If you're not at POSSIBLE Miami this week, your social feed is probably making you feel pretty bad about it. The Fontainebleau is crawling with advertising illuminati trying to figure out what's next, and for good reason.
Between Gary Vaynerchuk torching paid social strategy and the NFL revealing how they dragged themselves from the bottom to the top of brand perception rankings, there's actual substance behind the parties and cocktail networking.
Bulllllllllll
Gary V isn't exactly known for...subtlety. But his session at POSSIBLE might have delivered what brands need.
While most marketers are dumping obscene budgets into paid social distribution, Gary made the case that we've been using "working media dollars to disguise bad creative" for decades.
Now that strategy is falling apart.
His argument? Organic social is "the most important channel in marketing today," and brands like Chili's and Abercrombie & Fitch are proving it with measurable sales boosts among young consumers.
The uncomfortable bits are what agencies don't want to hear: if your content isn't good enough to perform organically, throwing paid dollars at it won't save you.
Takeaways your agency hates
For once, Gary actually came with some more detailed reccos, including:
- Allocate at least 20% of marketing budgets to creative production specifically for social media
- Executives need to personally use platforms like TikTok and Instagram (no more delegating platform knowledge)
- Integrate creative and media teams. The separation is killing effectiveness
- Segment audiences with surgical precision
- Stop chasing industry awards (which he called: "fucking horseshit")
The NFL's perception playbook
While Gary was burning down conventional wisdom on one stage, NFL CMO Tim Ellis was revealing one of the most impressive brand turnarounds in recent memory.
When Ellis took over in 2018, the NFL ranked dead last in brand perception among major sports leagues. Today? They're at the top. And they didn't get there through traditional fan acquisition.
Instead, they bet big on community impact and philanthropy as their primary marketing strategy. The results:
- Brand perception among non-fans has tripled
- Women in the fanbase: up 14% since 2020
- Youth engagement: up 7%
- Latino audience: up 6%
Their Super Bowl spot "Somebody," featuring real participants from their philanthropic partners like Big Brothers Big Sisters, drove a 433% increase in mentor sign-ups on Super Bowl Sunday alone.
The youth strategy
Any marketer targeting Gen Z reconsider their approach, according to Ellis: if you haven't acquired an NFL fan by age 18, it probably won't happen.
This has pushed the league to focus intensely on ages 5-12 and casual fans who might only watch the Super Bowl and a few other games.
The league's willingness to partner with creators and cede control of their brand in social spaces has been key to this strategy. Ellis mentioned that creator-produced content often outperforms the NFL's official material, and now all 32 teams have "always on" creative strategies.
What this means for other brands
There's a clear through-line connecting Vaynerchuk's critique of paid social and the NFL's success story: authenticity and community impact are outperforming traditional media approaches.
Whether you're investing $500 million annually in causes like the NFL o reallocating budget from paid distribution to better creative, the message from Miami is that the old playbook is being rewritten.
The question isn't whether your brand should adapt. It's how quickly you can move before your competitors do.
Travis Lusk
