Host: Paul McIntyre, Editor-At-Large

Gary ‘Vee’ Vaynerchuk says his pithy pro-social media views to circa 50 million followers are far more nuanced than the vast volumes of “Jersey boy competitive” social media sound bites let on. 

Is two seconds of social media attention enough to work for a brand? No - he agrees with Amplified Intelligence founder Karen Nelson-Field, with a couple of caveats, of course. “Every brand listening right now can waste $10m on social media in five seconds,” he says on this week’s particularly fast-paced Mi3 Audio Edition. “I would buy unlimited television ads in Australia tomorrow, not the Super Bowl. You know what my problem is? I want to pay 20 cents in the dollar that the market is charging because I think that’s the actual value of the actual reach I’m getting, not the potential reach…”

The founder of New York-based VaynerX and CEO of VaynerMedia, Vaynerchuk has more than 2000 staff plotted across the globe and a monstrous social media following built on sharp takedowns on everything and anything linked to legacy media and classic marketing theory and practice. 

Equally, Vaynerchuk says there’s a fair chance he’ll be using the same mincer on social media in possibly five years. “When the attention veers away from social networks on mobile devices, which it will at some point, I will be the first person to make fun of people overspending on social media, including myself if I’m still doing it,” he says. “I'm aware that I love the Super Bowl ad, which is a classic ad. And I'm aware that in your setup that I that I do struggle with a programmatic ad, classic television spots, things of that nature. Let me break this down because it's a very smart audience that listens to your show.”

As much as 45 minutes will allow, Vaynerchuk darts rapidly across themes but gets some way into the weeds on industry debate around:

• media and advertising’s long and short impacts for building brands
• attention and attribution metrics
• how blockchains will emerge as authenticity ledgers in the age of AI deep fakes
• why blue-chip companies have to be spending 20 per cent of their entire marketing budget on organic social production now - not media budgets to underwrite largely ineffective creative campaigns that don’t resonate with the public

Take a listen to Gary Vee riffing at marketing’s deep end.