers ready to survive and win in the next advertising shakeup.

Transcript

[A]

Back in the earliest, earliest days probably episode 20, episode 30. Very early wine libraries, I think I saw it on. I think I was doing web analytics on Crazy Egg and there was some type of like cross promotion blog article or interview or something you had done promoting wine library tv. And I learned a bunch about wine from you, but I learned a lot about marketing from you. And you have done so much over the years that one of the places I want to start is like you've written all these books, you've created all this content. Like what is, if you look what is the most impactful piece of content you've ever made? Like what is that thing where you're like, you know what? I got the most leverage and mileage out of that more than anything else.

[B]

It was probably, you know, it's a crazy story. There was a Web 2.0 conference here at the Javits center, which I'm very close to right this second. And it was early. I might have done three or four talks at that point in my career, but I'd already been in the game and enough to be one of the headliners. Cause it was pretty quick for me. I did a talk in Miami at Future of Web Apps FOA and that hit and then one more talk hit and then, you know this, since you found me that early, there wasn't that many of us in web 2.0 back then.

[A]

There were no creators. Hardly at all, None.

[B]

And the personalities were mainly bloggers that crossed over to video, right? Or social like Robert, Robert Scoble and Guy Kawasaki and Kevin Rose and dignation and Tim Ferriss. Like there just wasn't that many human beings.

[A]

No, we're talking pre four hour workweek. Like this is early, early in the cycle of all this stuff, right?

[B]

That's right. And so I gave a talk at Web some Web 2.0 conference and it was the one where I said if you love Smurf, smurf it up. And I just kind of exploded and just said it was my thesis for Crush it, which was the book that kind of put me on the map in the business world from the wine world. And what was really funny was two really iconic web people were in the green room right before I went on. Fred Wilson, the most successful New York VC, and Jason Freed, the founder of 37signals, who was like a real, real player personality at the time and is one of my favorite people I met in Web2. And I said to them right before I took the stage, like they're like, Gary, two minutes come and get mic'd up. And I looked at both of them and I really go with my intuition and chemicals and I look at both of them and say, huh. Either this is gonna be the best talk of my career or it's all over and I'll never be speaking again. And I went out there, I really felt like crazy, like overhyped. And I'm a pretty hype dude. And I blacked out and did my thing. By the time I got to the wine store. Cause I still was doing the wine business and we didn't have cell phone email back then. By the time I got back to the wine store and checked my email, I had like four book offers from people that were like, I'm in the crowd. I'm from Penguin, Putnam or Simon and Schuster. And then TED picked up that video and put it on the TED Talk website and that was it. And that was really the first, you know, time broadly. I was discovered for business talk. Prior to that, I had done an episode of Wine Library TV where I tasted wine with all these weird vegetables and fruits and cereal and candy that made the front page of Dig and Slashdot and Metafilter, all those places where you could be discovered back then. And then that led to me being on the Conan O' Brien show and the Ellen DeGeneres show doing the same skit. So that was my first broad thing, but this was my first, if you ask me, impactful. Like the Gary career that I have today. That piece of content definitely set it off.

[A]

I got kind of a two part follow up on that. One of the things that you did amazingly well is you went from this like you were doing content around wine. You had a family business around wine and you expanded into business. Most people have a hard time going from one thing that they do well and kind of expanding it. I want to know, how the hell did you do that? You know, I think there are a lot of people here who like feel like they're stuck in where they're at.

[B]

Well, it was weird because I was getting like, I'm very proud of my wine knowledge. And it's pretty significant, Very significant. But the reality was that kid that you saw right when you were a real kid back in episode 20 of Wine Library TV, that was February, so that was March or April of 2006. Yes, that was. Now eight full years into me running the family business and 10 full years since I launched winelibrary.com, which transformed our family business. And 1990, 16 years since I worked pretty much every day Every weekend, every summer vacation. And then Monday through Friday, when I was in school, I was reading the Wine Spectator and talking to my dad at night about the business. Sixteen years into my wine retail career and 2006, call it 1986, 20 years into my true hardcore entrepreneurial career. Because in 86, you know, I already started selling baseball cards and making cards you were flipping. You know, I was really in it. Like, not in the way that I think people understand. Like, I was a bad student for a reason. I was basically running a business since I was in sixth grade. Like, it's all I thought about. It's all I cared about. I'd go to school to sell cards. I'd come home and study cards. And then that switched to wine. And so what was ironic was I actually wasn't adding another thing. I just started communicating about the core thing. I knew more than anything. I know much more about operations and entrepreneurship and marketing than I do about wine. It's just that I came out the gate making a show about wine. And really, it's how the Internet knew me for the first five years that I was out there.

[A]

All right, one last question on this before we move on. So really, that big talk that you said was the thing that really propelled you. That was like 25 plus years in the making of a culmination of a lot of experience. But, like, how do you prepare and put something like that together? I think a lot of people see you and they're like, oh, he's just off the cuff. He just has all these ideas on the spot. I don't think that's necessarily true.

[B]

But you know, Kip, I got a weird one for you, brother.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

It'S a complicated answer. I don't prep for anything that's wrong. Not even for, like, wine Library business meeting. Excuse me. VaynerMedia business meeting. I am so deeply in my craft that it's just incredibly easy for me to talk. Like, if I had to go give a talk on healthcare, I'd have to prep for 100 hours if I had to go talk. But if I have to go give a keynote about the New York Knicks right now, I'm good. If I have to go give a keynote about wine, I'm good. If I have to jets, Forget it. I could give a 400 hour keynote about. And so when I go and talk or do an interview like this with you and Kieran right now, like, I'm talking about what I really deeply know. One of the things, actually, I'm glad you brought this Up. One of the things that I think propelled me in public speaking pretty quickly after that moment was I started going to conferences all the time. And it was the same people in the circuit, the same hundred people had all the keynotes, right? And the same 25, really, at the time. May rest in peace. Tony Hsieh, founder of Zappos Biz Stone, one of the co founders. He was circuit hard, you know, Tim Ferriss, who's amazing, but even like Dave Morin from Facebook. And it was just the same characters, right? Robert Scoble, Guy Kawasaki, you know, and one. And I mentioned those people because these people weren't doing it. But most of the people, including some of the people I just mentioned, they had the same presentation every time, the same one. I would see them at the affiliate summit. Affiliate marketing is quite different than Twitter marketing. I'd see them at the search summit. Like Google search is very different than winning on Twitter. And I would see them at these different things. I'd see them at Le Web. What was going on in Paris and Europe was very different than what was going on in the US and it took me back, took me aback, saying, huh, they know this stuff. But as a presenter, they're just kind of like, this is it. Slide 3. Same joke, same kitten from the Internet on slide 6. And I think what made me stand out was I was incredibly contextual. Like, if I was going to France, I was going to talk about what was going on Web 2.0 in France. When I do the HubSpot podcast, like I'm doing right now, I'm thinking a lot about the agencies, the individuals that are running within this ecosystem. That may be different than if I go speak at a blockchain summit in Finland. Might be different than if I go talk about intellectual property at IP conferences. So I think context matters. But to give everybody an answer, yes, I am shooting off the hip comma to answer you. Only because I'm prepped to the max, because it's my entire life, right?

[C]

That's the important part, is that, like, it's not being unprepared. You've prepared your entire life to.

[B]

And here I'm a practitioner every day.

[A]

Like, literally, we talk about this all the time. If you're in the craft, it's so much easier to talk about it.

[B]

I'm gonna show you. I assume this is audio predominantly, but like, literally, while like 9. 9:02. Literally as. Oh, literally as we were getting ready. It's kind of blurry, but that green box, you don't have to zoom in. It's fine, actually. Zoom in. I don't. It's kind of might be interesting for people. Like, this is me writing the copy to my Instagram post right before we started.

[A]

You're like, I'm doing the work in the moment.

[B]

I am literally the copywriter for my content. Still at this point, you know what people think? They think it's all like, oh, he's got a team. I'm like, no shit. For 11 years, I did it by myself. And then, yes, I got to a place where I have a huge team for my content, but I'm still writing the copy.

[A]

It's still your voice.

[B]

No, no, it's my voice because it's me.

[A]

That's what I'm saying. But you're saying. I'm saying it works because it is still you. You're not farming this out. You were like, I got this razor sharp perspective and I gotta make sure it gets out there.

[B]

But I'm also, like, analyzing the numbers and, like, thinking through the first second and like, like, it's why I wrote the new book. Like, I feel like I'm at the sharpest I've ever been. And I. I know because I've grown up in this game. The last 15 years, as people hit financial success, as they go into different chapters of their life, which is super appropriate, by the way. Everyone gets to live their life the way they want. Most people have, you know, delegated or. Or walked away from the trenches, from the dirt, from the practitionership. I've doubled down on it.

[C]

I would love to kind of dig into this point, Gary. You could do literally anything you want to do with your life, right? Your latest book is on day trade and attention. You basically taught a whole generation how to do that in the Web2, the Web2 era. One of the things that we find with marketers, and I know you manage marketers or spend a bunch of time with marketers, is today marketers want to graduate to strategy really quickly, right? Like, oh, like, I've done a year's work now I'm a strategist. And like, someone else would do the actual craft, but I'll direct them to do the craft. What do you talk, what do you say to people like that? Because you're deep in the craft all this time, you know, today, like, each and every day you're in the craft. Like, what do you say to people like that?

[B]

That's a great question, brother. Look, I'm obsessed with strategy, right? So first it makes sense. Like, I couldn't comprehend not overthinking about this stuff, you know, like it's my favorite part. But I would say to people, the second you take your hand off the wheel, you become a worse driver. Right? And so I do believe that. Let's go very high up. The sole reason Fortune 500 CMOs really struggle with today's marketing is they are so removed to your voice.

[A]

So removed, so removed.

[B]

They don't even have some of these apps on their phone, let alone consume the creative that works on it, let alone make the creative that works on it. Think about that. They are so uncomfortably removed. And so for me, the reason I like being in the craft, it gives me a currency, a pulse of its actual success with the end consumer. But this is also challenging. Here's why. First of all, if you're in the Fortune 5000, so let's include private equity based owned businesses and series D VC backed startups. If you're at that level, a lot of your marketing isn't even in the trenches. Fortune 500 continues to overspend on television, continues to overspend on traditional things. I mean it is flabbergasting how much Fortune 500 companies spend on print magazines and newspapers. There are many companies in fashion and other areas that spend more on print than they do on social creative. Do you know insane that is. So first of all, if you're Fortune 5000, you're running on reports, not on truth, right? Internal mmms, mmas, justifying media spend that are fake. Creative is being done by creative agencies that want to make television ads on a good day and on a bad day want to make banner ads for the web. So it's a mockery there as you go underneath that you have a lot of founders that start companies doing all the social creative, doing all the copywriting, doing the website, doing the email and it's great. And then they get bougie, especially the under 40 year old set. I get it. They want to get to the Lambos and the private planes and the vacations and the pretty girls and the pretty boys and all the things that they want and you know, they start to delegate and they have fast dreams that also leads to quick vulnerabilities. And so, you know, I think, I think you're right, my man. I'm pumped to see the way you jumped in and asked with passion because I do think it's the biggest, it's the biggest variable out there. And I think in a world where money got expensive, right, like meaning raising capital is expensive now. And in a world of post iOS 14,5 and let's call it what it was. The ones that figured out that Facebook, when I was yelling and screaming, it was true. Facebook was so effective that if you just did a very simple cac LTV roas cookie people and travel around the whole Internet and sell to them till they finally give up and raise tons of capital, you were able to make it look like on paper you had a great business. And so that year is also over. And I think we're. This is also one of the reasons I wrote the new book. I think we're going into an era where you're gonna have to be better to win and that excites me and I wanted to prepare my community or the people that have followed me or the people that are curious after they hear about it. And I think I did just that with this new one.

[A]

Well, yeah, so I want to talk, I want to get into the book. Day trading attention. First of all, we're catching you on a good day. Brunson just hung from 41 points on the 76ers. The Knicks are up 3 1. 47. Was it 47?

[B]

I think so.

[A]

47. Geez, I forgot that. So we're catching you in a good mood.

[B]

The jets had a good draft this weekend that I was thrilled with subjectively. We'll see how it plays out. It is a sunny Monday day in New York and I'm on with you boys. I mean this is good stuff.

[A]

So we're catching you at a high, at a high point. Most marketers right now, I talk to Gary are the exact opposite. They're pretty freaked out right now.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

They're like, oh, my ads are getting more expensive. My traffic to my like how to blog post, it's going down.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

Nobody cares about my social media. They're like, my emails are getting open.

[B]

Less and guess what? And if they're real and if they're really smart, like really smart. Uh oh. All my traffic comes From Google and AI things like ChatGPT. Like what if search goes away?

[A]

Well that's what, that's what we want to talk to you about. Like this is Kieran and I's thing. It's like, hey, we're moving into an era of day trading attention where you need personality led growth and different strategies to do that. And if you're relying on just paid ads and Google, you're screwed 10 years from now. Like that's not the right game to play.

[B]

By the way, I had email and search figured out in 2000. I bought. The day Google AdWords came out, I bought all the wine terms. I owned the word wine without a bid, up for three days.

[C]

Incredible.

[B]

I owned. And this was, I think it was like six to 12 months that the minimum bid was 5 cents, not 10 cents on Google. And so like, and then. You ready for. Wait, this crowd's gonna love this. You ready for this one? 1999 winelibrary.com, over 100,000 emails, 91% open rates.

[C]

I remember reading that from your newsletter. It's good to be first. This is another thing you're incredible at. Like, you're first to most marketing tactics.

[B]

Because I day trade attention. I'm never scared. In fact, here's a good one. You can imagine, given the life I live and how loud I was four years ago, there isn't a day that goes by that I don't get 13 questions of, so what are you gonna do, Gary, when TikTok's gone and I'm like, grow? And they're like, what? I'm like, what do you think's gonna happen if TikTok's banned in America? All that attention has to go somewhere. I believe that X is gonna relaunch Vine.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

I believe. I believe there's four to 50 good entrepreneurs right now building a TikTok competitor right now, right now. Because they're like, fuck it. The stakes are so high. If it gets banned, I'm gonna crush. I think Snapchat Spotlight's getting better. I believe YouTube shorts will be a winner. I believe Instagram and Facebook themselves will be winners. But what I know is the ultimate winner will be the best day trader of attention. Because she or he will spend that first two, three, four months really getting a sense in the grand. Cause it won't show up in the math yet. In the gray, they will figure out where it's going and they will hit it hard. You know, what do I say to all those people? Tough shit. And here's why. Here's why I say tough shit, Kip. When I hear Gary, you don't get it. My email, my Google search, what you just said, this sucks. This sucks. I'm like, you know what sucks? When you own Triple A Cleaners in New York and you were the first, first result in the yellow pages under cleaners. And then Google and Yahoo came along and killed the yellow pages. You had a 70 year business. Cause you were. Why do you think? I don't know if people know this. The reason there are so many companies named AAA Cleaners, AAA Landscapers, AAA is because the Yellow pages were the source of finding things and they did it alphabetically. And the people that own AAA showed up first. How about that for a history marketing lesson?

[A]

Probably half the people listening to the show had no idea that was the case.

[B]

So like, so to me, like, you know, you know, it is what it is. Do you think, do you think that Hershey's is thrilled that Mr. Beast made chocolate? You think Gatorade is super pumped that KSI and Logan Paul made prime energy drink? Do you think that Kmart was happy that Walmart happened? Do you think that QVC is pumped that TikTok shop exists? Do you think that Hollywood ABC was thrilled that Netflix happened? Do you think that Toys R Us was happy that Amazon. What are people talking about? Everything changes all the time, always and forever. And if you're crying that the thing that helps you make money is changing, well then you're a hypocrite of the history of how business works. And here's what happened. You got fat and lazy. Yes. And you're in trouble.

[A]

Hell yes.

[B]

And I say this, not I say this, I hope people hear it like it's framed as tough love. Here's why we can't complain about it because we were the beneficiaries of it at some point in our career. I'm not allowed to be mad that email and search got trumped by blogging, YouTube and social media. It's why I ran at it so hard. Because I didn't want to be a hypocrite. I built the largest wine store in New Jersey because everybody else was doing direct mail and full page ads and newspaper when I outflanked them with a website, email and Google. So when I sensed things were changing, I didn't want someone to do that to me. By the way, it happened to my dad. I got busy, started doing Vaynermedia and became Gary Vee, quote unquote and one wines to sold out, came out and innovated a deal of the day Groupon style and really took and became the biggest store and took that business from my dad. Then I got mad cause I love my dad. And I invented wine. I invented winetext.com by the way. Everybody should sign up for it. It's crazy. And now it's deal of the day in text form. Better deals and even easier. You just reply with a number to the text. And so that's what I love about it. It's kind of like, it's kind of like a trilogy in boxing, right? Like you don't win every fight. You might have won the first one, you lost the second one. The third one was a draw. Like. Like. It is what it is. This is the reality of marketing. It will forever change. What I struggle with is how NAive the Fortune 500 companies are of what's happening right now.

[C]

But it tracks with what you said, Gary, in that the CMOs, if you're not in the craft and you don't know how things are changing unless your agency turns up one day and has a bad report, because for the most part, that's. That's all they look at, right? Like you. Actually, to really understand how things are changing in marketing, you have to be in the craft each and every day.

[B]

You just talked about the thing that bothers me. My thing doesn't bother. The CMOs bother me, but don't bother me. What bothers me is the agency landscape. I am flabbergasted 15 years in how much agencies incentives do not align with their clients.

[A]

Agencies incentives are to make TV ads and try to win awards. And most companies don't need TV ads and awards are irrelevant.

[B]

And if you look even deeper, Kip, they sell things that they make margin on.

[A]

Oh, of course.

[B]

So it's not right. They make money on upfront buying on tv for sure. They make a ton of money on creating television. If you're a creative agency for everybody that doesn't know what happens on Madison Avenue, you get paid a full year, millions and millions of dollars just to think of one commercial. You don't even make it. You outsource it to a production company, literally to think, make decks and present. And then even worse, Programmatic Digital, they make so much money in these black boxes justified by cpm. The whole ecosystem is really, really pissing me off. And I believe that the reason I'm still building an agency is a little bit based on my superhero syndrome, which is a problem and I gotta fix it. Cause, you know, you go too far and you start building resentment. That's my personal life and my professional life. Like, I really wanna tear down Madison Avenue with VaynerMedia. And when I say tear down, I don't wish bad on anyone. I just believe that the interests don't align enough. And I'm hoping that I inspire fire a lot of kids that are coming out of ad school to build an independent agency and not sell to a holding company. Because if you sell to a holding company, it goes back to what's happening. I'm not even mad at the holding companies. They're publicly traded companies. And they, they care about their stock value, not about driving business results for their clients. And. And finally, it is the Coca Cola and BMW's fault. If you're writing the check, you're in control. They are feeding the bad ecosystem. They're the ones that can stop it. So, yeah, for everybody who's listening, knowing that there's a lot of people that might be considering getting into the marketing landscape, the Fortune 500 marketing thing is a major problem. It's built on a book called How Brands Grow that was written in 1991. It's the thesis of how companies still run, which is right in principle, but doesn't take into account the practitionership of 2024. Reach and frequency. And being consistent is beautiful. The problem is the world is fragmented. People's attention is 9,000 places now. And so you need to win on relevance at scale. That's how you stay consistent. And so that's why I wrote Day Trading Attention. I'm hoping very selfishly, but also selflessly that I might write the current bible of marketing. And that's the attempt I'm giving.

[A]

That's awesome. Well, first of all, I agree with you on the agency model being broken. Like, we work with you all at Vayner, on social, at HubSpot. Right, Briana. And folks on our team, we're killing it with you all. Thank you. But like, I can't imagine other agency moving and executing and you know this.

[B]

Let's share a little bit from behind the scenes that I think will help everyone. It is. Thank you. And it's starting to go well. But you know, it takes like, I sure you've heard from your team. I'm reading the notes every week. When you're doing it different, it takes a few minutes to calibrate it. It's not the easiest thing for a HubSpot or anybody else to make that transition because it's a different model.

[A]

Well, you have to move fast and back to your point. You have to be relevant at scale. And to be relevant at scale, you have to say interesting and different shit and it offends people. And people are a little uncomfortable about it and they don't know how to act. And then you get some people who will send you DMs and be like, oh, I don't know if I like. And you just have to be like, well, most people do. And the people I'm here for and the people I'm here to serve do. And that's ultimately what matters. I'm not here to make Everybody happy. I'm here to make companies who are trying to grow and be the next Fortune 500 companies, trying to make them happy 100%.

[B]

And you know, it's hard, it's hard for your most senior constituents. I know your founders very well. I'm sure you do. You know, maybe they've seen a post and like. But then, by the way, it's hard for my team. I always tell my team, if we're asking for humility and yes. And culture from our clients, we have to be the same. I had to speak to a creative last week in Asia and said, you're doing to our clients what you cry about, that our clients do to us. Because she was like my model, Our model. The model is we need to win on relevance to many different consumers. When the client has an idea, we need to make that piece of creative with the same gusto as if it was our own idea. And so my team's at its worst when they're like, oh, client, you don't get it. No, no. Every client usually knows their business better than us. And then on a flip side, you know, sometimes it's a senior person, but then sometimes it's day to day people, sometimes a 30 year old who says no to something we're making because it's not on brand in their mind, but on brand is to the different constituents, not the substantial subjective opinion of a human.

[C]

Right? It's not on brand is like the most awful, horrible excuse not to do something.

[B]

This is not on brand. Today's world is, I love you for this. This is not on brand is the great weapon of bad marketing, right?

[A]

Hell yes.

[B]

Because it's somebody invoking their political power on the meeting because this is not on brand would be like me saying that I, Gary, am universally correct in what attractive is.

[A]

Great, right?

[B]

Like I'm like every human on earth, attracted to certain things. I'm not attracted in other people. And in certain things I'm very aware that many people are attracted to those things, including my best friends. Like I grew up, up with friends and they were attracted to certain girls and I was attracted to different girls. That's life. This is not on brand would also be saying lobster is not delicious or I'll go more narrow. I'm obsessed with west coast oysters, Olympia, Kumamoto, but some people won't even eat an oyster. And then the audacity that you as a human, as a brand manager or somebody on the marketing team or social is the only person that knows what's on brand. When in fact we are of the moment where we need to be more relevant to many different consumers than ever. We're not making a television commercial. I'm not interested in debating pink versus fuchsia. Let's post them both.

[A]

Right? I mean what we talk a lot about on this show is that with AI and AI tools gaining steam, the cost to ship ideas is approaching zero. Right? Like if you, if you are obsessed about pixel perfect or the perfect idea, you're going to lose because somebody is just going to out test you and out ship you.

[B]

I just, I just don't understand how people don't understand what's going on.

[A]

Listen Gary, this show is listened to by hundreds of thousands of marketers and founders every month. You have the floor. What do you want them to change about how they think about marketing?

[B]

Like if you could just let me give a bunch of stuff and then you two jump in on the things that you think the audience will click on more. Here are many things that need to be digested which are hard to digest. Number one, quantity does not come at the expense of quality.

[A]

Hell yes.

[B]

Number two, if you do not understand how the first second of a video works per platform, you cannot be successful at social media. AKA how the first second of your video shows up in a TikTok versus how it shows up in an Instagram reel is already different and I'm watching many of you not succeed in one or the other or both platforms because you have not understood the science of the art of the first second of a video. Number three, a comment on a social media post today that's clever. What I call Cassie comments as creative is a more effective marketing execution than almost every banner ad, billboard, radio spot and print ad in the world. Number four, if you do not market to 40 different 30 different, I'll let you get away with 20 different micro consumer segmentations every day. 19 to 23 year old Hispanic males that live in California that are into skateboarding, 40 to 45 year old moms in middle America that have teenage boys, 60 to 70 year old men who are in the last five years of their career, that live in Florida, that work in B2B SaaS, 21 to 25 year old women that only consume TikTok for health and beauty tips on the coasts, 150,000 to 300,000 income earning Asian males who are 30 and single that travel a lot. If you do not think in the way that I just talked about and have many of them for your coffee, for your SaaS business, for your automotive company for your makeup Brand for your Fortune 5005000 or local flower shop. If you. If you do not think in cohorts. And then those cohorts are how you wake up in the morning and think about the 10 to 20 pieces of content you're gonna put out on social media. You already are on your back foot and are losing market share without even realizing it. I mean I've got like 30 more. Let's stop there for a second. What of those four rants got you going man?

[C]

I really want to talk about two. And then I actually have a question around brands versus creators because one of the things we've talked about on this show is the marketing channels growing today favor personalities versus brands.

[B]

Let me. Let me just jump in right there if you don't mind. Only because they're better at marketing. Let me explain.

[C]

Agreed.

[B]

Do do lingo which is killing your.

[A]

Content as creative shit man.

[B]

That's right. That's right. Yeah.

[A]

Like they're commenting comments. Game is great.

[B]

Poppy Soda is building a multi hundred million dollar and as you know it did it through the marketing and micro creators. And then the founder started to show up in the content. Like there's a lot. The only reason creators are dominating brands is because they're better at the marketing.

[A]

Right, but what are they better at Gary specifically? I think they're more agile. They're faster. Like what else is it that the.

[B]

First second the beats the copywriting. Cassie. Like the stuff that fucking matters. Like they. They don't put. Have you seen what brands put out on social media?

[C]

But isn't it. Isn't it because creators don't get the line thrown at them that when they have an idea to put out there they don't have someone throwing a line saying this isn't on brand. That is the great killer of creativity. And creators don't have that.

[B]

Yes. Yes brother. And this is why until corporate America falls in love with. Yes. And. And actually here's a big one. Just. And then I'll let you go back to the four things. I know we're all over the place. Cause I'm having too much fun. Until Fortune 5000 falls in love with. And they will lose. They're obsessed with or they love or eight hours of meetings for or eight weeks of debating. Or. Or. And it makes sense. It's their DNA. When you had to spend all your money on a television commercial it was smart to spend four or five months on figuring out or.

[C]

Right.

[B]

It makes no sense now when your market. Here's I'LL go in there. I'll go on my next rampant. Okay, you said to go ahead, Kieran.

[C]

So I think video is an ever growing important, critical part of like how you market today. And actually all of the channels are starting to skew much more heavily towards video. Like maybe Elon brings Vine back. You are a master of video. I don't think many people have their videos as we shared as much as you do. Teach us or teach brands how to be interested and relevant in video. Because I just think that 90%, 90, 95% should just not do video if they're going to do the videos they're doing today.

[B]

Well, first I said an important thank you for the compliment, but this is why I started VaynerMedia. I don't think you need to be pop on. I'm aware that I have charisma and I'm a good communicator. I understand that helps me. I'm aware I don't have this. I'm aware that people, some people are just so goddamn beautiful. It's hard for us not to watch the video. Then there's people who are just so damn knowledgeable. Right. I may be high energy, but as you two know, that also turns people off. There's other people that are very serious and we love it. Right? We like, like it because it's good information. Lot of ways to win on video. But let's go back to answer how to make video. Let me say it nice and slow. If I am making. If I know I'm making content for Southern frat dudes. 21 to 24 to buy my beef jerky, to buy my deodorant, to buy my bottled water. You can imagine, Kieran, where I'm going. This is the new brief. The new brief is the consumer segmentations. This is how you win on social. So if I already know I'm going after that and then this is why. This is why I don't know if you guys. Did you guys get the book? Did you get to skim it? I'm sure you're busy. I don't know if you read it or skimmed it. Give me real. Did you skim it? Did you read it? A little bit. Like help me understand. Great. When you skimmed it, you probably saw it's kind of textbooky. It's definitely deeper than anything I've ever done. And it was. Cause there was no way for me to articulate what I'm about to articulate. So now I know I'm going after 22 to 25 year old dudes that went to University of Alabama and were in a frat, right? And I know I want to sell them deodorant. First of all. And I know I'm on TikTok. First of all, I know that the thumbnail and the first second is my life. Kieran. Kip. I know that 98% of people do not obsess about the first second. Cause 98% of the content I consume every day waits 8 seconds. And by the way, I do it wrong sometimes too. It's hard. It's hard, but it's true. It's just like sometimes I do pushups wrong. I know what I need to do, but I'm tired. And so the copy, the slang. Kieran, as you can imagine, if I know that I'm going after Hispanic dudes in New York who come from Dominican and Puerto Rican families, can you imagine the adjectives that I'm gonna use in the copy that's gonna be different than frat dude? Like this is what people are not doing right. And then I know it needs to not only the first second, then around six to ten seconds, I need to make sure that I still have them. It's cadence of the video. And then are we articulating it simple. And then there's just a million things that go into it. Do I want this just to be brand? Once it goes organically well, do I convert it slightly to performance? I'm gonna say a very big statement. Organic social media. Organic social media posts per day. What I call social media ads. Because if you don't call them ads, the industry doesn't take it as serious organic social media ads. Just posting is. This is. I'm like pumped to say this on this show is now clearly an undisputed to anyone who's actually in day to day marketing. The most important part of every marketing mix in the world and every Fortune 500 company on a good day has it as the thing 30th most important thing on a good day.

[A]

Why did they think it? I'm with you. It is one of the most important things that we do every day.

[B]

I don't even think it's close. And I'll tell you why, Kip. I'll get to answer why. But let me tell you why it's not one of the most important. It is now leap to the most important. In the last three years, we've lived through the tiktokification of social media. Every single social media platform right now that has a staggering percentage of the world's attention now works with a for you page mentality including LinkedIn just launched theirs, meaning the content itself finds the audience for the first time in marketing history. The creative creates the reach. This is unheard of. I know this is a marketing cruise so I can go nerdy. The creative creates the reach. Now, when you post organically 20 times a day, 15 times a day, 12 times a day across five to seven platforms, might be the three of the same videos slightly post produced per platform. Because on YouTube shorts will be a little different than it was on X and different on meta. When you do that, when the content reaches an over indexing number or a viral number, the data is so strong, the algorithm is so strong that there is 100% affirmation that there's something there there for consumers. So what do you do next as a marketer? You then take that individual piece of content and you slightly tweak it in three different ways. Here are the three things you do everybody. Once you have a piece of organic social media over index your norm. Number one, if you sell direct to consumer or on Amazon or Walmart.com, you take that video and you slightly tweak it and make it a brandformance ad. So it was brand at first, but now you post, you take back the asset. You may add a headline at the bottom that it didn't have before saying on sale. You may turn it into a selling ad. You know how on meta that little thing will pop up at the bottom and you can click to the shop, you may close with a code, you may say go to the click the link in my bio to buy. You turn it into performance not just brand. Okay, that's one thing. Second thing you can do with it and this is becoming one of the most advanced practices of the biggest direct to consumer brands and it works for everyone. You can spend an ungodly amount of money amplifying that individual ad. A video that is a minute or 30 seconds or 50 seconds that is seen by 9 million people on social media is the best commercial on tv. And so instead of just letting it die after it's done organically, we are seeing advanced startups call them the hundreds of millions in revenue still private, haven't sold or IPO'd spend one to $5 million amplifying that individual post. Could you imagine a Fortune 500? Could you imagine telling Coca Cola or.

[A]

Or their money all tied up already, they don't even have the agility to.

[B]

Do doesn't even cross their mind. Wendy's would never take a viral TikTok and then spend $3 million the way they spend on their national TV ad. It's inconceivable that's a practice that will become normal in next five years. Or number three, one of my favorite things to do. We did this with Jimmy John's. You take it that piece of content and that becomes the brief to a campaign. What we call six socially informed campaigns. So you take an individual piece of content or you do a couple more social media ads that are thematically the same and then you're like, wow, all of our grandma granddaughter videos crush. Now that's the brief. Let's go make a commercial for super bowl or for pre roll YouTube long form video. That would be our preference over regular text television. That's marketing now.

[A]

Well, your thesis is actually very simple. You used to pay millions of dollars to people in offices to guess what people wanted. And now you're like, hey, you have to ship 10 to 15 things a day. And out of those you're going to find a handful that are way better than anybody in those offices could have ever come up with. Not because they're more interesting, but they're more culturally relevant.

[B]

They came up with it in the offices. This is what I tell all my creatives from Droga5 and Wild, Biden and Crisp. They come from all these fancy places and they're like, you know, they're a little weirded out cause Vayner's different social. I'm like, guys, girls, you're gonna be able to come up with every idea you've ever had. You can make an ad. Let me break it down more classic. Cause I think you guys will like this. This is gonna help. I see this helping a lot of very traditional marketers. All that social media ads are every day is like literally doing radio, print, direct mail and outdoor media creative every day. Like I said this the other day and it completely unlocked a cynic in the room in this meeting. And she's very smart. I have a lot of respect for her. I was like, look, if your fashion brand 30 years ago could run print ads every day, every day, every day, would you do it if you could have afforded it? She goes, of course. I go, that's social media. I believe that what happened is what happened with television. Television came out. It was small. It was not in a lot of households when it first came out because it was too expensive. And every radio copywriter in Madison Avenue shit on the television commercial. The television commercial was an inferior status in advertising because the radio and print were classic and more elevated. And all that's happening now is the social media ad has taken over the television ad, but the industry is still holding on to yesterday. This industry, my friends, is fascinating. It is romantic about yesterday and it's infatuated with tomorrow. Three years ago I had people willing to spend spend $3 million to build a store in the Metaverse that had nine people in it and they weren't willing to spend $3 million a year on organic social media. Creative. Right?

[A]

Well, that's because all the legacy people are telling them that they don't want to lose the TV budgets. Right, Gary? Like if you're a marketer, one of the best things is just, hey, what are these people incentives that they're selling me and are they incentivized in the old lame way of doing things? And if so, I should open my eyes up and change to the present best opportunity.

[B]

Romantic about yesterday infatuated with tomorrow and we suck at today. It's just real life. And let me say this, this is not a social media day. Trading attention is not a social media only game. I would buy full page ads in the Wall Street Journal tomorrow if they were $4,000, but they're not. I, I think, I think the super bowl is the most underpriced media buy in marketing in the world. At $8 million, I will get 110 million Americans to watch 30 seconds of a video. It is unbelievably underpriced. The problem is if my 30 second video's not good, then the whole thing's a lost. Creative is the variable of success. Nothing I talk about is changed from the history of marketing. The history of marketing is reach and frequency and the creative is the variable of success. Where's the beef? Just do it. The difference is the mediums have changed and I argue that we have always bought potential reach, not actualized reach. Common sense is not part of people's boardrooms. Unfortunately, I don't believe those banner ad impressions. I don't believe GRPs on television. I don't believe the priority company when it said this got 80 billion impressions in PR. It got 9.

[C]

One of the things that's also happening at the same time that, you know, you're kind of making the case that that is the number one skill marketers need to have today. We have to get in a little bit of AI. It is like one of the passions of this show. I, I played with so many tools that will help you do creative, help you create video, whether they're good or Bad right now isn't. The point is like this is a minimal viable version today. Like think about where they're going to be in two years time.

[B]

You know what, you know what cell phones look like 30 years ago? Exactly, exactly.

[C]

We were using Yahoo Web directory before we had Google. Right. Like that's the way to think. Think about this. How do you, how do you think about like as a, as someone who is a master of the craft of content, where is AI fit and into your process?

[B]

Oh, it's, it's an everyday conversation. The only thing that's holding me up right now is the biggest companies in the world need to, to be careful with AI creative because I don't believe that the trademark and copyright issues have been settled. So if your Mercedes and your agency or you make a full pledge 30 second video from AI and you run it on television, be prepared to get a cease and desist and illegal action from a Disney, from anybody who owns intellectual property has some real feelings about people siphoning off of their creative wisdom for their own good. And nobody has figured out what percentage, you know how in music we figured out. Well, if you use 3 seconds of sampling, that's okay. But more than that's not. I'm a little bit concerned that we're in a five year window where we're gonna need to figure out a lot of stuff which again is gonna favor the entrepreneur. These kids, they don't care about. Disney's not suing Ron in Nebraska. Right. So. But behind the scenes, making decks for each other, thinking, using this. Talk about strategy. Kieran, when you say strategy, like using AI to be a strategy partner is incredible. When I here's how my brain works 100%. A year ago, why is everybody starting to wear corduroy hats again? You know, I used to literally go to Google and social for that. The fact that I can type that in and every day I'm seeing that it's getting better at helping me think. I mean this is a big deal. I mean for critical thinkers like myself, for people who are naturally prompt engineers long before they even knew what a prompt engineer was like myself, this is going to be a creative nirvana. For people that are the actual creators, creatives, the actual creatives are going to win big. The people that sat between an actual creative and the market who were doing the secondary creative work, the architect is going to win. The masons are a little bit in trouble.

[C]

Exactly. The tool and this is a boom for. This is what we've argued on the show. This is a Boom. For creators. Like, I was talking to a marketer over the weekend and they were like, AIs will help all hype. It's not that helpful. It's like, fine for research for a blog post, but even just a tiny thing where you can have an AI create a hundred variations of something, you ask a human to create a hundred variations of something, they're out after variation 10. Ah, that's too much work. It's too monotonous. I don't want to do that. I can just say, like, oh, I have this creative idea of a campaign, and I can say, create a hundred variations of this. And, you know, here are some guidelines to iterate on each creation. That alone, I just don't think people get it right. They underestimate, like, having something that can do that for me at the click of a button.

[B]

Well, I got a good one for you. Wait. To the platforms that have all the attention start creating the AI tool creations for the. For the distribution on their platforms when they have all the information of what works on their platforms.

[C]

Right.

[B]

Let me say that nice and slow for all the kids in the back while everybody invests in AI tools and all this stuff, they're all going to get completely wiped by the platforms themselves. And I'm not just talking social. When Netflix has commercials, let's just use Hulu. When Hulu has all the data of the kind of videos and first seconds and scripts that work on their ad breaks at their disposal to make you your ad, they're going to have all the leverage.

[C]

Exactly.

[A]

And they're going to create 100 different variations for all the micro segments. Back to the point, Gary. They're going to convert 100% better than the stuff that you were doing before.

[B]

When I say, Don Draper's dead, he's dead, dead.

[A]

Dead, dead, dead.

[C]

What do you think that. So one of the things that Kip and I talk a lot about is the game of inches, right? That actually, most marketers are kind of doing the same sort of stuff. And maybe they're all kind of similar in skill sets. But the best marketers have discovered, like, the game of interest, the 10%, the 15%, that they just excel and crush everything else. So in your next era of marketing, like, you're painting the book for it. You've written the book for it. What is the game of inches? What is the. To me to excel in the next era, what should I crush it at? Like, what should I spend my time?

[B]

Do I have a fun answer for this? Let me give you the Game of inches that I've always thought was a yard. That is not a new phenomenon that everyone continues to miss. And I would call it a blind spot. I believe the game of inches, especially with the commoditization about many things given AI is coming in. Other things is this is good. I believe that almost every marketer on earth when they make marketing, comes from such a deep, selfish place that the creative is already dead on arrival.

[C]

I love this.

[A]

This is so good.

[B]

I believe the reason I've been able to outflank my inches in every medium, in every iteration has been simply this. I have never sold anything or made anything thing that didn't start with the following framework. Fuck my cohorts. It starts right here. It starts with, why on earth would anybody watch this? When I tell you the game of inches is completely based on the selfless, selfish framework that is marketing in life, it is that, my friends, when I tell you that the reason everything has worked for me and when I see it work for me, others, here's the biggest problem. Everybody comes from the including creators. I want more followers. I want to be famous. I want this to go viral. A couple friends of mine, about three years ago, when they sniffed it out, said, hey, why don't you ever post anything like, cool? I was like, what do you mean? They're like, I don't know, when you take a private flight to a Jets game or like when you drink a $5,000 bottle of wine or like, when you, like, have dinner. Like, I show up and coming kids in my office, but I don't show, like, the people that are big, you know, they're like, why don't you do that? And I'm like, cause it doesn't bring any value to the audience. To me, when someone takes a photo in a private plane with a bottle of champagne there and a pretty person to their side, they're doing that for themselves.

[A]

They totally are.

[B]

One guy came up to me at a private dinner where we had this talk, and I brought this up to this group and he goes, you know what, Gary? That's bullshit. It's aspirational. And I'm like, I really don't think it is. I think that's the makeup you put on it to justify your insecurity that you need those posts.

[A]

Yeah, you're just trying to prove somebody in high school that you're cool, not that it's actually valuable.

[B]

Correct. And I think. And I think brands are worse than creators and influencers at this game. Everything they put out is for Themselves. They think very little about why someone would enjoy this. And that's why humor tends to historically work in marketing. It was like the one place where the selfish brands and agencies were able to meet the audience. Right. But there's so many other things. There's information, education, there's ponderings, there's insights, there's wisdoms, and there's escapism, like beauty and humor. There's banter. There's so many things that could work. But marketing right now is incredibly not creative. I would argue the least creative, and I've got my hands in a lot of things. I would argue the least creative thing I know right now is corporate marketing. It's so not creative. By today's standards, it is. There's no copy, an art director and senior. There's no acds. There's no team of creatives that work in a classic advertising agency that are able to make their best work. I don't think they're not creative. I think they work in companies that suck out their creativity.

[C]

Right.

[B]

I believe many of the people that have gone into advertising, including my own company, came in much more creative than they left.

[C]

Right. It's because of the one thing you like. If you can take one thing from this show, it's because they don't start with what you start with, which is, how do I make something interesting? They start with something like, this is our rigid brand style guide. This is our rigid brand formula. This is what we can and can't say. This is our product that we have to promote. Promote, because that's what we're tasked with. Right. I actually was going through some of them yesterday for fun, for different purposes, but just a litany of branded tech channels that have. On YouTube that have like 500 people and, like, the average video gets, you know, 100 views. And they're doing it day in, day out, putting those things out, and they like, at what point does it drop? No one's watching this.

[B]

I. I think the most interesting thing men, I think the most interesting thing about this entire conversation, and I've been having this conversation for 15 years. The most interesting part of this conversation to me personally, is for the first time in those 15 years, I think shit's about to hit the fan. When I was talking about it in 2005 to private companies as why I was getting wine and myself going, it wasn't even on people's radars. When I started Wine Maynard Media In 2009, my brother AJ's laptop literally created the NHL's Twitter and Facebook account, Campbell's Twitter and Facebook account. My brother literally registered Pepsi's Twitter account. Literally. So you're talking. Think about how far we've come. They didn't even have the accounts. But there was never a time in the last 15 years of having this agency that I felt what I believed deeply was about to tip and have that moment. And let me explain what I mean by that moment. I yelled about Netflix for years in Hollywood to every single CAA executive, ABC, anybody in Hollywood that had power from 2000, I don't know, 10 to 15, every dinner I had with them is, Netflix is gonna win this. Netflix is gonna win this. Netflix is gonna to win this. And they completely dismissed it until they didn't. Everybody who would listen to me in 2014, 15, 16, 17, 18 in Hollywood would also get one other thing from me. Influencers on social media are about to become more famous than famous people. And no one believed me. Both of those things have now become true. And all those people that have those dinners with me are like, how'd you know? Why'd you know? What's next? I believe that we are within five years of the tipping moment in advertising, in Fortune 500 land. Not because I said so, not because of anything else, because it's almost over. Like, these brands are getting hurt. You guys know this. They're losing market share. They've lost, especially CPGs. They've lost both their advantages. They used to have a media advantage. They could spend 50 million on television and kids could spend nothing. But now they're spending 50 million, 30 million on television. Kids are doing organic, social and getting more awareness than they are. By the way, I'm gonna die on this hill. I want every Fortune 500 marketer to hear this. Every single brand that is good at social media, organic, is getting more actualized awareness, actualized awareness than you're getting for your 30 to $50 million media spend. It's not even close to, by the way, that's number one. And number two for CPGs, they got another problem. You couldn't get into Walmart and Target and Sephora in the past. Now these brands are getting famous on social and the retailers are going to them and paying them to come in. Meanwhile, they're charging the CPG big brands to be in their stores and slotting fees and retail media. And these kids are sometimes saying no because they can sell enough on Amazon or Shopify. I don't know what the fuck people are thinking, but carnage. Please Google it if you do not know this word. I know you all do. Carnage. Carnage is coming and there's such an easy way to stop it. Take organic social media creative seriously because even in the way I broke it down earlier, there's something I didn't touch on and I'm glad I got to this rant. The consumer insights that come out of making a lot of social media ads a year are worth the price of admission. Kip Kieran do you know why vaynermedia is the fastest growing independent agency of all time? We have better consumer insights than everyone because we make so many social media ads. 20% of them are made just to secretly ask a question to get insights from consumers.

[C]

Love that.

[A]

Hell yes. Gary thank you, thank you.