Social media has become one of the most crucial pieces of the marketing mix for both emerging challenger brands and Fortune 500 conglomerates alike. In fact, now that most social media algorithms prioritize serving users posts that are relevant to their interests, rather than content purely from accounts they follow, brands can potentially reach millions of consumers with a single post for a fraction of the cost of a traditional media buy. 

But some brands, particularly those owned by major companies, are only now acknowledging the power of creative advertising on social media, said Gary Vaynerchuk, chairman of VaynerX and CEO of VaynerMedia. 

“I believe that something is in the water in 2024,” he told Ad Age. “I can't explain to you how many more meaningful meetings around social creative I’ve had in the first 150 days of this year compared to literally the last three [or] four years. So, I believe that Fortune 500 companies are ready to take social creative seriously.”

With his new book “Day Trading Attention: How to Actually Build Brand and Sales in the New Social Media World,” Vaynerchuk offers marketers guidance on how to navigate today’s advertising landscape—where social media, content creators and other digital mediums are increasingly outstripping traditional marketing channels. 

Vaynerchuk sat down with Ad Age ahead of his book’s release tomorrow to discuss how brands should approach creative social media advertising, the “TikTokification of social media” and how AI will impact the creator economy.

This interview has been lightly edited and condensed for clarity.

Your new book is a follow-up to one you wrote a decade ago titled “Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook.” Why did you decide now was the time to revisit the topic of social media marketing?

When you’re talking about the current state of creative strategy and social [media], it’s probably a good idea to update it more often than once every 10 years. Because, as you can imagine, my thesis is that it’s changing daily—it’s the title of the book. When I wrote the book back in 2014, the Ad Age crowd could’ve cared less about social media creative, but this is what I’ve been yelling about for years. And we’re in a time where cable and network TV is transitioning to streaming and CTV, and you’ve got AI and VR on the horizon ready to change the world. So, I wanted to get this thesis down in “Day Trading Attention,” which is that it’s not about social—it’s just about marketing. 

In your book, you talk about the “TikTokification of social media.” What do you mean by that?

It means, for the first time in marketing history, the creative is the variable in creating reach, which is profound. TikTok changed everything. Social media for a decade was [like] email marketing— get as many followers as you can, and a percentage of them will see your posts, just like open rates in email. Now, with all these algorithms based on the interests of people, the individual commercial, the ad, has the potential to reach millions of people even if you have 1,000 followers. That is profoundly game-changing for advertising.

If I make a video for Blue Bottle [Coffee] that’s funny or clever or informative, and I post it and it has all the things I talk about in the book—the first three seconds, the thumbnail, the creative, the copy—there is a chance that that video could get 17 million views; 17 million actual organic consumed views is probably equivalent to the value of 100 million paid social views, and 100 million paid social views is probably equivalent to a $50 million media buy. [Social] is not taken seriously enough considering how profound that is. The industry has to respect that social media is more powerful than every other medium, creatively. But I don’t believe that that’s how the industry sees it right now. 

I often hear marketers talking about their struggle to keep up with the volume of content they need to be putting out on social media nowadays. How many posts would you say brands should be putting out to see success? Are there any metrics or goals they should keep in mind?

The official answer is as many [posts] as humanly possible. I think there are seven or so major platforms that everybody who does marketing for Fortune 500 brands should take seriously: Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, YouTube, TikTok, LinkedIn and YouTube Shorts. And I think, if you’re a Fortune 500 brand, you should be posting two or three organic posts per platform per day. And the reality is that that should be incredibly easy, given how much money [these brands] spend on advertising. The problem is they don’t allocate enough dollars to creative social—and even if they do, they don’t operationalize it in an effective manner to maximize meaningful creative output.

At Spotify’s NewFronts-adjacent presentation earlier this month, you told the audience that you think brands are “renting creators at scale” to help them keep up with those demands for social content, which is a “vulnerable state” for brands to put themselves in. What did you mean by that?

I believe that influencer marketing is a meaningful part of the media mix and the creative mix. But I believe that the reason you see so many [brands] go full influencer or go internal for social is because the advertising agencies have shit the bed on being good at organic social … the creative advertising industry has not figured out how to service the demand. 

Being great at social creative is not like being great at above-the-line creative. Being great at above-the-line creative is being a salesman and a politician. You have to convince the client to agree with you that they like [the ad], and then you have to get [press] coverage to justify that it was good. It’s not consumer-centric. I also think that the industry doesn’t want to be held accountable to the merit that is required in social media creative. And agencies can’t make as much money [from social creative], so they don’t want to sell it, and they don’t have the internal talent that actually knows what to do. 

How should brands be measuring the success of their social media campaigns in this era of changing algorithms and user behaviors?

The measurement doesn’t change with the algorithms. I think the best way to measure social is to bring media and creative together and measure against business results. And when you do social media advertising and creative properly, you’re also extracting consumer insights [from social media]. We have an acronym, internally, at VaynerMedia: “SIC”—it stands for “socially informed campaigns.” One of the reasons a lot of our commercials and activations are going well is that we’re getting insights from our day-to-day social media advertising, and that is mitigating the risk of the creative we put into the world. This is a very important part of the value of social. We did a Yung Gravy ad with Jimmy John’s that came from him replying to a post we did on social, and we turned that into a “SIC.”

You brought up “relevance” during your Spotify presentation, too—more specifically, the idea that brands will say “authenticity” when they actually mean “relevance.” Could you elaborate on that?

Brands can’t be authentic in the way that they say it—meaning, if you’re a bottled water or a soap brand, we all know the reason you’re communicating to us is to get us to buy [your product]. I think the industry has really messed up the word authenticity. When I say “relevance,” it’s not how [brands] normally say it—it’s relevance to more different people. If you have a group of three different people, I have a funny feeling Starbucks would like all of them to drink their coffee. And I’m also pretty positive that the picture or the video that all three of them need to see to compel them to actually start drinking Starbucks more or try their lavender latte, or whatever they want from them, has to be different for all three of them, too. That is the current issue of advertising, and I think people are missing the boat on that.

In your view, what is the biggest challenge brands face when they’re trying to convert social media engagement into actual sales?

It’s that they, big brands, don’t have media and creative together, so that means it’s over [from the start]. The moment you have media and creative separate in two different agencies—even if they’re within the same holding company—you have now eliminated your opportunity to drive sales. But when you do have media and creative together, the reason most brands don’t drive sales is that they’re too heavy in media and not heavy in creative. Creative is the variable of success—media isn’t hard to understand. Targeting people that are interested in wine in New Jersey doesn’t take a rocket scientist. What does take a rocket scientist is to know which pictures and videos will convert the best.

How do you think brands should balance data-driven marketing with creative intuition when developing their social media strategies? 

50-50. I think if you respect each of those things equally, you will land in a very good place.  I come up with tons of random ideas, intuition-wise, and I post them, and I come up with tons of ideas that are extracted from the insights of the data. You’ll never create something new if you only go with yesterday’s data. And by the same token, if you’re not using yesterday’s data to inform your next decision, you’re leaving incredible insights on the table. 

How has the role of content creators changed since you wrote your last book, and how should brands be working with them today?

[Influencer marketing] has gone from something people laughed at me for when I started GrapeStory—which was an Instagram and Vine influencer agency—back in 2013, to where we are now, where it’s one of the most significant [marketing strategies], especially in certain sectors. Can you imagine talking to a beauty company and them not talking about working with creators and influencers at scale? I think [creators] are a meaningful part of the ecosystem—they are both creative and distribution, which is unbelievable. 

And I think that brands should be really looking at [creators] in two ways. They should be inspired by them and they should be using the ones that are underpriced. The whole thesis of “Day Trading Attention” is overpriced and underpriced attention, and there is both overpriced and underpriced attention in influencer marketing. Some influencers are overpriced, some are underpriced, and getting a good grasp of that is imperative.

With the rise of AI-generated content, how should brands balance human creativity and automated processes in their social media strategies? What will AI’s impact be on influencer marketing?

AI influencers, I think, are one of the most interesting conversations in all of marketing. I believe that AI influencers are going to do to real-life influencers what real-life influencers did to celebrities—they’re going to take a meaningful market share out of them. Meaningful. Aka, in 10 years, I think that AI influencers will have a bigger piece of the pie than real influencers, because it’s going to cost less and you can own [them]. I think this is an inevitable outcome: brands will own influencers, there’ll be agencies that build influencers like IP, and I think it’ll be humongous.

Brands using AI to help generate social creative is an inevitable outcome. It’s happening now and it will continue to grow—especially as trademark and copyright issues with AI get figured out. But humans are so funny, like ‘We’re going to be eliminated.” No, you’re not. If you’re the ideas person and you know how to prompt engineer, instead of you writing a script you’re going to type it in, like “I need a scene with a grandma and a granddaughter after the granddaughter was bullied at school.” And I’m not going to have to pay $700,000 to make a video. If I’m a production company, I’m paying very close attention to what’s going on right now.

We’ve been talking a lot about social media, and I feel like the elephant in the room right now is the future of TikTok and how that might impact the social media marketing world. What are your thoughts on TikTok’s future in the U.S.?

Let’s play out this scenario: TikTok gets banned. The next morning, the kids—and the adults—who consume TikTok will wake up and they’ll consume something else instead. Meta will be a big winner, because Instagram and Facebook will get some [people]. I think Snap has a huge opportunity with Spotlight, and I think that YouTube Shorts will pick up a piece of the action. And I think it’s very clear that Twitter is going to relaunch Vine, so Vine is going to be another opportunity. And I find it impossible that there aren’t some people sitting in a dorm room at Stanford right now working on launching their version of TikTok with the hopes that [TikTok] gets banned and they pick up the action. When TikTok got banned in India, the incumbent platforms got a percentage of the attention, and some of the startups that were TikTok clones got some of the attention.

How should marketers be preparing for whatever comes next for TikTok?

Brands weren’t scared to advertise on “Seinfeld” in its last season. In fact, they spent more money on the last seasons of “Friends” and “Seinfeld” than they did on any other season. So, until TikTok is canceled, market on it with all your might. And if it gets canceled, then decide where you want to put that energy instead. The way I think about TikTok is that I’m a day trader of attention. Today, there’s a lot of attention on TikTok, so today, I’m going to try to be good at it. I think the way marketers should prepare for it is to fall in love with the concept of marketing for today, and then they won’t worry about it.