In “Golden Age of Marketing”, Organic Social is “Most Important Focus”: VaynerX CMO

VaynerX’s chief marketing officer, Avery Akkineni, has spent the last six months focussing on “the recognition that organic social is the number one most important focus area for modern marketers.”

It’s a phenomenon she told LBB the VaynerX team first observed in the US, before it scaled gradually – now landing firmly in the AUNZ and APAC markets.

“The TikTokification of social media has swept over social platforms, and this is inherently a very different model than what many traditional marketers were trained on,” she said in an interview during a trip to Sydney this week.  

“In Australia in particular, we're in [Byron] Sharp-ville. That paid-first thinking, like designing a campaign that is to be distributed primarily on TV might have been really relevant in 1991 but now we're in 2025 and the model has really shifted. So many marketers were trained on this idea of paid and then owned and then earned.”

Some projects the team has been working on in the US “for a year or two are just hitting now” in AUNZ, but Avery said the delay means those in the local region benefit from other markets having ironed out a lot of the kinks. 

“We're in a good spot, because we understand what works and what doesn't work, because now we've tried it with a bunch of our brands outside of ANZ,” Avery added.

“What we're seeing really resonate in 2025 is focusing first on owned, then scaling that into earned, and then amplifying that with media as paid. We've seen this work really effectively in other parts of the world, and now we're starting to see clients really resonate with that same thinking in ANZ.”

Avery admitted, “consumers don't want to see an ad,” but that doesn’t mean they don’t want to hear from brands if they have something relevant and interesting to add to an online discussion. 

“Being able to enter that conversation with consumers directly by creating your own assets that then can scale into something that does go viral, that is amazing. This is a golden age for marketing, the fact that brands can create their own reach is completely unprecedented.”

Vayner in APAC

Avery is now based in the United States, but was VaynerMedia’s first MD in APAC, helping launch the brand’s presence in the region. Within two years of launch, the brand had over 150 APAC employees.

She credits this growth with ”speaking our truth,” and “a deep focus on both consumer centricity and underpriced attention.”

“Everyone in the industry I was meeting with told me that we would never succeed as an American agency, opening in the cities we opened in. We went from zero to 200 employees and $20 million in revenue in two years, which is pretty unusual. I think that we were able to do that through speaking our truth and through being uniquely Vayner.”

In addition to standing firm on the business’ values, Avery said success also came from the fact the team “were really strategic in our hiring process.” 

“We opened up Australia with Amy Bradshaw, who was an Australian who had been with Vayner for at least five years. She really understood Vayner and who we are, but she also understood this market. I think that intersection is really the magic. I think about who my first hires were in Singapore – they were all people who really knew the market. We were hiring local, but having the influence of people who really understand who we are as the agency was the perfect combination for us.”

Most recently, Denny Handlin was named executive creative officer for VaynerMedia Australia, with the former head of global business marketing for TikTok ANZ joining the business in March. 

Looking ahead, Avery’s main hope for VaynerMedia’s ever-growing presence in APAC is for the team to “continue to unite creative and media.”

“We've had a lot of success on the creative side, particularly with social, that's really our bread and butter – and we truly believe that for any brand, your first dollar should go to organic social first. 

“But as we continue to grow and scale our presence in this region, combining creative with media will allow us to really supercharge business results for our clients.”

Most VaynerMedia clients buy their media through a global media agency, and Avery admitted “we haven't had the opportunity to combine creative and media as much as I think we would like to.”

“That is my big hope for us in the next 12, 18, 24 months, to have the opportunity to do that for a few bold brands and use those as case studies to really help more clients across APAC and ANZ accelerate their business. Because creative is the variable of success of any media plan.”

Cultural relevance is a big focus, and in a region as diverse as APAC, that means a focus on “local first whenever possible.”

“The prevailing theory is whenever possible, to create per country – so Australia being different from New Zealand, ideally. There's also budget realities, and there's times when people are just running a campaign at the regional level, and that is what it is, but whenever possible we believe in being as locally driven as possible.”

Avery noted “over the past few years, things have shifted a bit” in how marketers operate.

“When we first opened APAC, we were doing mostly regional work, and clients have been swinging in the direction of more local first style marketing, often united by regional principles or regional priorities or regional products. But local first is our preference, whenever possible.”