It’s not surprising that for Gary Vaynerchuk, real life is a distinct state. The real-life Vaynerchuk is a pretty successful businessman who runs a reasonably successful communications company, VaynerX. His alter ego, GaryVee, is an influencer, self-help business guru, motivational speaker and hero to an army of wannabe entrepreneurs. Together, the two Garys represent the ad industry’s most visible, voluble and controversial personality. Yeah, Gary Vaynerchuk gets right up the nose of the advertising establishment. This is the man who took to the stage at Advertising Week in New York recently to tell delegates to talk to their normal friends more. He thinks most of the people working in advertising are failing dismally to keep up with how consumers are actually behaving. "I believe that the next decade will be difficult for the biggest brands in the world because they continue to waste money on metrics that have nothing to do with their actual business," Vaynerchuk contended. He accused agencies and brands of "selling vanilla at scale and nobody cares… we spend 16 weeks to develop a brand positioning and to come up with a tagline that means nothing to nobody – because it’s so fucking vanilla – just so we can fit all the creative in it. It doesn’t make sense. It has to stop."
