After 3,046 amazing days at @VaynerMedia, this is officially my last week.
I met @garyvee on March 15, 2017 at City Winery. It was an epic first meeting. He laid out his vision for Vayner and it was wildly different than the rest of ad land - a model built to maximize relevance, to put social at the center of the world’s biggest brands, all fueled by a culture of kindness.
The vision was crystal clear, and 8 years later, my heart is full having had the privilege to work with the sharpest, kindest, most incredible people on the planet to help turn the vision into reality.
To all our brand friends: Thank you for believing in Vayner, for trusting us with your businesses, and for going on the journey to transform the way marketing is done. There are countless memories – laughter and tears, viral hits and misses, epic business wins and losses. I’ve loved it all and will miss you all dearly.
To our leadership team and extended VaynerX family: I am in awe of how you make the “impossible, possible” every day. My grandfather always used to say, “Find what you love to do, with people you love to do it with and you’ll never work a day in your life.” The amount of fun I’ve had every single day, working alongside people I love and love being around, is something I will never forget. Keep putting the best energy out into the world and the most amazing things will continue to happen. You are the best of the best and I can’t wait to see all the magic you cook up in the years ahead.
To GV: You’re truly one of one, incapable of being put in a box - entrepreneur, author, ad exec, creator, wine expert, rap artist (see Snoop Dogg track for reference), collector, die-hard Jets fan, speaker, etc, etc. When I first started, you told me that my #1 job was to eliminate fear every single day. You taught me that how you treat people (even when you know you’re right and they’re wrong) matters more than anything else. Amidst any stormy weather or bad days, you’ve never wavered from your conviction around these principles.
You inspire and push us all to squeeze every single drop out of life, to live with gratitude, to give without expectation of receiving and treat people with kindness and compassion. You make us all better and it’s an amazing gift to be your friend. Here’s to making positivity louder, FOREVER!
I’m looking forward to the next chapter (more news on that very soon), but I’ll be watching and cheering loudly from the sidelines as you all continue to soar.
Thank you for the ride of a lifetime. ❤️
118 million views the past 90 days. That’s a lot of eggs. Couple of interesting insights…
- Since Instagram released Ai translations, 20% of my views are coming from India.
- 99.4% of my views are from non-followers. Stop worrying about followers! The creative finds the audience based on relevance.
- My biggest viral hits all had retention curves where 50% of the audience made it to the end of the video. All mega viral hits (20MM+) reels were under 10 seconds.
- Re-posting creative works. If a piece didn’t hit the first or second time, I kept re-editing - changing the opening hook, audio, edit points, text overlay. Stick with it, sometimes it takes 5 postings for something to take off.
Let creators do what they do. If you give them too many guardrails and mandatories, you end up with vanilla shilling of your brand. #creators#marketing
500 pieces of creative. Every day.
The era of creative abundance is here. Creative scarcity is over - one “big idea” or campaign that you go all Ron Popeill “set it and forget it” with is making brands invisible by the day.
The new model looks like this:👇
Post volume = relevance to dozens of cohorts
Organic views achieved = signal
Paid media = scale
Relevance leads to reach. Without it, you’re just another ad falling in the woods that no one sees or hears.
Bieber’s Coachella set was him pulling up videos of his songs on @YouTube from his MacBook.
The memes are already firing around the world today. This Katie Perry one is viral already and is a good reminder that the ads we make are most often viewed as an interruption to the thing people want to be watching - resist the temptation to put something in front of them that’s not relevant or worthy of their attention. The world doesn’t need another piece of spam from your brand.