The Future of Brand, Culture and Marketing | Fireside Chat with GaryVee & Michael Smith

When a Single Video Becomes a Business Strategy

The economics of attention have always been a battleground for brands, but the rules are not what they used to be. Platforms have moved from predictable pipelines to meritocratic gardens where a newly posted clip can spiral into a commercial tidal wave. That shift rewrites orthodoxies: creative no longer merely supports media buys; creative can be the media buy. For brands and founders who still treat social like television, the landscape looks less like a channel and more like a culture engine—capable of launching products, resuscitating legacy catalogues, and making overnight entrepreneurs out of strangers.

Underpriced attention and the new calculus of reach

Attention has a price, but that price is elastic and transient. Some channels are underpriced at any given moment—Google AdWords in its infancy, the early years of television for companies like Procter & Gamble, and certain social platforms today. Investors who allocated attention lavishly at those moments built lasting advantages. The contemporary version of that idea is more nimble: it’s not about buying impressions in bulk; it’s about day trading attention—putting resources into channels and creatives that the algorithm and culture currently reward.

The implication is both tactical and philosophical. Tactically, marketers must validate creative on the platform before deploying large media budgets behind it. Philosophically, campaigns that prize a singular, polished ad as a final product are archaic. Creative now creates reach. That inversion forces organizations to think in terms of velocity: iterate, publish, learn, and amplify what the audience signals they want.

Creative meritocracy: why anyone can beat the incumbent

One of the most disorienting phenomena for legacy brands is the creative meritocracy of modern social networks. A first-time creator can publish something that outperforms a seasoned influencer or a brand account with millions of followers. Algorithms reward resonance, not pedigree. For businesses, that means the gatekeepers change: the best idea wins, and the job of marketing is to surface as many relevant ideas as possible to see which ones the platform rewards.

• Quantity and quality are tandem levers: publish broadly while maintaining a high bar for execution.
• Use live tests to discover what the platform wants before committing large media investments.
• Organize around platform-specific expertise—a living discipline rather than a one-off campaign.

Technology, virtual people, and cultural fluency

Technologies that once felt speculative—virtual influencers, VTubers, and AI-generated personalities—are already mainstream in pockets of the world. Where western marketers still recoil, other markets have normalized intimate, even transactional relationships with non-human entertainers. The commercial logic is straightforward: if consumers embrace humanlike virtual personalities, brands can cultivate engagement at scale without traditional talent constraints. The uncomfortable truth for some executives is that fear of change becomes its own form of competitive disadvantage.

Reading cultures beyond national borders matters more than ever. The global attention economy moves in micro-trends: slime videos one week, a pop star surge the next, then a calendar app for teenagers quietly dominating schools. Cultural fluency—understanding what different communities value and how the algorithm amplifies those values—yields the earliest signal that a platform or format is ready for scaled investment.

Leadership, hiring, and the humility advantage

There’s a practical human dimension beneath all the platform analysis. The leaders who win long-term internal battles don’t lord over employees; they serve them. That inversion—treating people who work for you as your true boss—creates sustained organizational health. Hiring is guesswork; promoting and firing are the essential instruments of shaping culture. The velocity principle applies internally as well: hire fast, observe, promote swiftly when someone shines, and cut ties quickly with toxic contributors, regardless of short-term gains.

Time matters. Regular human interactions—15-minute check-ins, dinners, candid conversations—build continuity and loyalty in ways that spreadsheets cannot. Those relational investments compound: teams that feel seen and promoted when they deserve it will out-execute competitors who tolerate mediocrity.

The practitioner’s edge

There’s an underrated strategic advantage to leaders who remain practitioners. Showing up to the trenches with a real-time understanding of platforms, formats, and audience signals short-circuits corporate distance. A leader who is also a maker can detect when a trend is nascent versus premature, and can allocate resources more courageously because they understand the mechanics up close.

Career agency, regret, and the ethics of time

The conversation lands, finally, on something quieter and harder: the moral economics of personal time. People spend years in jobs that slowly drain them. Small financial trade-offs—cutting discretionary spending, consolidating subscriptions—can buy the latitude to take a risk that aligns with passion and values. One practice recommended is giving five hours to a retirement home: a direct confrontation with lives that have less horizon and more hindsight, and a shockingly practical remedy to the paralysis that regret induces.

There is a civic and personal argument here: giving time is both an act of service and a diagnostic tool. It clarifies priorities. It reframes fears. And it tends to push people toward choices that trade incremental consumption for incremental meaning.

Conclusion: a strategy tuned to culture, not a calendar

Marketing’s tectonic plates have shifted from calendar-based campaigns to culture-based velocity. The winners will be organizations that treat creative production like a laboratory, put learning at the center of resource decisions, and cultivate humility in leadership. The future will demand a blend of technical fluency—knowing which platforms and microcultures matter—and humanism—how we hire, promote, and treat the people who make that work possible. The only predictable thing is the pace of change; the sustainable response is curiosity married to discipline.

Key takeaway: the marketplace now rewards the ideas that culture chooses; the smartest bet is to move faster, be humbler, and build organizations that learn in public.