The Mid-Funnel is the Biggest Opportunity in Marketing

0:00There is no logic. If you understood what's happening in meta, and by dance, and snap, and YouTube, and Google, if you understood how these algorithms are written, purely for relevance, the thing that we've been chasing to measure our whole lives. For a hundred years, marketers like us, the bane of our existence has been trying to understand the creative before it goes into market. Focus groups, fake reports, politics amongst seven important people in a room. We've been struggling with this deep knowledge that we know, which is if the creative isn't right, we lost. I ask for a lot of you is take your hat off of being a corporate animal and understanding how your organization measures everything and put your human hat on and listen to it and understand it. There is literally no reason to waste marketing dollars anymore. We don't have the guess. Like, do we really still have the audacity to think our subjective opinion on a 30 second video where a picture is gonna drive the business? Every single brand in here is biggest issue. It's not awareness, it's relevance. And if you're small and you need awareness,

1:01you can only get it through scaled relevance. This is the GaryVee audio experience. This is an amazing opportunity to have you in the room, Gary. Thank you so much, mate, for doing this. Thank you so much, everyone, for being here, really. So I've got a few questions I want to put to Gary. I'd be honoured meeting him, actually at the wine library, which was really special, man. It was kind of cool to see there, because I noticed when we finished filming, you were straight downstairs doing a wine review, and you were straight on the phone with like, okay, ring this number, everybody, put your orders in. I wanted to start with an unusual question. You're obviously at the forefront of so much change and what's going on. Like, what hasn't changed? Have you put yourself back in your wine library days? What hasn't changed that has underpinned your success? You know, it's actually a fun one to start with, especially with this crowd. I'm aware, even just had a quick interaction, that people think that a lot of mine slash our company's theories are maybe in contrast to what's been classically understood

2:03or known. The thing that has not changed is that relevance leads to consideration, leads to purchase. I think that is just so uncomfortably classic and so true. I think that where information is being consumed and how relevance is defined and how fragmented relevance actually is and always has been, but the media landscape has changed enough for allowing us to all take advantage of it. That's different, but what is tried and true, when we did that podcast at my father's wine store where I kind of grew up and built, and as soon as we were done, I went downstairs and what you're referring to is I made creative ads for social, which we ran in a 10 mile radius of the store and we used video in social media to replace what we did with direct mail and it converts better. I would be thrilled to do direct mail today. I would be thrilled to do outdoor radio.

3:06I would buy TVC and television my great challenge that I always push against if the price was appropriate. I don't really have feelings other than I want to buy attention at a proper price, not overpay for it, and I would like the creative to make someone do something. It's not complicated. I just think that the industry, especially this markets industry, is very good at holding on to yesterday. I hope you're enjoying the podcast right now. Make sure you follow the podcast. That's why I'm interrupting. Let's keep going on this show, but follow the podcast and make my mom super happy. Well, one thing I loved actually, so me and my producer James, we turn up with all our cameras, our lighting, our sound equipment. I got out guns on that day, didn't I? I'd set up in your wine library, then you brought your crew along. It was like cameras on cameras on cameras. I mean, we had so much content, but something you are exceptional at is just making content wherever you are, whatever you're doing. Like how do you fit all that in? How do you do the thinking and the creative and the content?

4:09Intent, I've had a very productive year I don't know how everybody is 26 is going, but reflecting at the end of last year, I didn't feel 2025 was my best year on the field. I think of business like sports, and I'm not crippled by a year where I don't think I've done as much or as well as I've wanted to, because some of the greatest athletes of all time have had seasons that are not as great as others. That allowed me to really sit down in between Christmas and New Year's and come up with a framework for myself this year called Intentionality and Impact. Just being very clear with the many businesses I have and the many key teammates that I have and creating really tight intentionality frameworks and how are we going to measure that impact? That allowed me already, I would argue this is true that I feel I've been more productive in 26 than 25 already and we're just getting started. But to answer your question, reason I brought that up was with the hope

5:10that it might bring someone value and you may want to think about that. But for me, I've always had the intent now, what are you in 2026, for about 12 years now, I've had the intent to think about every single day as a production day, right? And now much of what I do for a living, I work with a lot of people here, this will not be lost, 80% of my day is not something I can put out in the public. It's client information, it's internal information, but understanding that creative and content was the variable of success and that the new distribution channels had been reformed. I started, as some people in this room know, from 2014 to COVID, I filmed every aspect of my life and only a small percentage of that was able to go out, but that allowed me to produce dramatically more content than the market. And I continue to do that today to answer your question, it's just the intent, right? It is my strategy to produce content every day.

6:10It is my strategy to use technology and people to post-produce that content. It is my strategy to understand which platforms to post that creative on. It is my strategy to post-produce that content to maximize organic reach. It is my strategy to understand once that creative has been validated by gaining organic reach, which is only achievable if the creative is relevant, then I will use working media dollars to amplify it. That strategy for me became the framework of our creative agency and production company, VaynerMedia, as the forefront and the reality of what's actually happening in the consumer landscape. So for me, there's a lot of value in me focusing on my creative because it becomes the blueprint for what we do for bless you, what we do for clients around the world. The thing I'm most proud of, the thing that allows me to sit here, the thing that I think makes me different than many people in marketing, is I'm a practitioner of the craft.

7:13I am not a professor, I am not a pontificator, I am not in university or politics. Every single day of my life, for the last, one of my 50 now, for the last 32 years, every single day of my life, I have spent working media dollars to make a sale and build a brand happen, every single day. And so that makes me very comfortable to talk about my things, because I've only been taught to measure based on sales and brand. When I was building my father's liquor store, the only two things I knew was that my mom was so remarkable that I needed to build this business for my family as a payback to her. And two, that I would leave that company someday because I knew my dad was never gonna give me any money. And I had my own life. This is real though, this is very profound. As a 22 year old child, I knew that I wanted to build a very large business for my family. It was incredibly motivated. As I've gotten older, I realized how rare what I cared about is I was obsessed

8:15to build a huge business for my parents. But I also knew that one day, I was gonna have to leave and do something for myself, which meant I had to grow the business. My dad only allowed me to spend marketing dollars if he understood what the ROI was at the register. I wasn't trying to win a can-lion. Sasha Vaynerchuk was not interested in a brand-lift study. But I also knew I was gonna leave. And the other thing I knew was, my dad was gonna fuck it up after I left. And so I thought about brand. I renamed my dad's liquor store from shoppers discount liquors to wine library. I focused on building the brand of wine library. But I focused on building the brand of wine library by driving sales daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly by winning on relevance to so many different wine consumers that I had people that were buying $5,000 bottle wines, but also bringing people in that were buying $15 wines for the weekend. I didn't know what I was doing in the context of this room.

9:17I was just building a business. One for the short term, one for the long term. When I got to this world, I was flabbergasted by the currency of the Fortune 500, Fortune 5,000 brands in the world. Everything was incredibly corporate. So many people make decisions based on reports not business truths, the politics within your organization. No one could explain to me what an MMA was. Nobody could explain how a GRP was really measured. People spent all their working media dollars on potential reach, not actualized reach. Common sense had no permission to be in the boardroom. This has been a very interesting journey for me the last 15 years. Let's start with podcasts, right? Why are podcasts, I'm just making assumption here that asking for a friend here, but why podcasts I want to value, do you think? Well, they could be very overvalued. I would say that social media, all the way to television and everything between influencers, direct mail, outdoor, everything could be overpriced and underpriced, right?

10:20So podcasts are misunderstood a lot of times because I think people don't understand how much audio is being consumed every day. However, I'm sure not lost at any of you. If the ad in a podcast is some generic 30-second recording of a different voice than the host, no one here is converting. If the host mails it in, because they just want to rip you off for a million pounds as the sponsor and they could give a shit and they just read it like it's a burden, you also are probably going to overpay. If the host is very clever and she or he is thinking long-term about what they're building and they give it their all to that read and help convert that audience, it might be grossly underpriced. So I think podcast for me is an incredible opportunity because people buy from people and podcast hosts, especially when humans have tremendous opportunities to convert their audience. If they build something meaningful, I think it depends on how good they are

11:20at integrating the sale. Makes sense. Now you've been ahead on quite a few trends over the years. Start of 2026, what are you looking at with interest in terms of what you think is going to be hot? I think live social shopping is the most important conversation for anybody that sells any single product on Earth. It is very clear that the West is now starting to have the early indications of following what's happened in China. It is a $600 billion GMB market in China. In the US last year was incredibly important, both what not and TikTok went out the gates very hard. We've already seen Twitch, there's rumors of meta, there's so many other people entering this space. So anyone here that sells a bar of soap or really cool pants or anything else in between needs to really focus on what's going on with live shopping. I think live social shopping will be a point of differentiation for the people that outflank their competitive set

12:23in a similar way to what social media was in 2015. I'd love your perspective on the difference between the US and UK mentality, because I'm really having spent a lot of time in the US as I do now. I'm really struck by the way we see business and the different mindset. What's your perspective on that? My perspective is it's a little overrated as a conversation point, like of course, I mean there's always gonna be, you know, stereotypes and generalizations. Of course, whatever, I mean look in the US, we have a state structure, right? Forget about the US versus Europe or UK, within America doing business in Florida versus New York versus California. Like there's so many things to that. Here's what I would say, I spend zero seconds on it. Zero point zero seconds thinking about it. If I was an entrepreneur trying to build a business, I would think about it more. If I was UK based and I had an opportunity to go to Silicon Valley or to the US, the US laws for entrepreneurship and building

13:25tend to be a little bit more opportunistic than let's say parts of Europe. But again, still generalizations, there's unlimited opportunity. I will say the thing I do spend time on, which is why I'm here, is I really think there's a big difference in marketing. I think I am shocked and I say this respectfully and I actually don't think it, I don't even really, I haven't put in the homework to understand how deep or what the nuances are. But my world, which is how can you not be spending more working media dollars in social if you know how to do it, which is invest in the mid funnel, let the creative validate, then put media behind it. The opportunity in Europe, specifically in the UK, is extraordinary. It's easier to win here than it is in America, because in America I'm competing with Mr. Beast and Alex Earl and late stage venture capitalist startups. There's a lot of people that actually know what to do in the US, they tend to be human beings or VC back startups.

14:25The corporations in America don't know what to do either. But there's more competition for the feed in the US on these seven platforms here. It's remarkably, remarkably sound. I think, you know, I take on some of that responsibility. I think I could have been a better CEO for VaynerMedia for what we do here in the UK and in Europe in general over the last seven or eight years. I don't feel like I've put enough effort or flag in the ground. I feel over the last three, four months, we've put in the infrastructure in place to really start to put pressure on the market by delivering remarkable work. So I think about that. But I think there's a bigger delta in the marketing industry than there is in the startup community in Europe, specifically the UK. I think all the things that bug me to know and which is the romance about bullshit that this industry loves is a seven out of 10 in the US. It is a 10 out of 10 here. We just continue to validate rewards,

15:29fake reports and headlines and magazines as good work and we're wasting an extraordinary amount of money, an extraordinary amount of money on production and working media in a world that does not exist. And I think it needs to change and I'm incredibly motivated by it so much. So that I flew to Atlanta before a huge snowstorm in New York to get here this morning, shower quickly and sit in front of all of you fine people. That's really nice. My producer can't get back to the UK because he's stuck in New York, so I know exactly what you mean. So you're UK marketer, your satinist audience, what are the top two or three things you'll do with that insight you've just dropped there? It's pretty simple. It's incredibly shockingly simple. We live in a world right now where the mid funnel is the biggest opportunity in marketing and the mid funnel is the way we define it is organic social media creative. I do not believe this room and I'm generalizing but I do not believe this room and when I say this room, I'm talking about the market. I don't believe the market understands how profound

16:30what I'm about to say is at least from one man's point of view. Statement number one, I think it is insane to spend one dollar of working media on creative that has not been validated in social. There is no logic. If you understood what's happening in meta and bite dance and snap and YouTube and Google, if you understood how these algorithms are written, purely for relevance, the thing that we've been chasing to measure our whole lives. For a hundred years, marketers like us, the bane of our existence has been trying to understand the creative before it goes into market. Focus groups, fake reports, politics amongst seven important people in a room, technology that we've been sold by holding companies that's complete bullshit. Like we've been struggling with this deep knowledge that we know, which is if the creative isn't right, we lost. So I think what I ask for a lot of you

17:32is take your hat off of being a corporate animal and understanding how your organization measures everything and put your human hat on and listen to it and understand it. There is literally no reason to waste marketing dollars anymore. We don't have the guess. And we should definitely not be posturing in boardrooms. Like do we really still have the audacity to think our subjective opinion on a 30 second video where a picture is gonna drive the business? Every single brand in here, as big as issue, is not awareness, it's relevance. And if you're small and you need awareness, you can only get it through scaled relevance. So what are we doing here? Every, where are we on time, by the way? Just keeping, I wanna make sure we get lots of questions. Yeah, we have one, two more questions that's on. Perfect, all right. I wanna make sure you've all, I'm sure you've got loads of questions. I wanna make sure you get a chance to. We're getting dangerously close to 58 minutes. Yes, I don't, I'm just thinking. I can't, I can't go back on my promise. Well, maybe one more question for me and then let's get out to the audiences.

18:34You meet so many marketers all around the world, lots of very influential people. What are the traits of the most successful marketers that you come up against? Lack of losing their job. The lack of fear of losing their job is the number one thing that I see and someone who's doing a good job. You know, for a Fortune 5,000 marketer, there's no one in this room if they're in that size company that isn't dealing with a company that has measurement wrong, has allocation of funds wrong. It doesn't exist right now. And so it takes real courage to be a good marketer in a big company right now, to be able to bring common sense and actually speak what you believe in in a boardroom when you know that that is not being rewarded or that's not how the system works, takes a lot of courage. And so, you know, we joke a lot at Vayner, that like we only get called when shit's bad. You know, like people really don't actually want to,

19:34you know, it's profound that we've been able to build this company. I've been selling something that nobody wants to buy for 15 years. And so we're very grateful for the individuals we find along the way that know the truth of the consumer and are willing to fight for that in the face of the falsities of the corporation. And that takes courage. That's spot on by the amount of CMS I've met and the ones that are closest to their customer and don't fear, yeah, 100% they're the two combinations. It's wild. I said this last week in an important meeting by far the people that believe in what we're doing over in Vaynerland are CFOs more than CMOs. By far, it's not even close. Like there's literally no CFO meeting that I don't have, which I'm doing more of lately because of this reality

20:34that within the first 45 minutes, she or he's like, Mokai yes, this. We just have a lot of romance in CMO land. I would argue that CMO land that I, geez, I'm very fortunate. I'm incredibly close to many of the Fortune 500 CMOs and we cry about, and I feel I'm closest to CMOs. I'm a marketer. We cry about like the lack of respect or the short tenures of the CMO. And I remind some my dearest friends, people that went to my wedding, like I remind them that it is their fault. I mean it. I think we need, we need a recalibration of our industry, we're losing credibility. I spend most of my time with the boards of the companies that you work at. We are losing credibility as marketers by showing up to these meetings with fake data. We must destroy fake data in our industry

21:36and our industry is, if anything, great at creating fake data. Although we're talking a lot about marketing, hiring is the biggest thing for me. Okay. Getting the best talent. Okay. I use fuel a little bit of oil. My sense. I talk a lot about hiring and hiring quickly, which I think is leading through and I'm taking back the rocket. You've also talked about being partnered. Yes. I'm wondering how to deal with the balance of those things, especially when it's more down to talent than application and how you see that change with that. There's many things there. So a lot of people hear my content around higher fast, fire fast, but they always skip the part that I also say, I also say promote fastest, right? So like one of the ways that this whole system will work is if you also focus on when you're fortunate enough to hire someone good, to start really building an actual relationship with them, interacting with them, speaking to them, moving them up as quickly as you can afford to. That's number one.

22:36Number two, I rely on the truth of my humanity. I just rant it for 20 minutes that subjectivity in marketing is our problem. Hiring and firing is completely subjective. Of course there's some objective things, depending on the job, but I'm aware that many of the people I've promoted or fired in my life has been a subjective opinion of me. And I'm comfortable in the humanity of me being flawed and at times making mistakes. I also think that there's a kind way to fire. I think early in my career, the way I thought I was being kind was letting people that really sucked at their jobs hang around for an extra year. Later in my life, as these gray hairs started to come in, I realized that candor, along the way, was far more valuable than the charity I thought I was giving them, which was creating nepotism and entitlement and also hurting the A-players around me. So I think there's a kind way to fire, brother.

23:37I think you need to communicate. And also, you know, for me, I'll tell you what worked for me. I just gave bigger severances because that's what mattered to me. I did care about the humanity more than the money, but I really, really misplated my 20s, 30s into my early 40s. I was unable to communicate to people that I was struggling with their performance because I thought it would scare them. And I hate fear. And I just didn't have it right. I didn't have it calibrated properly. Now we have something internally called kind candor. It's literally called kind candor. And it's completely been profound for our business. It has given people that want to deliver candor from me down a framework that they need. Haven't had the luxury of the 50,000 hours of work that I've put in in these details. And I've seen every sector. We spent billions of dollars in media against it. I only look at the business short and long-term. Like we have it, right? And so for you to have it, you need to know all the answers, right? I know, like literally,

24:38because I didn't sleep on the flight over here either, which really sucked. I'm literally analyzing how the algorithm of Snapchat spotlight is working on the flight out here. I would argue almost no one in this room has ever been to Snapchat spotlight. You know, so like either you're a practitioner of the craft or you're not. I know that Carousel ads on LinkedIn right now with picture-to-then-video are over-indexing on reach versus written word. The level of practitionership needs to be profoundly deep. I also, it depends on what business you're in. Back to CPG, because I spent a lot of time there. I know that the excuses that Tesco and St.Sbury want us to do this are not true. Because I speak to them. Like you just have to have every answer. When I'm with Pepsi, they blame the bottler. When I'm with the QSR, they blame the franchisees, right? Like, you know, and then I pay attention market for PayPal, like I understand what Robin Hood is doing and Chime is doing and the blockchain is doing. And like you just have to be very good. Like I, you know, I don't, like, if you, but I mean this, like, like for, you know,

25:39Kaelin is our cheap business officer. We have watched clients go from this mid funnel investment from 800,000, you know these numbers, from 800,000 invests into organic social two years ago to last year, eight million with us in fee, social credit production, to this year, 40 million in fee for some clients. To get a brand, to go from $800,000, to 40 million in 24 months can only be done by being incredibly teased in eyes in every conversation in the boardroom. And then the action has to be true. So I would say if you're going to move it and move the conversation for the higher ups, you've got to be prepared for every counterpoint and the biggest issue is, and I talk about this all the time my company do not fold like a cheap chair, right? The biggest issue that a lot of executives have is if Amy or Diego is emphatic that a press releases better than organic views on LinkedIn, for you, I'm empathetic, it's tough for you to fight that fight all the way through.

26:41For me, it's easy. I'm like, we're out. You know, like the coolest thing about my company is, something, I don't know if you guys know this, but you have this thing called procurement on your side. Those fuckers really try to do it, you know? They come in after it's been fully negotiated and try to take away literally all the margin. We just are willing to walk. I'm willing to walk in the pitch. We don't do, we don't even do RFPs. We're willing to walk every step of the way to not compromise the model, because we know it to be true. And if it's compromised, us at 80% of what we're supposed to do is just as bad as every other agency. It has to be 100%. You have to be 100% with all the answers to get the confidence from the people that make the decisions to move around the allocation. But I will say it's very simple. It is very simple. Creative gets tested for free in social as a byproduct of actually doing what you should be doing. Working media should be going to the creative that gets abused, period end of story. To the point where in America,

27:41I think the best ad marketing is the super flat. It's the best media, it's underpriced. I believe within the next five years, you will see super bowl spots that are literally the video that played on social with the black bars on the right and left because it came from mobile device because the creative has been validated and you're making a $10 million media investment why gas on which celebrity you're gonna put in a spot. Ooh, I'll be good, over here. I'm gonna flip what you've just said and talk about the noise, which is the cease-weeper it gets stuck where I don't quite know where I don't wanna sign off and your CFO should be your absolute best friend and the answer to that is, how do you break that tension and how do you move it forward? Because a lot of times you can't influence if this grip buttons down the hatches because of fear that I wanna do it or they don't know how. The way I do it, in case you wanna ammo this, it's similar to knowing all the answers, but it's showing the waste on what you already do. I've been fascinated by this journey in the last decade, they're like, Gary,

28:43approve to me the ROI of this social thing. I'm like, your business has been declining for seven years in a row. Like, why don't you prove to me that television and bus ads work? And by the way, that's how our business grew just so you know, when I came into the industry, I knew I knew nothing about the jargon, I knew I knew my world, right? I built this wine business with marketing. I was an early investor in Facebook and Twitter and I was really successful in Silicon Valley investing and that was starting to be clear when I started the agency, but I didn't know the terminology, Chloe, and I asked questions. You know, one of my first meetings was that Campbell Soup in New Jersey and Hunter PR back to PR. They came up here and they were like, they did a presentation in an IAT, I didn't even know what that was. And they said, great news, we got 80 trillion impressions last month. And one of the examples was like, they got a reference in a Huffington Post article and they literally threw up the monthly visitors

29:46to the entire site and I came from tech and almost invested in Huffington Post and I was like, that's the end. They literally just claimed an article six clicks in to Huffington Post had 45 million visitors. I was like, and no one said a word. And I got bad grades in school. So this is my first meeting, they gave us a packet. I'm like, I'm not reading this shit. I went to the last page and said business down 7%. I'm watching the first 25 minutes of this meeting and I'm committed to not talking because I always talk if you can't tell and I knew it was in a new industry and I wanted to listen and I wanted to listen. Don't jump to conclusions, Gary. Stay disciplined, listen and I'm listening and I'm listening and for 25 minutes, this circle is having a party. Hunter PR is 80 trillion things and then grays like this and I'm profound, it tested better than anything in 37 years when we did four people in a focus group. Yay, everyone's cheering. And finally about 25 minutes in, I raised my hand.

30:48I go, hey, I'm sorry, VaynerMedia's social. No one even knew what the hell I was saying. And I was like, just curious. Like everything sounds so awesome. Everything's working. Why is the business declining so much? I wasn't asking to razz like I do today. I was asking because I didn't know and literally everybody in the circle just shook their hand and they're like, yeah, you're right, we're confused. And I said simply, maybe the reports are wrong in the first meeting I ever had starting this company. Maybe the reports are wrong and you would have thought like I'd killed Santa Claus and that's the problem with the CFOs and the CEOs. So you have to show them what's not working with theirs if it is or isn't and you have to show them the alternatives. There's unlimited examples of people that have devoted in the last 36 months to the mid funnel. It's every human that's becoming an, I'm writing a book called Your Individual Empire right now.

31:49It's talking about the Mr. Beast, the me, the Stephen Bartlett's are about to become billion dollar corporations as humans. They are the leaders of the mid funnel. Poppy, like would I be, like these companies are going from, I mean anyone here, you have competitors chime. Like we have competitors that are going from zero to major players with a commitment to the mid funnel and we are still fully stuck in the upper funnel and the lower funnel and we're, and we're all, a lot of corporations here are dragged, right? They have the lower funnel performance team over here and they have the upper funnel brand people over here. These people are fucking think they're Don Draper. These kids think they're MIT-Math nerds but they're way worse than they think they are and the algorithm that sits in the middle destroys their math skills and it definitely destroys fucking fake Don Draper's over here. And I don't know what the fuck people are doing. Chloe. There you have it. We must bring in this side of the room as well. I'm Hannah from Staple Tip. So essentially rewards customers who are basically our brands.

32:51So it's the ultimate funnel. So I hear you on that, we own a report on the news to clients and it's just not scalable. They want interaction and they want, yeah, cost per clicks, et cetera. How are you then making a report to keep clients in changing their whole structure because I want to buy my hair against school when they disregarding you and they die on the hood of impressions. By telling them they should take the creative that those individuals are making and put them into the lower funnel and put media behind it the same way they do with everything they do, right? You and I are aware that organic impressions at scale can drive a business. Our breakthrough at Pepsi was mug groupier that had no media behind it. Just the organic impressions grew household penetration in such a significant way that it changed our conversations at PepsiCo. But I wouldn't bang my head against the wall. I think you need to tell them, take the creative we're giving you or these people are giving you

33:51that are incentivized to give it and put it down at the lower level to performance and tell me how it performs against the AB creative that you normally put out. What we know is that when you put media dollars in performance against over indexing mid funnel creative that it outperforms the best AB testing that performance people do, if you know how to take that original asset and slightly tweak it with performance DNA. Change the copy, add a banner at the bottom. So there's a little post production. You would do against that. But yeah, you can't fight a fight that isn't set up for you to win. You could just have the proper conversation. They're more likely to pay their creative AOR to millions of dollars to do a campaign that then pays a production company to make the video, right? Then then gives them bad assets to do that work, right? You've got to show them that those assets with paid media behind it can succeed if they don't want to build into organic

34:51or you could tell them the truth, which is they're so under investing in it. And if they gave you five million dollars instead of a hundred thousand pounds to do it then they would get the same results. That always drove me crazy. They're like Gary, social's not working. TV is, I'm like you're spending 44 million on TV. You're spending 500,000 on social. Give me 44 million and let's have it out. I mean, it's a crazy talk, but I think I see I have to go. I would say this, the best way I could say this is the following, you all know this is true. I'd like to think that, meaning you live in life. And so I highly recommend back to some of the great questions, cross your teeth and eyes and understand this enough to have the proper conversations because I understand it's hard to fight for this if you only know 70% of it. You're gonna get caught along the way. So if you believe in it, and more importantly,

35:54as marketers, this is where the industry is and will continue to go. And a lot of you are saying things in boardrooms that you don't actually believe, but you know the company will accept it. And I will leave you with this. It is much more fun to die in your own sword than someone else. One of the things that drives me very, very much in this industry is to challenge marketers to speak their truth because you will get fired for defending something you don't even believe in if the business continues to decline. So there is a respectful way for you to challenge the status quo. And I promise you the smartest people in the room are paying attention. And that will benefit your career. Because we are in that transition point. And a lot of you will be casualties of war if you are not thoughtful about what's about to happen. And I mean that. So please, by the way, you may believe the complete opposite of me. You might think it's a really good idea to have three people randomly come up with an idea and spend millions of dollars making a 30 second video

36:56spending millions more to make them watch it even though nobody watches them. And if you believe in that, you should be conviction and yelling about that in the boardroom. But if you believe in something, you need to start speaking up because what I can tell you from my seat is marketing is about to go through a transition. And there's a lot coming. And there's a lot of angst in a system. And you want to be on the right side of history in your boardrooms over to next 12 to 18 months. It will benefit your career. And I wish that on you. Thank you. Everybody, if you enjoyed this podcast, please go back and look at the prior episodes. They're loaded. I appreciate your attention. And thanks for being part of this journey. See you later. See you later.