This industry I hope knows what happened for Walgreens and their mango gummy candy on one TikTok brother, one organic TikTok post sold out that product nationally and it was sold on ebay for a premium that is unparalleled to anything you could do in class marketing. A single TikTok that went viral sold out every pack of nice mango gummies at every Walgreens in America and it was sold for 4 to 15 times the price on ebay. That's how much a man there was. Because the buzz, the buzz on that one video, not the buzz.
Human attention. Attention is the only thing that's happening here. Why is a register? Why is being at the counter or at the register such as the thing, it's attention.
You're in line, you're bored. Let me grab some Tic Tacs. This is the GaryVee audio experience. Gary G.
I'm first of all I'm stunned you've even got the time to spare. Thank you very much. What are you up to at the moment? We're gonna do the whole story.
But right now what is keeping you very busy? Live social shopping. I think one of the biggest things that's gonna happen here and Curtis mentioned what we just did with Jolly Ranchers. This room which represents an industry that I'm very fond of.
I like consumer goods to begin with but this specific category I think has a huge opportunity to talk about the digital footprint instead of convenience. Makes so much sense. But when you look at what's going on with consumer behavior, both from marketing framework but then even the shopping framework, I think the biggest opportunity that sits in this room today that isn't futuristic like the glasses, SLU recording, VR, AI. Are there things that are gonna really interesting over the next 10 years?
The thing that would probably catch this room off guard the most on what could actually affect their P and L in is live social shopping. Because I think we still think in small unit economics in this category but when you package it and you think of a different angle for the AOV collectibles which I'll talk about, I'm sure during this talk it's a huge opportunity to end in the macro. It's a multi billion dollar industry in the US that has very little attention because AI is eating up the oxygen. And so for this room that's probably personally I'm spending a lot of time on that.
We will come back to that. So let's put that on the back burner as they say. But how does somebody like Gary Vee come To be. What is your background?
We had a little bit in the video, but I'm just fascinated by how it all began. Well, the real answer to the question of what gives me the luxury and the honor of sitting here and having such wonderful, smart people listen to me is having a world class mother. That's the actual answer. It's the truth.
Every person in this room is wildly affected by the DNA they were given, the circumstance and the environment they grew up in and the serendipities of who parented them. I do not struggle with accolades or pushback because I feel like I'm a product of almost attached from being the person. I have enormous pride in my businesses and my own children and things where I feel like I architected a little bit more. But even that I struggle with because I know that I really hit the jackpot.
I was born in the Soviet Union, which was a tough start. Belarus, right? That's right, it was now Belarus. It was the USSR at the time.
I got incredibly fortunate to come to the greatest country in the world when I was three. And you know, if I go very macro on all of you for a second, I think the greatest gift in the world that you can be born into is being born into not much, but having a home that is extraordinarily filled with love. Because very quickly you are learning that money has no correlation with happiness. And I couldn't have been in the extreme of both more.
When we immigrated to the U.S. i lived in a studio apartment smaller than the stage we're on right now, with multiple five, six different family members at a time. My great grandparents, my grandma, my parents. We had very, very little.
I watched my father go from making $2 an hour as a stock going to a liquor store to eventually owning a small liquor store. I grew up in a liquor store. I associate with many people here. I grew up in retail and along the way I had a mother who held me accountable for my core grades, but championed who I was as a nice person and as an entrepreneurial kid.
And I stand on her shoulders. That's great to hear and thank you for sharing that story. And you did you actually joined the family business? Was that something that filled you with excitement or you felt that you wanted to give back?
Thank you for knowing my story. I was a very unusual kid. I just talked about my admiration for my mother. But my father worked every minute of my life and by the time I was 14, 15, I understood the sacrifices he was contributing to allow me to have a mom that was at home even Though he had so little.
And I started working my Dad's store at 14. From 12 to 14, I was making real cash. 5, $600 a weekend selling baseball cards in the malls of New Jersey. When you come from an immigrant family and you have $5,000 in cash under your bed at 14 and you're not selling weed, you're winning.
Yeah, smart. Just like that. So I was very proud of who I was. And then my father, you know, again, some of you are in family businesses here.
It's been fun to meet some of you before this. And some of you grew up in an immigrant family environment. When I turned 14, I had to work with a family business. And so I went from making 3, $400 a week and selling trading cards to making 2 bucks an hour bagging ice for 12 hours a day in my dad's basement at his liquor store.
And the first year I hated it. And the second year I was finally allowed upstairs, by the way. Literally from 14 to 15, I was in this dungeon basement. How many people here, by show of hands, saw Goonies, the movie this hilarious.
I was literally sloth. They chained me, chained me to the basement. Finally, I was allowed upstairs. And about three weekends in, I had the great revelation that I was a much better businessman than my father.
And I make that joke, but I was that there was a lot of things that family business could do different. And you know, it's funny, growing up in those flea markets and card stores, card shows, excuse me. I gave incredible amounts of time to merchandising. You know, I really thought about my table.
I walked the floor and understood the market. Like, I learned so much. It was naturally in me, but I learned so much even as a child. So I got to my dad's store, like there was no thought to end caps or what we were doing at the register.
I was really bringing merchandising DNA to my family business as a child. And around 16, 17, the greatest thing happened to me, which is I realized people collected wine and I came from such a collecting DNA. And once that happened, and my dad's store was called Shoppers Discount Liquors, I had great dreams of building an important wine source. So I rebranded the store to Wine Library.
I launched one of the first three E commerce wine businesses in America in 1996 out of that store and built a really huge business for my father, which was awesome for him. Still getting two bucks an hour? Not exactly, but, you know, I do a lot of content and I talk a lot about patience and paying your dues. From 22 to 34, I work 100 plus hours a week in a store.
Every Saturday. Every Saturday. And I built that business from a $3.3 million year revenue business to a $65 million a year revenue business when I was doing 10% gross profit. Gross profit because we're discount liquors for when I was doing 27% gross profit.
And I got paid between 45 and $70,000 a year. So I started VaynerMedia at 34 years old. I had to start it at in another company's conference room because I had no money. Right, of course.
Wait, can I ask you a question? You had all these phenomenal ideas. Your first client, I guess in many ways was your dad. Did he accept all of your ideas?
Did he go, do it, do it, do it, or did he fight you? That's such an insightful question. One of the reasons VaynerMedia has been successful is for anyone who ever grew up in agency, I get into the agency game. I want to learn Fortune 500 marketing and business, which is why I did it.
And you know, everyone's like, oh, clients are so tough and this and that. And I was like, these characters are pushovers compared to Sasha Vaynerchuk. And you might find this very interesting. You might find this very interesting.
I didn't realize I was doing this. And this is really my relationship with a lot of clients here and potential clients in the world. I was driving sales because my father wanted to know the ROI on absolutely everything. But I was also trying to build brand because the reason I rebranded into Wine Library was I knew that My father, at 27, my dad's like, well, you're gonna inherit this business.
Like, we should have no problems with the fact that you're not getting paid that much money. I said, dad, you're only 21 years older than me, which is true. And you have ridiculously good genetics. I have no interest in inheriting this when I'm 90 years old, but I knew that I was gonna leave one day once I finished my first mission of putting my parents on.
And so I knew I had to build a brand while driving sales. And for the brands in here, I think there is an incredible struggle on driving your short term business while building brand equity. But I remind all the marketers in the room, business results are measurable. Black and white brand health studies are destroying the Fortune 500 brands in here.
And so there's a lot of fake reports and advertising land. But I was trained to drive business and build brand. And so it Became very natural to me when I went into client services because no one will be tougher than my father. Of course.
Perfect rounding. Interestingly, you committed very early in the Internet's world to video. Lots and lots of video you put out there. We were talking earlier about the McDonald's CEO doing his burger and what that.
What gave you the confidence that video and online activity was the future? I don't, you know, thank you for the intro. You mean, I don't predict anything. I just move quickly to the reality of the consumer.
I. I have no interest in being historically incorrect. Live shopping. I've been watching live shopping in China for 11 to 12 years.
I only talk about it in my content in the last 24 months because we're now hitting scale, because it's real. You need to find. A lot of people might not even know what live shopping looks like. Live shopping.
Everyone is QVC on social media, right? Like, if you go to your TikTok right now, and I assume. How many people here have TikTok, raise your hands. Holy crap.
Hold on. How many people here do not have TikTok? Raise your hands. Yikes.
Oh, crap. We're gonna talk about that. Yeah, it's coming. Let it get over the shot.
A couple things on what we just saw. Yes. One thing I'm thinking a lot about is people using politics as their excuse to not put in the work for innovation. So a lot of people just raise their hand and probably said to their neighbor, yeah, China and politics and all this, we're gonna do it with AI.
You know, TikTok I can put on the shelf right now. That just happens to be where the consumer's attention is. But we can put it on the shelf at least. It's in a couple of other places.
My concern, believe it or not, it was not the hands that just went up to TikTok. It's that that's a gateway indicator to how everyone here feels about AI. And AI is electricity. AI is the Internet.
For all those hands that just went out, avoiding new technologies is incredibly dangerous. Quick question. How many people here are retiring in the next five years? And I don't mean you're gonna crush it and sell it to a PE firm or go public.
I mean, you're old and you're just curious. One more time on that. So I can see it once up. Five years, like, pumped for the 13 of you, for the rest of you, especially off that staggering hand raise.
By the way, I. I use social media every day, but I actually don't like it. For me, I'm actually inherently very private. The Soviet stuff, you know.
Yeah. I just couldn't comprehend being in the consumer business and not having the app to understand what the consumer's doing. I mean, it's a window. It's a window, bro.
I'm so pissed at them right now. To be in this industry, I don't even care if you're in supply chain or back office, to not have it, to understand what's happening with consumer relevance and behavior is an incredible vulnerability for a 99% room that has no interest in retiring in the next five years. I'm pissed. Oh, you should be.
So, okay, we've got more to discuss, but let's just touch on this for a minute. You're obsessed with live shopping. Every time I see live shopping, first of all, I don't demand that it comes up on my feed. It'll be people right there.
Since none of you are on TikTok, let me explain what's happening, what he just said. When you're going through your feed, maybe you do it on Facebook. By the way, I'm obsessed with Facebook. I'm being dead serious.
Facebook Blue Classic Facebook is one of the great places to market in the world. All the contemporary marketers are overly indexing on just Instagram and TikTok. There are eight to 10 meaningful platforms from LinkedIn. I've even gotten into YouTube shorts and how it affects Gemini's AEO SEO.
You know, Aogo is going to be so important. There are people here who are spending ungodly amounts of money on SEO on Google while it's becoming the yellow pages in front of your face. So there's a lot going on about that. But when you're on TikTok, when you're just swiping through your for your page, out of nowhere a QVC like show pops up.
Those shows are doing billions in gmb. Tens of billions, hundreds of billions in gmb. Merry Roots Organics has gone from zero to its top line revenue. There's.
If you go to, I was just at Expo West. The enormous amount of brands that are going from 0 to $100 million top line revenue on a 100% live shopping and creator affiliate infrastructure just on TikTok is staggering. And 80% of those rooms are going to be on the platform. It's unbelievable.
It's unbelievable. What do you say to people sitting there right now going, gary Vee, that's all very well, but what am I going to do? Sell chocolate online on a TikTok account? What's your answer to them?
Because this is more than just that. No. My answer to that question is yes. Do it.
Okay, good to know. I'll tell you why it's actively happening. If you literally opened up TikTok right now and typed in chocolate for Hershey's or others candy, what have you. There's also a standalone app called Whatnot.
Whatnot's a stand. How many people here are familiar with Whatnot? Raise your hands. So a lot of Pokemon card collectors in the room.
This is a standalone app that this one won't bother you. Actually the one doesn't. How many of you have never heard of one out. Raise your hands.
That makes sense to me. That's fair. That doesn't upset me as much. It's new.
Ish. It's standalone. I just speak more time if you may appease me. Have never heard of whatnot.
Raise your hands. Whatnot did $12 billion in GMB last year. Wow. $12 billion of gross merchandise value on a platform that most of this room doesn't know.
And if you were to download the app later, there's a category for confessions and candy. And you will watch people sell unlimited boxes of candy a little bit in bulk. More Costco. Listen a lot.
This is OG crowd as we established, right? Yes. How many people here have been in business for over 40 years? Raise your hand.
35. Who's been in business for over 30 years? Raise your hands. Higher.
Some of the people in this room then were there when we started to see big box retail. We're here when Price Club and Costco and Sam's stood up. And this industry went through a transition where bulk started to sell in a way that for G's that just raised her hand was not the case. That is happening in live shopping.
New formats, collectibles like we did with Hershey's inside that cracker Jack cereal dynamic of the 50s and 60s and 70s. PepsiCo is a leader in collectibles in CBG. I think this industry is gonna get massively affected by collectibles. But this is very real.
So to answer your question, it's QVC within social media. It is a Stick with me here. A 800 billion dollar GMD industry in China. Let me say it again.
8. The rough number of the guests right now for this year In China is $800 billion worth of stuff is going to sell in live shopping. There's such an advanced market. People are selling homes, cars, luxury.
This industry will be wildly affected by that medium. And people have to figure out how they get in there. Both the retailers and the CPGs. So I want to come back to the thought of AI's electricity soon.
But just touching on this a bit more. So what are you saying to a legacy company at companies 30 years old should be their approach to this? Is this just yet another channel that they are currently missing out on or is this a wholesale change to how they sell? No, it's an ant.
Everything's an ant. We're so obsessed with ore, right? Like I don't understand why people want things dead. Like you can do direct mail.
There's a better way to do it on Facebook Blue. But it's not like it's dead. You're just paying more for it. You can decide to still do television commercials besides the Super bowl in 2026.
It's crazy, but it's not. It's not dead. It's just incredibly overpriced the way the big companies do it here. Creative AOR fees, paying millions of dollars for ideas, crazy production costs, wildly crazy for this world.
Much cheaper everywhere else. The agencies have extracted way too much money out of brands and the media itself. You're paying for potential leech. GRPs are fake.
Potential leech. Not actualized. You can, but it's not dead. Live shopping isn't gonna stop someone to go pump their gas and go inside and pay for their gas and pick up some candy or go to Costco or go to Albertsons or Walmart.
It's not be gonna take it to zero. It's slowly but surely going to dent it. However, here's where people get smarter. It's also a production day for your marketing.
So now you're selling live for a couple of hours, but there's one clip in one moment where the host does something and that 40 second video played in social can be an extraordinary outcome. This industry I hope knows what happened for Walgreens and their mango gummy candy on one TikTok brother. One organic TikTok post sold out that product nationally and it was sold on ebay for a premium that is unparalleled to anything you could do in classic marketing. A single TikTok that went viral sold out every pack of nice mango gummies at every Walgreens in America and it was sold for 4 to 15 times the price on ebay.
That's how much Amanda was. Because of the buzz. The buzz from that one video. Not the buzz.
Human attention. Attention is the only thing that's happening here. Why is a register? Why is being at the counter or at the register Such a good thing.
It's attention. You're in line, you're bored, let me grab some Tic Tacs. Attention. Like I don't care how people may not be on TikTok but by show of hands, who has a cell phone?
They've all got phones. There's an iPhone in the hallways. There's a lot of constituents here for the CPGs. They've been outflanked by the retailers over the last 25 years.
Do you want to get into retail media and all the stuff that's going on? We need to get very serious here. Everyone's battling for the same thing. I'm an influencer, about 60 million followers.
I want the consumer's attention. The brand that just sat here wants the consumer attention. The retailers have the consumer interaction, they have the consumer attention. We're all battling for attention.
On this subject of attention, I'm on TikTok the other day, my 12 year old daughters are sneak on it more than I would do. So I'll be fully upfront about that. I end up as this girl, she's selling blenders, handheld rechargeable blenders with fruit and water in it. Blends.
Cheap stinking example. I could not stop watching. Of course I couldn't stop. There's all this tv.
Was it a blender? She was a normal person but it was the way she was doing it. The selfless, the motion, the activity. How important is the people?
Are the people that we choose to put on camera? Look, I just wanted a one minute rant about attention. Let there be no confusion. I think the super bowl ad is the best single ad in advertising.
You have literally 120, 100 million people in America wanting to watch the commercial. It's the only time that happens. It is grossly underpriced at 8 to $10 million a spot. But back to the host.
The creative is the variable of success. Like you can waste unlimited money on social media. If the creative isn't right, AKA relevant, then you're dead. The great thing is though, we're living in the great sphere of marketing.
For the first time in the history of marketing we can measure creative because the algorithms for social networks are written on relevance, because they want to keep you on the platform. I would actually argue that social media has died about two or three years ago, that we're now in interest media that everybody hear when they open up their Instagram, Facebook, TikTok or what have you. What you're seeing is not content from your cousin that you follow or a Buddy you went to high school with, you're seeing content that's relevant to what you're interested in lately. Lately meaning the last 10 minutes sometimes.
Sometimes if you're that active. And so this is a remarkable opportunity for everyone here because the first time ever the distribution that has the attention of the end consumer has the same aligned interest that we do, which is relevance. And relevance leads to consideration, leads to purchase. That has continued to be tried and true.
So it's a pretty staggering opportunity. And you're absolutely right. The hosts, the set that you sell on, the products, the product's mix, the uniqueness of the product can only be found in the shopping environment. The collectability that I've been touching on a lot special packs, the things that retailers look for, their exclusive stuff plays out in live shopping but for the brands they control that medium.
And so it's a very interesting time. Phenomenal. Every soft I'm going to stop all your suggestions that are coming in my phone. So they're not always going to be tied in precisely.
But this is from Cantha goes Garrett. Confectionery is one of the few categories where the purchase decision happens in seconds of the shelf. It's already a dopamine economy. So when you talk about dating, trading attention.
Do brands in this space have a structured advantage they're leaving on the table? Well, they have structured advantage on purchase, like impulse, like it's an incredible category for that reason. I actually think it's a disadvantage for a lot of people because they take it for granted. I think this is a game of upside.
I think there's so much more to go and I think, listen, I know Hershey's knows this because they've had one enter. I think this room is wildly naive about what the creator economy is about to do. I'm writing a book called the Individual Empire and my thesis in the book and I've been spending two years writing it and it's gonna come out early next year I've wrapped it up at this point is that the human being with a large audience has remarkable leverage in compared to corporations and much bigger than people realize. And so I think that we as big companies, even mid sized companies in here, retailers and brands for damn sure need to start acting more like the creators, not the reverse.
And that's winning on relevance with a lot of different consumer segmentations versus one brand positioning pushed down. And I think we have to stop taking for granted our advantages. And so yes, I think that question is brilliant and there's truth to that. There's always opportunities that are bigger advantages for some categories than others.
But let there be no confusion, it's a lot. Listen, I travel a lot, I'm in Hudson News all the time buying all sorts of products here. Sure there's opportunities. I mean I could argue that bubblegum has been a private label category for 15 years with the way it's gone down.
Like there's a lot you can argue here. Let there be no confusion. Like branded relevance make the hand go in different places. So it's not like you're gonna be crushed because there are some different dynamics here.
But boy, there's a lot of money being left on the table in this room. Can I challenge you on the individual empire? Yeah. So all of a sudden I think it's so genuine and so cool.
The minute it's a sponsored video, they're being paid for it. I'm like, eh, I'm out. Well, you're going on one man's subjective point of view and I'm going on macro data. Right, meaning people don't care.
No, meaning you care, but not the masses. Right. There's an extraordinary amount of economy around humans that have started their own CPGs. And this room from the brand side had the advantage of retail sales, organization, supply chain and then marketing being expensive.
Now between Shopify, Walmart and Amazon's three PL and TikTok and social media, all of our huge moats have disintegrated in front of our eyes. We need to battle on actual relevance and we're still stuck in brand positioning. Classic campaign. We've got some work to do for sure.
This question I think will apply to so many people and I'd love you to leverage maybe some work you've done with one of your clients. With the media. What are some other ways to get food brands, legacy food brands, in front of influencers and live sellers sending direct messages on social media. You know, it's funny when I hear that I'm so empathetic because I live this day to day.
You know, big brands do big brand things. It's just no different than, you know, the analogy is so easy. Right? A huge battleship versus a little steamboat.
Like you can direct message anyone on social that's an influencer, a creator or live shopping host. They would be thrilled to hear from any brand in this room. So, but, but we don't think about hand to hand combat. We don't think about scaling unscalable behaviors here.
We think in tech stacks, we think in scale. It's called going back to the grassroots. I remind everybody, every brand in this room, all that, you know, at least at the holding company level because obviously there's been some innovation within companies. But at the holding company levels, these all started as small little brands where the founders went hand to hand combat.
And so that's what everyone here can do. Go a bit further, you reach out to an influencer. Are you putting money on the table? Do you want to start a conversation?
Don't they refer to people slipping into my DMs? Well, you know, slipping into DMs like comes in all shapes and sizes. No, that's a tweet right there. Come here.
You know, to your point, it's no different. I mean, it's even going back to dating dynamics or off site conferences like this when it gets Rowdy at 1am in the bar. Like there's all different tacks. If a brand comes and DMs and is overly aggressive.
And really where they get hurt is when they send the same generic message to 500 different influencers. But if you actually reach out to influencers, say, hey, that thing you did with chocolate, that chocolate fondue thing, are you passionate about chocolate? Obviously, you know, especially let's use Hershey's. And they're sitting right here.
You know, everybody knows what Hershey's is. If you're like, hey, we're interested in content, maybe let's have a conversation about influencer marketing campaign. We're doing a post like they're going to respond to that. Now the bigger they are, they're quickly, like, talk to my agent at ETA or William Morris, which for brands here, I would highly recommend trying to find people right before they get to that level because you'll be able to make much better business deals for you.
But yeah, it's just all in the copy. Like you're going for Casey Neistat. You're going to be paying big bucks because he has such a huge following. That's right.
But are there people who would advise organizations in this room on who is up and up and coming so they know who to look for and contact? Yeah, I mean, I would argue for the brands in this room. I know there's retailers and there's some smaller brands that do marketing internally. I would say for the bigger brands in here, it's tough, man.
Like, I have a lot of empathy for this. I'm very concerned about the agency ecosystem. I think over the last 20, 30 years the agency ecosystem has lost its way. I think they worry about their P&LS more than their clients PNLs.
And the biggest issue with influencer marketing that I see is PR companies have the same 50 people on a list that they point it in front of people. And for me, if you look at my books that are up here right now, if you look at the bottom right, big trading attention, we think the entire economy of attention and relevance is now on a day to day basis. This is not setting a campaign and three months later doing something. The speed in which we have to market is so much faster.
And that's just where we're at. If you've reinvented your whole agency every day. I just had a meeting a few months ago right to the entire agency. We're not an agency and so we're a production company that happens to do creative media and strategy.
Because I think any agency partner of any Fortune 5000 brand must produce output cannot be paid for. Just thinking right? I keep hearing it over and over again. You've got to be a generalist in this world.
You've got to be able to code, to build, to put content together to get it out to market. This seems to be paying extra dividends. You know, I think you have to be capable of everything and but they have to be good at it. Like in my beloved space right now, the underpriced attention is definitely posting social creative organically and then watching what does well and then having a media plan that's fine and dandy.
That would be like me telling you that basketball players are getting paid a lot of money to be a basketball player. You know, to be good at social creative. Let me give you context. At VAYNER we have 113 people whose full time job it is to understand what algorithm is favoring.
Just think about what I just said. Like all day long they look at the math, the quant and the qua to understand is it photos, is it videos, is it carousel ads, is threads under prices, Twitter x YouTube shorts? Like it is a complicated landscape. But I don't say this lightly.
When people do marketing internally, the problem is it's where the consumer's attention is. And so like you know, I wish marketing stopped 20 years ago. I had email search all figured out but it was great. But this game changes constantly.
I spent 100 hours last year on just substack. How many people here are familiar with Substack? How many people here have never heard of Substack? The bly ling is the devil.
You know, like substack bought hands for it and knowing people reading it, it was a non event 24 months ago now an incredibly important place to go. Long form written content for a lot of brands and retailers here. So substantially's changing. I'm almost scared to ask you this question.
You just talked about your team and the work they do. We're at a point now where theoretically, not that you work as you're a people lover, you could replace half of that team with Claude Cowork. AI is best. The most interesting thing that's happening in this room right now is that 25% of the people in this room is grandchildren are going to marry an AI robot.
Full on married. Not just date. Full on married. It didn't land so well.
Care to extrapolate? Yes, I will. If a caveman walked in here right now, his open line be like, what the hell is going on? Like, things evolve and.
Yeah, I mean, I am concerned about that. You're right. I do talk a lot about culture. I love culture.
The strategy of dignity. I love people. It is my greatest gift. I think it's why I'm a good marketer.
I'm overly empathetic, so I understand what you know, like, I'm into it, but I am not naive, nor do I have any interest in underestimating technology. Now my belief is that in the macro, this job displacement that comes along with AI gets replaced by something else. I will die on that hill. It is the story as old as time.
In the short term, the speed in which this could happen is complicated and is very much a United nations issue, let alone a US or this is quite profound. I internally have talked about this a lot. I think leaders of bigger companies should be addressing this. Honestly, my point of view internally is in the short term, it is not AI that's taking anyone's job.
It's a human being that uses AI that's gonna take your job if you're not using it. To me, this is the computer, this is the Internet, this is software and technology. In the long term, I'm gonna say it again. We're having enough issues with race, gender and religion when it comes to marriage.
A lot of your grandchildren are going to marry an AI robot. Good lord. Thank you. Just leave it like that.
When I say that, I say that again as a non predictor. This is already happening in Japan. This is real like. So when I say that, I talk about the size and scale.
Notice how I use grandchildren. I talk about the size and scale of innovation changes over 50100 year windows. There's a lot going on. Of course, in the short term, it's a profound technology that everybody should be taking serious and they should be honest with their employees.
There is no pointing your head in the saying like I don't use AI because I have some moral principle against him. Your moral principles. You're scared you lose your job, and I'm empathetic to that. But that means you should go on the offense with this weapon instead of hearing it.
And you're right because you said this before refusing to use AI. Now, as I say, we're sticking with candles to light things up around here. Next question from our audience. And you've touched on this a bit.
But any final thoughts? Stephanie goes first. A Personal thank you GaryVeeve My LinkedIn presence has grown from a few thousand followers to 120,000 following your advice. I'm a Gary Vee angelist Question In a market dominated by big brands, social media can help level the playing field.
What additional advice do you have for small accounting companies trying to win shelf space? You've touched on live selling. What else? Winning on shelf space in 2026 when you're a small brand is building your direct consumer business to an extreme level and winning on relevance with younger consumers because retailers will then want you.
Hey everybody, 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. My biggest most of all my clients, besides my investments are big companies and all I'm trying to do is get them to act in a contemporary way because retailers are literally taking my big clients money in retail media and giving it to their own private label execution and even paying smaller relevant brands that are winning on social and live shopping to get into the store because retailers are worried about losing a younger consumer. So for the small brands, continue what you're doing, bet even more on organic social media creative, get it measured and then run your media play and run your live shopping play. But for the big brands in this room, friends, you're getting outspent.
You have literally 50 times more money than them and you're getting outspent because we're wasting so much money, a potential reach and we're not invested enough in social organic production. Our production dollars are going to classic campaign work. Big brands that have 50 to 200 times more money than small brands in actualization of relevance of attention consumption are being outspent. Wow.
Yeah, it's a real wow. So let's and it's showing Up. I'm trying to up. It's why these numbers are really happening.
Kurt, you know this. We've been in Pepsi for 13 years. All my jargon you're hearing fell on deaf ears. Not because Pepsi didn't know I'm sympathetic.
First of all, 13 years ago, talking about this stuff was really out there. Second of all, they weren't feeling it in the pnl. And then over a short window you have prime energy drink, you have liquid death and you have poppy. And all of a sudden it's like, wait a minute, right?
And these kids don't play fair. They invite offspring of founders to interview them about what they feel about product. They have advantages on relevance. And we're running television and outdoor and print and campaigns.
We must win here, my friends. This is the dominant platform of our society, whether you like it or not. I don't like it. I'm 50, I don't like it.
But I don't have feelings when it comes to business. And like anyone in here that does not understand this dominates the attention. And outside of this, what dominates the attention is streaming services that don't even have commercials. And so like we have to make some real adjustments really fast.
I remember you years ago holding up your phone saying, this is television. Because that was the way that people thought about it. Okay, so dig a bit deeper because people sit here thinking, alright, okay, we've got to start producing content now. You've got your own people, you can select your own stars.
But now this AI, which actually creates video content that looks quite decent on a phone, how far should we use that versus real people? This is gonna be another advantage little companies have over big companies. Like McDonald's had a day with it the other day, didn't they? Like the big companies in here are gonna have to wait for 24 to 36 months for the stigma of AI advertising to go away.
Because the consumer's pushing back on us because subconsciously they're worried about their own jobs with AI. So they're pushing back verbally and that's making us stuck at a standstill. Small brands can play with it a little bit more because they can get away with it more like liquid death and things of nature. So is it the same customer base who also worried about AI?
It is and it isn't. But we unfairly, in my opinion, but anybody can have, subject to calling us, we hold up bigger companies to different standards, which I understand, I understand a 400 in society. So no, even though they may be the same consumable customer the way they will treat a Fortune 500 versus startup is extremely different. I will say this, the reason a lot of startups can get away with it is they won credibility by winning with relevance in these platforms where we've stayed silent.
Interesting. When you go to video production AIs. Are you a Sora guy? Are you prefer Genspark?
Whatever. Nano manual will come out something tomorrow and the next day. Claude, you don't even have time to be a fan of something. That's right.
You know the speed with which these AI companies evolve is profound. And so I believe the end state of this is the creative production technology is happening within the platform that the distribution's happening in. So you will be in a meta environment, in a ByteDance environment, in a Google environment, in a Microsoft environment where you're creating because they're gonna have the first party data of what creative over indexes within their platform. This is gonna get very, you know, integrated with the 12 to 15 super scaling technology companies having disproportionate advantages.
It's funny, I call it personal, I call it leapfrog theory. They leapfrog over each other. You think this is cooler than the next one leapfrog. But what you're saying I think is they're all gonna end up with the same capability.
In other words, max capability. Yeah, I think, I do think AI creation is gonna find its way to being into a similar place as big beta. You know, 13 years ago I was talking about big Beta then you realize, wait a minute, the IRS, Visa, MasterCard, Walmart, like there's a lot of sources meta. I think they're gonna find themselves in a place that's similar.
Ish. Next question? Anonymous. You seem to operate such a fascinable way even as a business at scale.
What can big CPG businesses learn from how you operate? That fake reports are a big problem. The only reason I move fast is I do not create a fake ecosystem that benefits my financial situation. Meaning I've built successfully in the last 15 years one of the largest independent global agencies in the world.
We are so far ahead of everyone in making relevant social creative for these channels. Meanwhile, in 36 to 48 months we will be fully commoditized because platforms will do it themselves. So I spend all my time currently building on the other side of the world that I see, which is the barbell extreme digitalization and extreme analog. I'm actually incredibly bullish experiential marketing real world events like the real world is going to rise.
Running clubs and events like this like being here. I'm incredibly bullish real world. And so Vayner as a production company is all focused on live shopping production because for a while that will have to be not AI though that will get there and experiential. Yeah.
And so the reason I want to be nimble for who anybody asks that is I'd rather put myself out of business than let someone else do it. It Let me ask you a tough question. If you decided tomorrow you're going to take one of von rockets and fly to Mars and the agencies were left behind, no further contact, would they continue without you or are you the power that drives them? I'm the power that drives them.
My companies would do fine, but they would decline over time. I always laugh about this. People ask this a lot about me because I'm the founder and I am who I am and I always laugh about it because I think it's much more vulnerable to be an investor or in an environment where the CEO does change every six to nine years. You know, like a founder led business.
Like I know that I could die, but like it's likely I won't please God. But it's like business is like sports. If you take the best player off a team, like the team's not as good. And so I'm proud of my team.
I got a company that's 15 years old. This is the thing I'm most proud of that's about to come out of my mouth. I have over 150 employees. I've been there for 10 plus years.
Wow. I built real culture with real continuity. People know the religion, but I mean I'm the best one you are. And I'm so brutally honest.
Okay, I know I wasn't supposed to curse, but that one just came out. It's real. I'm sorry, I'm from Jersey. It's fine.
You're amongst friends. Okay, time is running out. So quick fire round. First of all, we've had a little chat this morning about the generations, the generational differences.
Gen Alpha, Gen Z, Millennials, your perspective on the gen very briefly. There's always subtle differences, but I would argue we spend way too much time thinking about the differences versus the similarities. There's not a business in here, retail or cpg, that shouldn't be winning on relevance with as many different consumer segmentations as possible, thus rendering this conversation mute. You should all be selling to everyone, the addressable market to everyone Here is anyone that is willing to consume this product which goes with many generations, really outside people that are probably overly health conscious and have a line in the sand on ingredients.
Everybody else is in play for us and you should be relevant to a 73 year old and a 37 year old and a 15 year old and on and on and on. So to me, I think it's a conversation that I think about like Oxygen, like why wouldn't I try to sell to everyone? Thus I'm not thinking about like the things that a lot of other people are thinking about. To me, it's every day I'm trying to win with all of them.
Like nothing's gonna change about that. Yeah, obviously. The other thing is I think there's way too many generalizations. For example, I know unlimited lazy boomers just like that.
Yeah. Like, and meanwhile there's plenty of Gen Z that is incredibly hardworking. Like sure, generalizations have truths in them, but I think we get overly emotional about it. We need to be marketing to many different suicidalizations anyway.
And so that's how my brain thinks about it. I've heard you be asked the question, what are you doing your time off? And your answer was, I build new businesses. Do you have any time to yourself?
Oh, a lot. I mean I sleep seven, eight hours a night. I take seven to 12 weeks of vacation off a year because I have a 16 and 13 year old. I'm just wildly productive when I'm working.
Right. Like I'm not some psycho that's gonna burn out. I just think it's crazy when you have huge ambitions to take a bullshit two hour lunch. Two final questions who say one other thing.
For example, on this issue, this is the single most important thing on a sale day. Every business here will get much better if you stop making meetings an hour when they're actually 30 minutes worth of work. Absolutely right. Notice that was my most universal like thing.
Just like that. We all know this. We will fit and your teams will fit the work into the time allotted. No question.
The biggest breakthrough for me about seven or eight years ago was the 15 minute meeting. The 30 minute meetings that are really 15, the hours that are really 30, the two hours that are really an hour. They can change an organization. This is not about burning yourself out.
This is about. Many people in this room are similar to me. They are passionate and enjoy being executives and operators. But this is about effectiveness when you're actually on the playing field.
The 30 minute meeting line landed a lot better than the marrying robots line. Yes. Which I thought was great. Okay, I've been asked a couple times, what's your favorite candy my number.
I'm just gonna be. Listen, if you follow how many people are following me a little bit. Just show your hands so you. Thank you.
By the way, that was. I don't know if you have a real piss again. I love to keep it real. I will keep it very real since this is also on the Internet 17,000 times because I love cocking.
And my favourite candy, my favorite candy of all time is a watchable bar. Okay, well, thank you very much. You got some bass and my last gobility360 selfie at the end. But my last question before we do that is basically your final words of wisdom to this incredible crowd.
Obviously a lot of people are thinking deeply about these very new ideas to them. What is your parting advice? We talk about a lot of words and they're buzzwords and we don't really live it. Authenticity, culture.
We know this. We know our shortcomings about talking about things and not living it. The disproportionate thing that you must live true in this next half decade. It's only five year statement because so much is changing.
We must get obnoxiously consumer centric. I am flabbergasted by the ability of the Fortune 5000 to have fake reports justifying behaviors that none of the executives even believe in. This is a humongous problem. Brand lists.
You can't measure brand, bro. You can't measure brand. Measuring brand is like measuring love and God. You have reports that you believe that do it.
But we must get much more consumer centric. The retailers must bring more value. The suppliers must. And we must bring common sense back to the boardroom that we are lacking it.
We love that we're playing message. Anyway, 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.