Social media has become a creative meritocracy — most marketers haven't caught up

Executive overview

Distribution has fundamentally shifted. The phone is now the primary device of society, and social platforms have become creative meritocracies where a first-time poster can outperform an account with 10 million followers.

Most marketing teams still treat social with a television mindset — slow, committee-driven, subjective. The opportunity is to flip that: use organic social as a validation engine, then invest behind what the algorithm already confirmed consumers want.

The creative itself now creates the reach — not the media spend behind it.

The TikTokification of social and what it means

• For the first decade of social (2005–2015), it worked like email: build followers, post, get guaranteed reach
• The last three years have broken that model — reach is now determined by content quality, not audience size
• A first-time TikTok poster today can outperform a 10M-follower account on the same afternoon
• Chili's attributed 40% of Q3 revenue to a single TikTok; Ocean Spray was transformed by one viral video
• Spending media behind unvalidated creative in 2025 is illogical — the algorithm tells you what consumers want before you buy reach

Underpriced attention — the core framework

• The question in every era: where is attention underpriced relative to its actual impact?
• Google AdWords in its first six years was "uncomfortably underpriced" — Amazon's dominance traces directly to being the top spender
• P&G dominated consumer brands by going all-in on TV when other advertisers were still writing radio copy
• The Super Bowl ad is still the single best media buy in the world — 130M Americans watching a 30-second video for $7–8M is genuinely cheap at scale
• TV isn't dead; standard TV media costs are just overpriced relative to alternatives
• The concept of day trading attention: what's a good deal in marketing changes constantly — live social shopping, virtual influencers, and TikTok Shop are the current underpriced plays

Why campaigns are the commodity, not social

• The industry inverted the value hierarchy: social was treated as support for the campaign; it should be the other way around
• Brilliant strategists who can write a tagline and produce a commercial exist everywhere — that's the commodity
• The scarce skill is understanding how algorithms work differently across Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok, LinkedIn, and YouTube Shorts
• VaynerMedia has 100+ employees in "PAC" (platforms and culture) whose only job is understanding platform algos and global cultural trends
• Creative agencies pitching seven-month campaigns via subjective opinion decks are structurally unable to win in this environment
• Focus groups of six customers are absurd when you have social media as a real-time signal

Yes-and culture and content volume

• The industry's "insecurity" — treating every Instagram post like a full-page Vogue ad — kills output velocity
• Yes-and means: every person on your team has unlimited ideas that may resonate with different consumer segments; now let them reach the market
• The goal is consideration across as many consumer segmentations as possible — why would you want anyone not to buy?
• Matching luggage creative (one hero video + supporting assets) is not a 2024 marketing strategy
• For the first time in marketing history, the creative itself creates the reach — not the budget behind it

The practitioner advantage

• GaryVee's competitive edge is being an operator of marketing every single day — not a strategist who gets briefed
• He runs marketing for VeeFriends, Wine Text, his agency, and other businesses simultaneously as CEO
• Walking into meetings without prep is possible only when you live in the work daily — "I've been prepped. There is no prep."
• Staying independent is the structural advantage over holding-company agencies: no 90-day financial targets means freedom to invest heavily in a down year and "kill everybody next year"
• VaynerMedia opened Canada because the local market is dominated by holding companies constrained by quarterly numbers

Timing and how to spot the next platform

• Timing is not genius or foresight — it is humility plus paying attention
• When GaryVee called TikTok six years ago, it wasn't a prediction: TikTok had already happened; most people just weren't paying attention
• Current signal: Saturn app — a calendar app that has penetrated 80% of US high schools and recently added chat; it is likely to be the next Snapchat/TikTok-scale platform for 14–18 year olds
• Live social shopping (Whatnot, TikTok Shop) is already at tipping point — not a forecast, an observation
• Virtual influencers are accelerating; AI-generated humans on Instagram are already indistinguishable for some audiences; VTubers in Japan show where parasocial relationships with non-humans can go
• The pattern: watch until there is enough scale for large brands to care, then go loud

Building culture and retaining people

• The single most important leadership reframe: employees are your boss, not the other way around
• Humility is the "sheer superpower of society"
• Firing people who are not good human beings — regardless of their revenue contribution — is non-negotiable; tolerating a talented piece-of-shit human destroys everything else
• Hiring is guessing; promoting and firing is knowing — hire faster, fire faster, promote fastest
• When you identify someone great, act on it immediately: title, money, or at minimum a dinner conversation
• VaynerMedia has ~100 employees with 10+ years of tenure in an industry notorious for churn — a direct result of spending time with people, not just managing them

Career advice and complaining

• Speak your actual point of view in boardrooms — your career advances on historical correctness, not on what people wanted to hear in the moment
• If you know the company is spending marketing budget the wrong way and say nothing, you will be the fall guy when results disappoint
• If the company won't change: say it once, clearly, then either accept your constraints or leave
• Complaining is for losers. Audit who listens to your complaints — it is only people who love you unconditionally or other complainers
• Action beats complaining: start posting on LinkedIn about your professional observations today; it creates optionality and leverage

On passion and avoiding regret

• Work takes up too much of life to spend it miserable — the goal is to like it more, not necessarily love it
• The best exercise: volunteer five hours at a retirement home, talk to people in their 80s and 90s, and witness regret up close — it is "quadruple scary" when time is running out
• Many people are trapped in jobs they hate not by necessity but by spending patterns — cutting streaming services and daily coffees can offset a $30–50K salary reduction
• Action available right now: make weekly videos about your professional observations; one DM from the right person changes your trajectory
• "Please do not just accept that it's the way that it is. That is not true."