There is no logic. If you understood what's happening in Meta and ByteDance and Snap and YouTube and Google, if you understood how these algorithms are written purely for relevance. The thing that we've been chasing to measure our whole lives for a hundred years, marketers like us, the bane of our existence, has been trying to understand the creative before it goes into market. Focus groups, fake reports, politics among seven important people in a room.
We've been struggling with this deep knowledge that we know, which is if the creative isn't right, we lost. I ask for a lot of you, is take your hat off of being a corporate animal and understand how your organization measures everything and put your human hat on and listen to it and understand it. There is literally no reason to waste marketing dollars anymore. We don't have to guess, like, do we really still have the audacity to think our subjective opinion on a 30 second video where a picture is going to drive the business?
Every single brand in here's biggest issue, it's not awareness, it's relevance. And if you're small and you need awareness, you can only get it through scaled. Relevance is the Gary Vee audio experience. This is an amazing opportunity to have you in the room, Gary.
Thank you so much, mate, for doing this. Thank you so much everyone for being here, really. So I've got a few questions on it for Gary. I had the honor of meeting him actually at the wine library, which was really special, man.
It was kind of cool to see there because like, I know she's. When we finished filming, you're straight downstairs doing a wine review and you're straight on the phone, you're like, okay, bring this number, everybody put your orders in. I want to start with a maybe an unusual question, like you're sitting forefront to so much change and what's going on? Like what hasn't changed?
You put yourself back in your kind of wine library days. What hasn't changed that kind of has underpinned your success. You know, it's actually a fun one to start with, especially for this crowd. I'm aware, even just have a quick interaction that people think that a lot of mine, slash our company's theories are maybe in contrast to what's been classically understood or known.
The thing that has not changed is that relevance leads to consideration leads to purchase. I think that is just so uncomfortably classic and so true. I think that where information is being consumed and how relevance is defined and how fragmented relevance actually is and always has been. But the media landscape has changed enough for allowing us to all take advantage of it.
That's different. But what is tried and true. When I read that podcast at my father's wine store where I kind of grew up and built. And as soon as we were done, I went downstairs.
What we're referring to is I made creative ads for social, which we ran at a 10 mile radius of the store. And we use video and social media to replace what we did with direct mail and it converts better. I would be thrilled to do direct mail today. I would be thrilled to do outdoor radio.
I would buy TVC and television. My great challenge that I always push again if the price was appropriate. I don't really have feelings other than I want to buy attention at a proper price, not overpay for it. And I would like the creative to make someone do something.
It's not complicated. I just think that the industry, especially this markets industry, is very good at holding onto yesterday. 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. Don't make my mom super happy. One thing I love actually.
So me and my producer James, we turn up all our cameras, our lighting, our sound equipment. I got outgunned on that day. Didn't like that. I set up in your winelip and then you brought your crew on.
It's like cameras on cameras on cameras. We had so much content. But something you are exceptional at is just making content wherever you are, whatever you're doing. But how do you fit all that in?
How do you do the thinking and the creative content intent? You know, I think I've had a very productive year. I don't know how everybody's 26 is going, but reflecting at the end last year, I didn't feel 2025 was my best year on the field. You know, I think of business, like sports, and I'm not crippled by a year where I don't think I've done as much or as well as I've wanted to because, you know, some of the greatest athletes of all time have had seasons that are not as great as others.
That allowed me to really sit down in between Christmas and New Year's and come up with a framework for myself this year called intentionality and impact. Just being very clear with the many businesses I have and the many key teammates that I have and creating really tight intentionality frameworks and how we can measure that impact that allowed me already. I would argue this is true, but I feel like I've been more productive in 26 than 25 already. And we're just getting started.
But to answer your question, the reason I brought that up was the hope that might bring someone value. Think about that. But for me, I've always had the intent now putting in 2026, for about 12 years now, I've had the intent to think about every single day as a production day, right? And now much of what I do for a living, I work with a lot of people here.
This will not be lost. 80% of my day is not something I can put out in public. It's client information, it's internal information. But understanding that creative and content was the variable of success and the new distribution channels had been reformed, you know, I started, you know, some people listen to know.
From 2014 to Covid, I filmed every aspect of my life and only a small percentage of that was able to go out. But that allowed me to produce dramatically more content than the market. And I continue to do that today. To answer questions, just the intent, right?
It is my strategy to produce content every day. It is my strategy to use technology and people to post produce that content. It is my strategy to understand which platforms to post that creative on. It is my strategy to post produce that content to maximize organic reach.
It is my strategy to understand once that creative has been validated by gaining organic reach, which is only achievable if the creative is relevant, then I will use working media dollars to amplify it. That strategy for me became the framework of our creative agency and production company, VaynerMedia as the forefront and the reality of what's actually happening in the consumer landscape. So for me, there's a lot of value in me focusing on my creative because it becomes the blueprint for what we do for. Bless you.
What we do for clients around the world. The thing I'm most proud of, the thing that allows me to sit here and the thing that I think makes me different than many people in marketing is I'm a practitioner of the craft. I am not a professor, I'm not a pontificator. I am not in university or politics every single day of my life.
For the last, what am I, 50 now? For the last 32 years, every single day of my life, I have spent working media dollars to make a sale and build a brand happen every single day. And so that makes me very comfortable to talk about my things because I've only been taught to measure based on sales and brand. When I was building my father's liquor store, the only two things I knew was that my mom was so remarkable that I needed to build this business for my family as a payback to her.
And two, that I would leave that company someday because I knew my dad was never going to give me any money and I had my own life. This is real though. This is very profound. As a 22 year old child, I knew that I wanted to build a very large business for my family.
I was incredibly motivated. As I got older, I realized how rare what I cared about is. I was obsessed to build a huge business for my parents. But I also knew that one day I was gonna have to leave and do something for myself, which meant I had to grow the business.
My dad only allowed me to sign marketing dollars if he understood what the ROI was at the register. I wasn't trying to win a can Lion Sasha Bay was not interested in a brand lift study. But I also knew I was gonna leave. And the other thing I knew was my dad was gonna fuck it up after I left.
And so I thought about brand. I renamed my dad's liquor store from Shoppers discount liquors to wine library. I focused on building the brand of wine library, but I focused on building the brand of wine library by driving sales daily, weekly, monthly and yearly by winning on relevance to so many different wine consumers that I have people that are buying $5,000 bottle of wines, but also buying $15 wines for the weekend. I didn't know what I was doing in the context of this room.
I was just building a business. One for the short term, one for the long term. When I got to this world, I was flabbergasted by the currency of the Fortune 500, Fortune 5000 brands in the world. Everything was incredibly corporate.
So many people make decisions based on reports, not business truths. The politics within your organization. No one could explain to me what an MMM or an MMA was. Nobody could explain how a GRP was really measured.
People spent all their working media dollars on potential reach, not actualized reach. Common sense had no permission to be in the boardroom. This has been a very interesting journey for me the last 15 years. Let's start with podcasts, right?
Why are pod? I'm just making assumption here, asking for a friend here, but why? Podcasts are undervalued, do you think? Well, they can be very overvalued.
I would say that social media, all the way to television, everything between influencers, direct mail, outdoor everything can be overpriced and underpriced, right? So podcasts are misunderstood a lot of times because I think people don't understand how much audio is being consumed every day. However, I'm sure not lost to any of you if the if the ad in a podcast is some generic 30 second recording of a different voice than the host, no one here is converting. If the host mails it in because they just want to rip you off for a million pounds as a sponsor and they give a shit and they just read it like it's a burden, you also are probably going to overpay.
If the host is very clever and she or he is thinking long term about what they're building and they give it their all to that read and help convert that audience, it might be grossly underpriced. So I think, you know, podcast for me is incredible opportunity because people buy from people and podcast hosts especially once humans have tremendous opportunities to convert their audience if they build something meaningful. I think it depends on how good they are at integrating the sale makes sense. Now, you've been ahead on quite a few trends over the years.
Start 2026. What are you looking at with interest in terms of what you think is going to be hot? I think live social shopping is the most important conversation for anybody that sells any single product on earth. It is very clear that the west is now starting to have the early indications of following what's happened in China.
It is a $600 billion GMV market in China. In the US last year was incredibly important. Both whatnot and TikTok went out the gates very hard. We've already seen Twitch, there's rumors of meta.
There's so many other people entering this space. So anyone here that sells a bar of soap or really cool pants or anything else in between needs to really focus on what's going on with live shopping. I think live social shopping will be a point of differentiation for the people that outflank the competitive set in a similar way to what social media was in 2015. I'd love your perspective on the difference between the US and UK mentality, because I'm really having spent a lot of time in the US as I do now, I'm really struck by the way we see business and different mindset.
What's your perspective on that? My perspective is a little overrated as a conversation point. Like of course, I mean there's always gonna be, you know, stereotypes and generalizations. Of course, whatever.
I mean, look, in the US we have a state structure, right? The state, forget about the US versus Europe or UK within America, doing business in Florida versus New York versus California. Like there's so many things to that. Here's what I would say.
I spend 0 seconds on it, 0.0 seconds thinking about it. If I was an entrepreneur trying to build a business, I would think about it more. If I was UK based and I had an opportunity to go to Silicon Valley or to the us. The US laws for entrepreneurship and building tend to be a little bit more opportunistic than let's say, parts of Europe.
But again, still generalizations. There's unlimited opportunity. I will say the thing I do spend time on, which is why I'm here, is I really think there's a big difference in marketing. I think I am shocked and I say this respectfully.
I actually don't think, I don't even really. I haven't put in the homework to understand how deep or what the nuances are. But my world, which is how can you not be spending more working media dollars in social if you know how to do it, which is invest in the mid funnel, let the creative validate, then put media behind it. The opportunity in Europe, specifically in the UK is extraordinary.
It's easier to win here than is in America because in America I'm competing with Mr. Beast and Alex Earl and late stage, you know, venture capitalist startups. There's a lot of people that actually know what to do in the us they tend to be human beings or VC backed startups. The corporations in America don't know what to do either.
But there's more competition for the feed in the US on these seven platforms here. It's remarkably, remarkably sound. I think, you know, I take on some of that responsibility. I think I could have been better CEO for VaynerMedia for what we do here in the UK and in Europe in general over the last seven or eight years.
I don't feel like I've put enough effort or frag in the ground. I feel over the last three, four months we've put the infrastructure in place to really start to put pressure on the market by delivering remarkable work. So I think about that, but I think there's a bigger delta in the marketing industry than there is in the startup community in Europe, specifically the uk. I think all the things that bug me to no end, which is the romance about bullshit that this industry loves, is a 7 out of 10 in the US it is a 10 out of 10 here we just continue to validate rewards, fake reports and headlines and magazines as good work and we're wasting an extraordinary amount of money, an extraordinary amount of money in production and working media in a world that does not exist.
And yeah, I think it needs to change and I'm incredibly motivated by it. So much so that I flew to Atlanta before a huge snowstorm in New York to get here this morning, shower quickly and sit in front of all of you fine people. That's real. Actually, my producer can't get abruptly crazy sick in New York, so I know exactly what you mean.
Okay, your UK marketer, your stand in this audience, what the top two or three things you'll do with that inside, you've just dropped there. It's pretty simple. It's incredibly, shockingly simple. We live in a world right now where the mid funnel is the biggest opportunity in marketing and the mid funnel is the way we define it is organic social media creative.
I do not believe this room. And I'm generalizing, but I do not believe this room. And when I say this room, I'm talking about the market. I don't believe the market understands how profound what I'm about to say is, at least from one man's point of view.
Statement number one, I think it is insane to spend $1 of working media on creative that has not been validated in social. There is no logic. If you understood what's happening in Meta and ByteDance and Snap and YouTube and Google, if you understood how these algorithms are written purely for relevance. The thing that we've been chasing to measure our whole lives for 100 years, marketers like us, the bane of our existence, has been trying to understand the creative before it goes into market.
Focus groups, fake reports, politics among seven important people in a room. A technology that we've been sold by holding companies. That's complete bullshit. Like we've been struggling with this deep knowledge that we know, which is if the creativism might be lost.
So I think what I ask for a lot of you is take your hat off of being a corporate animal and understanding how your organization measures everything and put your human hat on and listen to it and understand it. There's literally no reason to waste marketing dollars anymore. We don't have to guess, you know, we should definitely not be posturing the boardrooms like, do we really still have the audacity to think our subjective opinion on a 30 second video or a picture is going to drive the business? Every single brand in here's biggest issue is not awareness, it's relevance.
And if you're small and you need awareness, you can only get it through scaled relevance. So what are we doing here, Avery? Where are we on time, by the way? Just keeping I want to make sure you get lots of questions.
Perfect. All right. I want to make sure you. I'm sure you get lots of questions.
I want to make sure you get a chance to get dangerous in close to 58 minutes. Yes, I know. I'm sticking. I can't go back on my promise.
Maybe one more question for me, and let's get to audiences. You meet so many marketers all around the world, lots of very potential people. What are the traits of the most successful marketers that you come up against? Lack of losing their job.
The lack of fear of losing their job is the number one thing that I see in someone who's doing a good job. You know, For a Fortune 5000 marketer, there's no one in this room, if they're in that size company, that isn't dealing with a company that has measurement wrong, has allocation of funds wrong. It doesn't exist right now. And so it takes real courage to be a good marketer in a big company right now.
To be able to bring common sense and actually speak what you believe in in a boardroom, when you know that that is not being rewarded or that's not how the system works, takes a lot of courage. And so, you know, we took a lot at Vayner that, like, we only get called when shit's bad. You know, people really don't actually want to. You know, it's profound that we've been able to build this company.
I've been selling something that nobody wants to buy for 15 years. And so we're very grateful for the individuals we find along the way that know the truth of the consumer and are willing to fight for that in the face of the falsities of the corporation. And that takes courage. That's got the amount of CMOs I've met and the ones that are closest to their customer and don't fear.
Yeah, 100% attitude combinations. It's wild. I said this last week in an important meeting. By far, the people that believe in what we're doing over in Bingland are CFOs more than CMOs by far.
It's not even close. Like, there's literally no CFO meeting that I don't have, which I'm doing more of lately because of this reality that within the first 45 minutes, she or he's like, okay, yes, this. We just have a lot of romance in CMO land. I would argue that CMO land and I.
Jesus, I'm very fortunate. I'm incredibly close to many of the Fortune 500 CMOS and we cry about in C. And I feel I'm closest to CMOs. I'm a marketer.
We cry about, like the lack of respect or the short tenures of the cmo. And I remind some of my dearest friends, people that went to my wedding. Like, I remind them that it is their fault. I mean it.
I think we need, we need a recalibration of our industry. We're losing credibility. I spend most of my time with the boards of the companies that you work at. We are losing credibility as marketers by showing up to these meetings with fake data.
We must destroy fake data in our industry. And our industry is, if anything, great at creating fake data. Although it's been a long time hiring, amazing for me, getting my talent that is cool at all. You talk a lot about hiring, firing quickly, which I think is being true.
I'm a big back rocket. You also talk about being kind. Yes. I'm wondering how do you deal with balance of both things, especially when it's more down to talent and application, how you application.
There's many things there. So a lot of people hear my content around hire fast, fire fast. But they always skip the part that I also say promote fastness. Right.
So, like, one of the ways that this whole system would work is if you also focus on when you're fortunate enough to hire someone good to start really building an actual relationship with them, interacting with them, speaking to them, moving them up as quickly as you can afford to. That's number one. Number two, I rely on the truth of my humanity. I just ran it for 20 minutes.
That subjectivity in marketing is our problem. Hiring and firing is completely subjective. Of course, there's some subjective things or some things depending on the job, but I'm aware that many of the people I've promoted were fired in my life has been a subjective opinion of me. And I'm comfortable in the humanity of me being flawed at times, making mistakes.
I also think there's a kind way to fire. I think, you know, early in my career, the way I thought I was being kind was letting people that really stuck to their jobs hang around for an extra year. Later in my life, as these gray hairs started coming, I realized that candor along the way was far more valuable than the charity I thought I was giving them, which was creating nepotism and entitlement and also hurting gay players around me. So I think there's a kind way to fire, brother.
I think you need to communicate and you also, you know, for me, I'll Tell you what worked for me, I just gave bigger severances because that's what mattered to me. I did care about the humanity more than the money. I'm just, I. But I really, really misplayed it.
My 20s, 30s, into my early 40s, I was unable to communicate to people that were struggling with performance because I thought it would scare them. And I hate fear. And I just didn't have it right. I never calibrated properly.
Now we have something internally called kind candor. It's literally called kind candor. And it's completely been profound for our business. It's given people that want to deliver candor from me down a framework that they need.
I haven't had the luxury of the 50,000 hours of work that I put in in these details. And I've seen every sector we spend billions of dollars in media against it. I only look at the business short and long term. We have it right.
And so for you to have it, you need to know all the answers, right? I like literally because I didn't sleep on the flight over here either, which sucked. I'm literally analyzing how the algorithm of Snapchat Spotlight is working on the flight out here. I would argue almost no one this who's ever been to Snapchat Spotlight, you know.
So like either you're a practitioner of the craft that you're not. I know that carousel ads on LinkedIn right now with picture than video are over indexing on reach versus written word. The level of practitionership needs to be profoundly deep. I also it depends on what business you're at that's to spend a lot of time there.
I know that the excuses that Tesco and Sainsbury wants us to do this are not true because I speak to them like you just have to have every answer. When I'm with Pepsi they blame the bottler. When I'm with the qsr they blame the franchisees. Right.
Like you know and then I pay attention to market for PayPal like I understand what Robinhood is doing and Chime is doing and the blockchain is doing and like you, you just have to be very good. Like I don't like but I mean this like, like for you know Caitlin is our business officer. We have watched clients go from this mid funnel investment from 800,000. You know these numbers from 800,000 in investment organic social two years ago to last year 8 million with us in fee social credit to this year 40 million fee for some clients to get a brand new to go from $800,000 to 40 million in 24 months can only be done by being incredibly T's and I's in every conversation in the boardroom.
And then the action has to be true. So I would say if you're move it and move the conversation for the higher up, you got to prepare for every counterpoint. And the biggest issue is that I talk about this all the time. My company do not fold like a cheap chair.
Right. The biggest issue that a lot of executives have is if Amy or Diego is emphatic that a press release is better than organic views on LinkedIn. For you, I'm empathetic. It's tougher for you to fight that fight all the way through.
For me, it's easy. I'm like, we're out. You know, like, the coolest thing about my company is some. I don't know if you guys know this, but you have this thing called procurement on your side.
Those fuckers really try to do it. You know, they come in after it's been fully negotiated and trying to take away literally all the margins. We just are willing to walk, unwilling to walk in the pitch. We can do our peace.
We're willing to walk every step of the way to not compromise the model because we know it to be true. And if it's compromised us at 80% of what we're supposed to do is just as bad as every other agency has to be 100%. You have to be 100% with all the answers to get the confidence for the people who make decisions to move around the allocation. But I will say it's very simple.
It is very simple. Creative gets tested for free in social as a byproduct of actually doing what you should be doing. Working media should be going to the creative that gets abused. Period.
End of story. To the point where in America, I think the best ad marketing is the super plaid. It's the best media. It's under price.
I believe within the next five years, you will see super bowl spots that are literally the video that played on social with the black bars on the right and left because it came from a mobile device. Because the creative's been validated and you're making a $10 million media investment. Why guess on which celebrity you're gonna put in the sp that I'm going to flip what you just said and talk about the noise, which is the C suite where I get stuck, where I don't quite know where I don't want to sign off. Your CFO should be your absolute best friend.
How do you Break that tension and how do you move it forward? Because a lot of times you can't influence. If this group rans down hatches because of fear, no one can do it or they don't know how. The way I do it, in case you want to analyst, it's similar to knowing all the answers, but it's showing the waste on what you already do.
I've been fascinated by this journey last decade, Gary, but prove to me the ROI of this social thing. I'm like, your business has been declining for seven years in a row. Why don't you prove to me that television and bus ads work? And by the way, that's how our business grew.
Just so you know, when I came to the industry, I knew I knew nothing about the jargon. I knew I knew my world, right? I built this wine business with marketing. I was an early investor in Facebook and Twitter, and I was really successful in Silicon Valley investing.
And that was starting to be clear when I started the agency. But I didn't know the terminology development. I asked questions, you know, one of my first meetings was at Campbell Soup in New Jersey and Hunter pr back to pr. They came up here and, like, did a presentation.
And then Iat, I didn't know what that was. And they said, great News. We got 80 trillion impressions last month. And one of the examples was like, they got a reference in a Huffington Post, you know, article, and they literally threw up the monthly visitors to the entire site.
And I came from tech and almost invested in Huffington Post. And I was like, that's the. They literally just cleaned an article. Six clicks in to Huffington Post had 45 million visitors.
I was like. And no one said a word. And I got bad grades in school. So this is my first meeting.
They gave us a packet. I'm like, I'm not reading this. I went to the last page and said, business down 7%. I'm watching the first 25 minutes of this meeting, and I'm committed.
I'm committed to not talking, because I always talk if you can't tell. And I knew it was in the new industry. I wanted to listen. I wanted to listen.
Don't jump to conclusions, Gary. Stay disciplined. Listen. And I'm listening.
And I'm listening. And for 25 minutes, this circle is having a party. 100 PR's, 80 trillion. And then gray's like this profound.
It tested better than anything in 37 years when we did four people in a focus group. Yay. Everyone's cheering. And finally, about 25 minutes in, I raised my hand.
I go, hey, I'm sorry. VaynerMedia Social. Don't even know what the hell I'm saying. And I was like, just curious, like, everything sounds so awesome.
Everything's working. Why is the business declining so much? I wasn't asking to raz like I do today. I was asking.
I didn't know. And literally everybody in the circle just shook their head like, yeah, you're right, we're confused. And I said simply, maybe the reports are wrong. In the first meeting I ever had starting this company, maybe the reports are wrong.
And you would have thought like, I killed Santa Claus. And that's the problem with the CFOs and CEOs. So you have to show them what's not working with theirs, if it is or isn't. And you have to show them the alternatives.
There's unlimited examples of people that have devoted in the last 36 months to the midflow. It's every human that's becoming. I'm writing a book called your individual empire right now. It's talking about the Mr.
Beast. The beast, Stephen Bartlett, are about to become billion dollar corporations. As humans, they are the leaders of the mid funnel. Poppy Liquid IB These companies are going from anyone here.
You have competitors, Chime. We have competitors that are going from zero to major players with a commitment to the mid funnel. And we are still fully stuck in the upper funnel and the lower funnel. And a lot of corporations are dragged.
Right. They have the lower funnel performance team over here. They have the upper funnel brand people over here. These people fucking think they're Don Draper.
These kids think they're MIT math nerds, but they're way worse than they think they are. And the algorithm that sits in the middle destroys their math skills and it definitely destroys fucking fake John Drapers over here. And I don't know what the fuck people are doing. There you have it.
We must bring this side of it as well. So your hands on Facebook. So essentially rewards customers. So here on that we only report news to clients and it's just not scalable.
They want impressions. They want. Yeah. Clock cost per click, etc.
How are you then looking at a report? By telling them they should take the creative that those individuals are making and put them into the lower funnel and put media behind it the same way they do with everything they do. Right. You and I are aware that organic impressions at scale can drive a business.
Our breakthrough at Pepsi was mug root beer that had no media behind it. Just the organic impressions through household penetration in such a significant way that Changed our conversations at PepsiCo but I wouldn't bang my head against the wall. I think you need to tell them, take the creative we're giving you or these people are giving you that are incentivized to give it and put it down at the lower level to performance and tell me how it performs against the ab creative that you normally put out. But we know is that when you put media dollars in performance against over indexing mid funnel creative that it outperforms the best a B testing that performance people do.
If you know how to take that original asset and slightly tweak it with performance DNA, change the copy, add a banner at the bottom, there's a little post production you can do against that. But yeah, you can't fight a fight that isn't set up for you to win. You can just have the proper conversation. They're more likely to pay their creative AOR millions of dollars to do a campaign that then pays a production company to make the video.
Right? Then it gives them bad assets to do that work. Right. You've got to show them that those assets with paid media behind it can succeed.
If they don't want to build into organic or you can tell them the truth which is they're so under investing in it and if they give you $5 million instead of £100,000 to do it, then they get the same results that always drove me crazy. They're like, Gary, social's not working, TV is. I'm like, you're spending 44 million on TV, you're spending 500,000 on social. Give me 44 million.
Let's have, let's have it out. I mean it's a crazy talk but I think I have to go. I'm say this the best way I could say this is the following. You all know this is true.
I'd like to think that meaning that you live in life and, and so I highly recommend back to some of the great questions cross your keys and I's understand this enough to have the proper conversations because I understand it's hard to fight for this if you only know 70% of it. You're caught along the way. So if you believe in it, and more importantly as marketers, this is where the industry is and will continue to go. And a lot of you are saying things in boardrooms that you don't actually believe but you know the company will accept it.
And I will leave you with this. It is much more fun to die in your own sword than someone else. One of the things that drives me very, very much in this industry is to challenge marketers to speak their truth. Because you will get fired for defending something you don't even believe in if the business continues to decline.
So there's a respectful way for you to challenge the status quo. And I promise you, the smartest people in the room are paying attention and that will benefit your career because we are in that transition point and a lot of you will be casualties of war if you are not thoughtful about what's about to happen. And I mean that. So please, by the way, you may believe the complete opposite of me.
You might think it's a really good idea to have three people randomly come up with an idea and spend millions of dollars making a 30 second video, spending millions more to make them watch it even though nobody watches them. And if you believe in that, you should be conviction and yelling about that important. But if you believe in something, you need to start speaking up. Because what I can tell you from my seed is marketing is about to go through a transition and there's a lot coming and there's a lot of angst in the system and you want to be on the right side of history in your boardrooms over the next 12 to 18 months.
It will benefit your career and I wish that on you. Thank you everybody. If you enjoyed this podcast, please go back and look at the prior episodes. They're loaded.
I appreciate your attention and thanks for being part of this journey. See you later.