2025년 성공 보장! 게리비의 소셜미디어 브랜드 전략 완벽 가이드

Small brands have one Tik Tok that goes viral that out sells in product what a Fortune 500 competitor theirs spends millions of dollars in television investment.

 If you were a small entrepreneur, you couldn't get into Walmart.

 You couldn't get into Sephora and Ulta.

 You couldn't get into CVS or Wegman's.

 You also didn't have enough money to run television spots.

 That's all been flipped because attention has shifted to the mobile device and to social networks and distribution has shifted to Amazon 3PL's to Shopify opportunities.

 You know, you don't need to win at Walmart to build a big business.

 What has been the most important strategy for you in shifting your approach in growing online communities and your brand from 15 years ago to today? To really win with the consumer, you have to have a level of relationship with it, with them, with the collective that is grounded in a astonishing level of humility and nontransactional DNA.

 I would argue that most people struggle in business and marketing because they are overly emotional about how they make their money today.

 Overly emotional about how they make their money today.

 Why do you say that? When I'm in those meetings with those CMOs, when I talk about Tik Tok live shopping or I talk about influencer marketing, Tik Tok live shopping.

 If you talk to a retailer who's got 400 leases around the country and all their cogs are li are caught up and in stores and fixtures and employees.

 me pontificating that in a studio like this, you can sell just as much stuff as your store in Midtown right now with all those costs, you you struggle to go there because we've made the financial commitment there and we're going to be judged every 90 days because we're a big company either publicly or in a PE environment.

 And so you start to say no, not because you're not intellectually strong enough to know that it's happening.

 It's just that you're emotionally and and actually tied up into how you're making your economics now.

 When I talk about influencers six, seven, 10 years ago are coming.

 Well, if you just paid Tiger Woods $20 million a year to wear your watch, the concept of like, hey, these kids online can do more for you for hundreds of thousands of dollars, doesn't sit well.

 You're locked into a threeyear $60 million deal.

 So, if you ask me why things have worked for me or what has been the go-to, it's never fight the market.

 If the truth is that consumers are now enjoying social or influencers or live shopping or here's a good one that's going to really bother everyone, AI influencers.

 If it hurts your feelings as a human, you're against the concept of AI humans on the internet, people that are not real, that are computerenerated, if that's your ideology, you're allowed.

 But if the consumer is consuming that content and doesn't care if it's a real life human or an AI generated human that's communicating to them about a bottle of water or a dress or a blouse or a hat, you're going to lose that game.

 the customer is undefeated.

 I was not going to ask you this till the end, but your book is dedicated, quote, to the 1% that make consumer centric decisions versus the 99% that make decisions based on boardroom politics, which seems to tie in to what you were just saying.

 You really believe that most entrepreneurs are making decisions based on boardroom politics and that 90-day cycle that you just referenced.

 No, I don't believe most entrepreneurs are.

 Entrepreneurs have no choice.

 They have to be consumer- ccentric or they're out of business pretty quickly.

 I believe most executives are interesting.

 So that's your message to corporate America.

 Yeah.

 And by the way, I I don't say from a place of audacity or disdain.

 I actually come from a heavy place of empathy.

 You know, if you're making $613,000 a year in stock options in a big corporation and you have you have, you know, a you know, your mortgage to pay and your life is run by your income.

 To go into a boardroom and throw a bomb in there and say we're doing everything wrong, that's politically vulnerable.

 So, I understand how people and why people do what they do it.

 But my point has always been while I've been in Madison Avenue the last 15 years with all these CEOs, CMOs, board members, CFOs, is I understand why you do it, but it doesn't mean that it's right.

 And there's a reason that there's so much decline, especially you look at the CPG space, they used to have substantial moes.

 You couldn't, if you were a small entrepreneur, you couldn't get into Walmart.

 You couldn't get into Sephora and Ulta.

 You couldn't get into CVS or Wegman's.

 You also didn't have enough money to run television spots.

 That's all been flipped with Shopify and Amazon and with the retailers needing younger consumers.

 So now they're taking their shopper marketing dollars from big companies and they're giving it to little companies to come into their stores.

 Small brands have one Tik Tok that goes viral that out sells in product what a Fortune 500 competitor theirs spends millions of dollars in television investment.

 We have a very big day of reckoning going on right now because attention has shifted to the mobile device and to social networks and distribution has shifted to Amazon 3PL's to Shopify opportunities.

 Uh, you know, you don't need to win at Walmart to build a big business.

 You need to win at Walmart and Target to get to that next tier.

 But you can get to a hund00 million in revenue today without ever stepping yourself into Arkansas or Minnesota.

 That is unprecedented in the history of consumer package goods.

 And that's just the CBG space.

 This goes on and on and on.

 And so look what Melanie did with Canva to to Adobe.

 She couldn't have done that 30 years ago without the internet being where it is now.

 She wouldn't have had the money to go to the trade shows in Las Vegas and buy a booth for $100,000 to court corporate clients.

 It's changed when you talk about attention.

 You called your book Day Trading Attention.

 And obviously it's a whole book so I don't want to give away the whole book.

 Okay, you can.

 But what is the thesis? What what does it mean to day trade attention? From a marketing lens, this will probably land with anyone who's from marketing or knows a little bit about it.

 We used to spend months and months and months to plan our campaign.

 You know the way you know again if you ever watched Madmen uh or if you know somebody in the industry or if you're in it you get a brief you work on it for months to think from strategy then creative tries to crack the idea then you got to sell it to the client then they say yes then it has to go to a production shoot then that takes time then then finally then nine months later this is happening today there are brands who will spend millions of dollars to take nine months to make a 30se secondond television commercial.

 Do you know how insane that is? Trying not to laugh because I know a lot of people make money that way, but the world is moving faster than that.

 I mean, hundreds of thousands, million and then hundreds of thousands if not millions of dollars and then they have to spend millions of dollars to amplify that 30 secondond commercial.

 My thesis, my argument is that is dinosaur behavior.

 On the record, I wish it still existed.

 Very few humans were built to dominate the 1960s70 Madison Avenue landscape more than me.

 I would have crushed.

 I would have been in Midtown with a cocktail.

 I would have been charming, gift of gab.

 I would have had good ideas.

 I would have cared.

 It would have gone great.

 It would have gone great.

 We would have built a huge firm.

 It just doesn't exist.

 I wish it did.

 It What we do at Vayner Media, what day trading attention is about is harder than coming up with a slogan and making a 30-cond video.

 But the argument is it's moving that fast that today as we sit here right now, every Fortune 5000 company should have already posted three, six, 11 pictures or videos across the seven social networks and watched the organic AIdriven algorithms reach the audience based on the creative value and then analyze the quantum qual data of that success or failure to make another decision to put out another piece of content later today.

 Three, six or seven pictures.

 I believe that per social.

 So that's three on Instagram.

 No, I would say overall I'm trying to be empathetic here.

 The number is going to be far greater and with AI coming these numbers are going to I'm going to watch these I'm going to make fun of myself about that quote in 24 months.

 And by the way, Gary Vee, my personal brand, this morning has already put out 12 to 15 pieces of content across all the social media platform from link for everybody who's listening from LinkedIn to Facebook to Snapchat Spotlight to Tik Tok to X Twitter to YouTube Shorts.

 Every one of these platforms now is very similar.

 Facebook proper.

 Facebook proper, not Instagram, one could argue is the most important platform right this second because of how much attention is actually on it and how many people have forgotten about it because they've moved on to Tik Tok and Instagram.

 So, you have the best marketers, at least the contemporary young ones or even old ones that get it putting all their energy on Tik Tok and Instagram.

 Meanwhile, back to day trading.

 Facebook's sitting here with an ungodly amount of attention, especially if you're targeting 45 to 80 year olds.

 Oh, by the way, they have plenty of money, right? And brands are not posting in there organically.

 The other thing that's crazy is in Adland, you always used to make something knowing you were going to spend media dollars to amplify it, to hide if it was bad.

 I've been saying lately for 70 years, working media dollars, the money you would pay the print, Forbes to put a full page in the magazine 20 years ago, a billboard outside, a radio station, a television network, working media dollars, the media dollars, not the creative that was in for 70 years, those were used to hide bad creative.

 Now, when you put out all your advertising on the organic algorithms, when something does remarkable, that's when you should put media dollars behind it cuz you've gotten validation that people think it's good.

 So now I believe the job of working media dollars is to amplify good creative.

 We've gone from it be good money, big money, hiding bad creative to now big money amplifying good creative.

 the Fortune 5000 brands that most attack that first will win.

 So that's what you mean when in day trading attention you say use data to inform content creation and optimize ad spending.

 So basically see what goes viral.

 I would argue or overindex, right? Viral is like a whole different animal in itself.

 If if if you and I started a tea brand and our first 50 posts got 80 views because we're new and our 81st post got 8,000 views, we need to take note of that one.

 You know, for me, 8,000 views is a devastating moment for a brand that's just starting with 50 views.

 8,000 is a great win.

 I was there, too.

 We're all starting at zero.

 So, overindexing.

 But if you have virality, yes, you should bet the farm on it.

 You mentioned a few minutes ago the number of social media platforms and how you should be on all of them.

 I personally am losing track and I lose the energy to keep up on threads and blue sky and Instagram and I've ignored Facebook.

 I'm not on Tik Tok.

 That's Maggie personally like Maggie and my personow.

 Maggie the person is allowed.

 But for entrepreneurs and for yourself, how do you keep track and stay on top of all the new platforms emerging? Because one of your other pieces of advice is prioritize early adoption of new platforms and features, which that in and of itself is a job.

 To say nothing of building a business by knowing I have no choice.

 Like if I want to be successful, I need to be able to convey my messages.

 And success comes in a lot of forms.

 I have a lot of selfish and a lot of selfless energy inside my body.

 I desperately want to achieve entrepreneurial success.

 I love building the things I'm building.

 I want Vayner Media to be huge.

 I want Vayner Sports to be huge.

 I want V friends to be huge.

 I want Wine Tech to be huge.

 But I also have an incredible gift in that I was motherthered so damn well.

 Parented, big shout out to Sasha, too.

 I'm not leaving you hanging, Dad.

 I was parented so well that there's a lot of things I want to say.

 and and if I want to reach 8 billion people, I need to be everywhere.

 And so I think if you're a business, if you're Coca-Cola, you have no choice.

 You're trying to sell Coke to everyone, right? If you're a politician, you're trying to win your election.

 You know, if you're anybody who wants to achieve something commercially, you have no choice.

 I I would argue understanding social networks and how they work for a business is now right on par to understanding how to balance your checkbook.

 It is oxygen to me.

 I could not comprehend having the naive to walk around earth and not realize that if my business is not good at social, I am vulnerable for decline.

 My business is not good with social, I am vulnerable to decline.

 And that's an important message.

 I I do not believe that people have grasped how much of the consumer's attention actually sits on these seven platforms.

 When you take them, you add the streaming service, you know, the Netflix, the Hulu's, you add some of the iconic print magazines that have been able to segue like yourselves to online digital, you're not leaving much left.

 Like after YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Tik Tok, Snapchat, LinkedIn, and Hulu, Netflix, like do you know how little cable television is being consumed? I mean, like, do you know that none of the four of us right now can name five active sitcoms on network television? I don't know if I can name one.

 I'm really not kidding.

 Like, think about it, Mag.

 Give me give me this like last fall's new series.

 It's impossible.

 And I don't know if you've noticed, but the newspaper keeps getting thinner and thinner and thinner and more and more expensive.

 Outdoor billboards.

 Have you watched how humans walk or sit in cars? We're all on our phone.

 I I I don't know what else to say.

 Like, and again, I I I need everybody to hear this.

 I'm not happy about this.

 I'm also not sad.

 I don't think this is like catastrophe.

 Like worlds change.

 Like you've seen that photo, right? When everyone's like, "The world's ruined.

 We're all on our phones in the subway.

" And then they show a picture of everybody reading the newspaper in the subway in the 30s.

 Nothing changes.

 Everything changes.

 But yes, I will say this nice and slow given the magnitude of the audience that listens to this audio.

 Whether you're B2B, which is LinkedIn, or you're BOC, which is the rest of them.

 If your business is not strong, forget about on strong on social, every quarter is about to get worse.

 What sparked your entrepreneurial drive? Probably DNA.

 You know, the truth is it was so early.

 It's almost it's almost hard for me to recall a time in my life where it wasn't a foundational currency, a backdrop.

 I think about wonder years the TV show and like talks about like music and the 60s being a backdrop of Kevin Arnold's life entrepreneurship was the backdrop you know basically as soon as I moved to Edison New Jersey in August of 1982 I was born in the Soviet Union I came to the US when I was three for we lived in Queens for a couple years and then do New Jersey for a year but then we moved to Edison which is where I grew up and that was August of8 82, right before school started, first grade.

 Pretty much at that point, meeting friends in the neighborhood, you know, shoveling snow, you know, when it snowed and we had a snow day, washing cars, lemonade stands, 7, 8, 9, 10 years old.

 Literally, just as I was rolling into this interview, I was doing a podcast with uh Dr.

 Beckett, who invented the Beckett baseball card guide.

 This was the price guide, the monthly price guide that dominated the 80s and 90s around trading cards.

 That was my Bible at 11 years old.

 So, I went from lemonade stands and shoveling snow and and you know, those kind of things to baseball cards and and then I went from baseball cards to working my father's liquor store and becoming weirdly obsessed with building a huge business for my dad and mom, which I feel very proud of.

 And so, it's always been there.

 Even I was a poor student for probably many different reasons, but at the top of the list was I just could not think about it was pure obsession.

 I would sit in third or fourth grade class and think about how I was going to sell sports cards to my classmates at lunchtime and like what were they going to what was Brian Chen or Tyler Bunting going to react to? Or oh this kid's wearing a Cincinnati Reds hat today.

 I'm going to sell him a Pete Rose after school.

 and and it was just it was really really really ingrained.

 Um and so I would say there was no spark.

 I think you know November 14th, 1975, the moment I was born, the spark was there and and I'm very grateful that you know something that was naturely in me is something I enjoy so deeply.

 You mentioned poor grades.

 I heard you give a keynote to some local high schoolers where you actually told them, I'm paraphrasing, but don't worry about your grades.

 A bad grade is not the end of the world.

 How mad were the teachers at you after that? You know, it's funny.

 10 or 12 years ago, I started talking a lot about grades in college.

 And I would get substantial hate emails from parents, you know, um from teachers, from educators.

 And I and it and I always tried to refine and tighten my message.

 I wanted people to understand that I believe education is the foundation of like life.

 But the system that's in placed currently and has been in place for a while works for many, which is amazing, but it does not work for many.

 And I think that is a worthwhile debate.

 So I would say to you that one far less because it's 15 years removed from where we were.

 15 years ago, I would have never been invited and I might have been taken off stage if I was too aggressive.

 Today, I think a lot of educators in the school system are looking for voices to round out.

 And they do have a lot of children who overstress and get into very bad mental places over a term paper or an acceptance letter into a college.

 And I think any grown-up um should care enough about a child to tell them the truth, which is there is no correlation to being a profoundly great student and having a happy life.

 Not a su a successful life is even laughable.

 I like the concept that we are not aware that many many people have been financially successful who have not gone to an Ivy League school and got great grades.

 That should have never even been a conversation.

 I think the deeper conversation is not financial success.

 It's are you a happy grown-up? And I think everybody who's watching this or listening right now knows there's no correlation to getting good grades in school and having a happy life.

 And I think it's an important message and then and I'm I'm happy of where I am on this journey.

 It was very tough for me.

 I took a lot of lumps um reputationally, business opportunities.

 People were very emotional about the college and grades thing 15 years ago.

 I think we're more round.

 By the way, plenty of people are about to DM me just on this right now.

 There's still people really holding on.

 Um, but this is not about being educated.

 This is about a system in place that has strengths and weaknesses like any system.

 And, uh, I think it's worth debating and rounding out.

 And most of all, if you love your child, you should have a well-rounded conversation.

 Switching gears a little bit.

 You mention every everyone's watching their phones, everyone's online, but you have trading cards.

 The Tops V I want to get this straight.

 Tops V friends Chrome trading cards.

 And you mentioned baseball cards earlier.

 I imagine there's a tie between that love at 11 and VCards.

 But how does this fit into your overall business strategy? Because it's returning to the physical.

 It's returning to the real world.

 Well, it's let me let me build on that.

 While I just made that whole rant on social, I would argue one of my favorite businesses to invest in and be involved in right now is experiential.

 This is not about or this is about and the problem with traditional marketing is it's overpriced.

 It's back to day trading attention.

 Let me be very clear.

 I would buy tomorrow for every one of my clients and for my businesses.

 V friends, wine text, Gary Vee the brand.

 I would buy commercials on network and cable television.

 I would buy full page ads in print.

 I would buy radio, terrestrial radio, live reads.

 I would buy direct mail.

 I would buy all of them if they actually slashed their prices by 90% to make it valuable to the actual reality of how much attention those things have.

 Got it? Mhm.

 So, everything I just mentioned as we sat here for the last 15 minutes, plenty of people did consume a commercial on network television during the Today Show or something.

 Many people are right now across this country having a coffee reading their local newspaper.

 The pricing's off.

 So, I don't believe we've gone completely digital.

 In fact, I actually think experiential like concerts and festivals are growing.

 M because we need a little bit of detox from digital.

 And you know this, we also want to take the photos at these places for digital.

 People literally go to events to take a photo to post on Instagram at scale.

 Anyway, back to V friends.

 I'm going to add to this.

 I hope this brings some value to someone.

 Uh, one could argue in the next decade with the explosion of AI that the only safe business is intellectual property.

 Mhm.

 One could argue, obviously, there'll be many others.

 Four years ago, I decided to launch my own intellectual property inspired by Pokemon and Marvel and Disney and ultimately really Sesame Street.

 As I've been on my journey, I've realized back to that selfish, selfless energy.

 Jim Henson really does it for me.

 I feel like he really was very entrepreneurial and wanted to win, but he had a lot of soul.

 There was a lot of good in there and I really resonate with that.

 So anyway, V friends was born on a NFT project blockchain.

 Remember that little exciting moment? Which by the way, on the record, that is going to be fun to watch.

 I'm sure some of you in this room, you guys are youngsters, you may not know this, but in 2000, all the internet stocks collapsed in April of 2000.

 And literally, major magazines and newspapers, including this one, wrote versions of the internet was a fad.

 I'm sure we could find that Forbes article.

 I'm sure.

 And and then obviously by 2004, it was quote unquote back.

 Same will happen with NFTs.

 There was too much greed just like on internet stocks.

 But nonfgeable tokens on the blockchain in fact is one of the most important innovations that sit today because I'm sure it's not lost on anybody who's listening.

 You know, deep fakes, no longer being able to trust video is a crisis in our society.

 For the last 100 years, video proof has actually been the judge and jury of our society.

 Now, there will be literally millions of videos of me in the next decade saying things I never said because AI deep fakes are that good and nobody will be able to tell the difference.

 The blockchain actually is one of the counters to that and I don't want to get on a tangent.

 We'll talk about that another day.

 But anyway, V friends is a big deal for me.

 In fact, if I had to bet on the most substantial business I will build in my life, it's going to be V friends.

 Interesting.

 The trading cards is a very big deal.

 Topps is the iconic trading card, you know, company.

 Even people that don't collect have heard of it.

 They've only done intellectual property deals with Disney.

 So Star Wars, Marvel, Disney.

 This puts V friends in amazing, amazing company.

 Way too premature.

 But the Tops Chrome is the iconic brand.

 I want kids around the country to buy a pack of cards and fall in love with my characters.

 They will discover it on YouTube.

 kids.

 We have cartoons.

 They will discover it.

 We have kids books with Harper Collins.

 We do ungodly amounts of things on digital every day.

 We're on whatnot and Tik Tok shop selling collectibles on live social shopping.

 But I believe trading cards and comic books are incredibly imperative for me to have a prayer to pull off my ambitions.

 And that's why I'm so excited about it.

 Ambitions to reach 8 billion people.

 That's right.

 I was going to ask if the cards were a way of building community in a different way, but what you just described sounded like an IP play.

 It's fully an IP play.

 I don't think an IP can be successful without community.

 Let's think about it, right? Harry Potter, right? All those kids and grown-ups growing, you know, dressing up as Harry Potter to go to the Midtown Execution or to a new film if they came out with one, that's community.

 All those nerds that go to the Javit Center or go to San Diego for Comic-Con.

 By the way, back to sports.

 You diehard Philly fans, us Nick Snick fans, what was I in last night in Madison Square Garden? I was there with a community of 30,000 other maniacs that desperately wanted us to win a game and all left as if someone in our family had died.

 That's true community.

 And if you go to whatnot and you go type in V friends and you watch a,500 300 people watching us live in the middle of the day as we open up trading cards, as we read comic books, as we show off our little new pins, you'll realize what community is about.

 For me, what's crazy is I was so affected by my childhood.

 And I grew up right in the 80s.

 Garbage Pail Kids, Cabbage Patch Kids, My Little Pony, Strawberry Shortcake, Transformers, G.

I.

 Joe, Max Hedrum, ALF, The Smurfs.

 I was being bombarded with intellectual property, He-Man.

 Much that was commercially driven, right? Make a cartoon to sell toys.

 I was an entrepreneur.

 I love pop culture.

 This was almost written in hindsight.

 I I wouldn't have been able to predict it 15 years ago, but I'd always thought about potentially buying Gumby or this or Scooby-Doo.

 I always thought about buying one day later in my career some IP and refurbishing it.

 It is far more enjoyable to start my own.

 And here's why.

 Back to the selfless part of me.

 When I make every child in the world fall in love with accountable aunt and patient panda, I genuinely believe that I can leave a deposit of eliminating some of the anxiety that is ravaging our world.

 If modern parenting has so overcodled children that we have eliminated merit, we've eliminated accountability, we've eliminated ramifications and consequences, and that's hurting our kids.

 Eighth place trophies were well intended, but they caused enormous harm.

 And so I want to build an intellectual property that's going to teach the virtues of kindness and empathy.

 Empathy elephant is one of the most important characters in be friends.

 However, so is tenacious termite and so is competitive clown and so is accountable aunt.

 And I think, you know, I think about it in terms of politics.

 I I want V friends to be purple.

 I don't want to be red.

 I don't want to be blue.

 All the magic's purple and I've built 283 characters that are going to allow me to do that.

 And I would say Gary B and my 50 million followers that I've been able to amass, if you look carefully, they resonate with the purple.

 You know, some days my fans love what I'm saying.

 Other days they don't like it because I'm poking at their vulnerability.

 And I've had a very unusual path of popularity on social media because I've been in that place.

 But I can't reach eight billion people.

 I'm not everyone's cup of tea.

 Um, it's just not how humans work, but IP can and your characters can and my characters can.

 And so, Patient Panda and Karma Kiwi, these little characters are going to help me finish off what I started 15 years ago.

 We'll have to have you back in less than 15 years to get a progress report on how that's going.

 But, Gary Vee, thank you so much for being here.

 We so appreciate your time.

 Thank you.

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