VaynerMedia

The future we’re building at VaynerX doesn’t start with long winded email chains or textbooks of objectives. It’s built IRL, with our entire leadership team in the same room at the same time, getting into the details of what success as a modern production agency looks like in 2027. ⚡️ This week, Gary Vaynerchuk (Chairman, VaynerX) rallied our global leadership team together to map out what the rest of Q4, and the year ahead, is going to look like. From the big picture vision to the grounded POV of every individual team and leader. A day spent one on one with our incredible execs, who each poured their own experiences, insights, and questions into how we can grow as a full-on social, creative, and production agency. The takeaways that each of us left the day with come down to three simple points: 🌟We aren’t just a social ad agency. We’re a modern production company that does it all, from creative, strategy, media, and everything in between. 🌟Speed and relevance, with a social-first approach, are what we’re all about. We’re not spending 8 weeks jumping onto a TikTok trend (because guess what? It’s way over by then!) We deliver with speed and strategy behind every piece of creative at every step. 🌟VaynerX is actively building the modern marketing infrastructure, and this is how we’re getting started. A big thank you to our entire crew who made it out to NYC and made this a truly inspiring day. We can’t wait to put everything into action. 🚀

VaynerX everywhere? 👀 Yeah, that’s the 2027 plan. 🌍 We brought our global leadership together for a massive vision-mapping offsite and asked them for one word to describe where we’re headed next. The answers covered the board, but the collective energy was undeniable. After a full day our team left fired up and ready to make serious noise across every vertical. We're taking on 2027 the only way we know how…the VaynerX way. ⚡️

In it for the love of the game. 🪨✂️

Your Wednesday marketing news roundup is here. 📢 Our host of the Do You Know Show, Avery Akkineni (CMO, VaynerX), is back for another week with the latest marketing news, campaign highlights, and biggest platform updates. In this week's episode, we cover a lot, like…. DO YOU KNOW… 👉 Meta, YouTube, AND TikTok ALL HAVE UPDATES YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT? 👉 THREE “REVOLUTIONARY” BEAUTY PACKAGINGS…ALL LAUNCHED IN THE SAME WEEK? 👉 GRANDMAS ARE TAKING OVER MARKETING I.E. OpenAI AND Uber  👉 YOU CAN MAKE A DIFFERENCE WITH charity: water? Treat this as a mini podcast and hear what a CMO has to say about the brands actually breaking through the internet noise this week.  Psst! We’re actually headed to the charity: water brand partnership summit TOMORROW. We’ll be recognizing some of our own Vayner employees, like Beth G. Harper and Connor McCreery, who represented VaynerX on a mission trip to Uganda this past summer. Plus, we’ll hear some special words from Gary Vaynerchuk on VaynerX’s $10M, 10-year commitment with charity: water, and the incredible impact clean drinking water is making around the globe. You can help too! Check out more about charity: water’s mission here: https://lnkd.in/gdGpN-8 And let us know…DO YOU KNOW anything we missed?

Meta leapfrogged OpenAI and Apple in 45 minutes (def didn't see that coming) and quietly seeded the question: is Zuck the new Jobs!? (...I know!) I just got back from my third (IRL) Meta Connect -- and no question, it was the most important one yet. Not just for Meta but for every partner in their ecosystem. This is a long post so I appreciate the read (and had to share!) By now you've seen the announcements — the new $1299 headset is legit bonkers and "Tamagotchi" is back!! And while Muse was at the center of it all, 𝐭𝐫𝐮𝐬𝐭 was the headline for me. Most of the Instinct vs Muse debate with friends has centered on access — to what, to how many sources, read-only, or letting them PROACTIVELY do things!? 😱 😂 An AI assistant/agent's level of context to 𝐲𝐨𝐮 will directly correlate to productivity (personal and economic). That upside is gated by access. And winning the 𝐭𝐫𝐮𝐬𝐭 layer feels like the leading indicator for who wins the next phase of this race. Side note: I highly recommend reading David Singleton's thread breaking down how security and your Muse instance work (link in the first comment👇). So what does this mean for brands and marketers? Sharing a few unpolished thoughts that were spinning around my head on the flight home: • 𝐎𝐧𝐥𝐲 𝐭𝐰𝐨 𝐦𝐚𝐤𝐞 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐜𝐮𝐭: Today, agents don't show 20 options — they recommend one or two. You get mentioned or you don't exist. • 𝐀𝐈 𝐚𝐥𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐝𝐲 𝐦𝐚𝐝𝐞 𝐮𝐩 𝐢𝐭𝐬 𝐦𝐢𝐧𝐝 𝐚𝐛𝐨𝐮𝐭 𝐲𝐨𝐮: The agent describes your brand from what it already believes. That's your "storefront" and you won't be able to change it as fast as you'd like. • 𝐀𝐫𝐞 𝐫𝐞𝐯𝐢𝐞𝐰𝐬 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐧𝐞𝐰 𝐚𝐝��?: Ratings will heavily inform what agents buy. Review volume just became a media channel. • 𝐕𝐢𝐠𝐬 𝐨𝐧 𝐕𝐢𝐠𝐬 𝐨𝐧 𝐕𝐢𝐠𝐬: Whoever owns the agent will own the transaction. Meta's taking a cut, Amazon's blocking Muse. Tolls going up everywhere (we've seen this before, ad fam.) • 𝐁𝐨𝐭𝐬 𝐰𝐢𝐥𝐥 𝐟𝐥𝐨𝐨𝐝 𝐲𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐬𝐲𝐬𝐭𝐞𝐦𝐬. A thousand agents hitting your booking API and support queue — is very real, will be your problem. • 𝐙𝐞𝐫𝐨 𝐜𝐥𝐢𝐜𝐤: No impression, click or site visit — the agent just buys. Can your measurement stack see that? The brands that move first on all of this win disproportionately — the upside is asymmetrical. Even if agents do the buying, that raises the bar for what a store has to be (meaningful experiences, thoughtful merchandising, a human's ability to interact with the brand). Enormous thanks to Bianca, Dave, Veronica, Maggie, Simon, Jason, Nicola, and the rest of the Council team for a glimpse into the future 🙌 🙏 💙 If you haven't tried Muse yet, use invite code 9H680J -- gets you (and me) a billion tokens that never expire. Check the link for a ton of "musecases" too 👇 What a time to be alive, and what a privilege it is to navigate and build through it. LMK what ya'll think!

There is no metric more dangerously comforting to a marketing department than total follower count. …but we’re officially in the non-follower era of social media, and this legacy playbook has expired. Today’s platforms are entirely driven by the interest graph. The algorithm doesn’t solely base your content getting pushed to feeds by seeing who clicked follow on your brand page 3 years ago. It cares more about who is captivated by the creative you’re making today and determining if your content is relevant with people who don’t even follow you. This shift is actually an unlock for brands that are willing to adapt. Today, platforms are bypassing your existing audience to serve your content directly to non-followers who share an interest in your industry, product, or POV. As Gary Vaynerchuk points out time and time again, algorithms are giving away unprecedented reach for FREE. Your content has to actually be relevant enough to earn it though. If you had to present your monthly social reporting tomorrow, would you rather show a 5% increase in passive followers…or a piece of content that organically reached 500,000 net-new potential customers? 👇

SHHH….FOR INTERNAL AND CONFIDENTIAL USE ONLY.  Take a peek inside this year's leadership offsite and see how Gary Vaynerchuk and the rest of our leadership team are actively building VaynerX into a fully operating social, creative, and production studio agency.  Looking ahead to 2027, we have a clear vision of where VaynerX is headed and how exactly we’re planning to accomplish it. We firmly believe that a marketing agency should do everything. We don’t see ourselves as just a social ad agency because we’re actually a fully humming engine, fueling social, strategy, creative, and production.  It’s why we operate a little differently, acting fast in the ever-shifting culture of internet trends, and most importantly, why we put social at the center of everything we do.  At this year's leadership offsite, we shared a few of the slides above (and a whole lot more), because this is where marketing is headed in 2027. The modern marketing infrastructure is being built right now. We’re just giving you a sneak peek into what’s ahead. 🚀

Social Media Managers defy the laws of physics of normal hand grip capabilities and that’s just a fact. 🤷♀️

Stop debating AI in your Slack channels and come watch it happen live on stage at Shoptalk Fall. 🎤🍂 We all know AI is changing the future of creative... but how much of a role should it actually play in your brand’s day-to-day marketing? This Wednesday, VaynerX CMO, Avery Akkineni is taking the stage for a little real talk to figure that out. There’s going to be a 2v2 debate: two proponents of AI-generated creative, and two convinced it needs to take a back seat. Going to be a fun one. Shoptalk marketers, come hang! Check out all the details and grab a seat here 👇 https://lnkd.in/eJ8GBGzG

If you want to be a CMO in 2026, you have to be fluent in two languages: Math and Art. 📊🎨 The modern day CMO should be able to anticipate potential issues while also being a translator, converting analytics into creativity and vice versa. All while driving real, tangible business results. It’s a role that’s constantly evolving, and truthfully, as Gary Vaynerchuk points out, one that’s been misunderstood for the past decade. Today, the role of the CMO is defined not by what they’re best at, but by the range of skills and knowledge they bring to the table every day. Shout out someone below who fits the description of an amazing, modern-day CMO. 👇