It’s a gathering that brings together CEOs and CMOs, owners of NFTs and MBAs, collectors of trading cards and pins, and a healthy dose of social media creators, podcasters and influencers. VeeCon, which takes place August 9-11 in downtown Los Angeles, is, at its core, an expression of the diversity that serial entrepreneur Gary Vaynerchuk carries within himself.
“We want to be the coolest business conference,” said Vaynerchuk diversity. The event will highlight Vaynerchuk’s various ventures, with its emerging children’s brand Vee Friends taking center stage. Additionally, the company hopes to counter the downward trend in the world of Web3, NFTs and disruptive digital technologies by expanding the Vee Friends characters and storytelling ecosystem through digital and video content.
“The world underestimates the sheer power and attention that lies in social media,” says Vaynerchuk. “Many people wish it weren’t so.”
VaynerMedia has partnered with “CocoMelon” producer Moonbug Entertainment to produce Vee Friends as a half-hour animated series set to premiere on YouTube Kids this fall. The VeeCon event will feature a number of branding efforts from Vaynerchuk’s other companies, including marketing and branding services for blue-chip companies PepsiCo, GE, Johnson and Johnson, Chase, AbInBev and others. Vaynerchuk is also active in the collectibles and trading cards space, which will be well represented at the weekend event with the “Gary’s Garage Sale” marketplace section.
VeeCon speakers include Howie Mandel, Jay Shetty, Ashley Graham, Nick Cannon, Poppy Harlow, Will.i.am, Flavor Flav, Danica Patrick, Arianna Huffington, Liquid Death CEO Mike Cesssario and others. Panel descriptions range from “Trust in Customer and Community Relationships” to “The $150B+ Industry Everyone’s Talking About: The Creator Economy” to “Is It Time to Relook at Blockchain?” Vaynerchuk will deliver opening and closing remarks, focusing on business trends and topics he sees on the horizon.
Attendance at the event is free for owners of nearly 11,000 drawings of the original Vee Friends characters (Vee Friends, Series 1), which Vaynerchuk hand-drawn and sold as NFTs in 2021. Since then, Vaynerchuk has worked to build a fan base with digital shorts, merchandise, and now a more traditional TV series presentation with 23-minute episodes. Since Vaynerchuk has been able to generate significant NFT sales through social media and YouTube, he has made the YouTube Kids platform his destination for the series.
“Vee Friends was positioned as ‘Pokémon meets Sesame Street,'” he says. “Sesame Street is the Jim Henson of everything – the positive impact. The Pokémon are the collectibility of everything.”
The first Vee Con was held in Minneapolis in 2022. Last year it was held in Indianapolis. Vaynerchuk and his partners have largely kept a low profile, promoting the event only through their existing fan, business and pop culture networks. This time around, he expects 2,000 to 8,000 attendees.
Vaynerchuk is a bestselling author, among other things, and signed a 10-book deal with HarperCollins in 2008, in the areas of business and self-help, based on a keynote speech he gave at the Web 2.0 conference in New York. His first book, Crush It!, was published in 2009.
A decade earlier, Vaynerchuk was a young and savvy digital entrepreneur who saw the e-commerce potential of online networks. His family emigrated from Belarus in 1978, when he was still a teenager. In 1996, Vaynerchuk transformed his family’s liquor store in Edison, New Jersey, by opening one of the first alcohol e-commerce websites, WineLibrary.com. The business grew into a $40 million-a-year company. Ten years later, he was one of the early adopters of DIY video series on YouTube, hosting the series “The Wine Library,” where he offered reviews and commentary. Today, he hosts the daily business podcast “The Gary Vee Audio Experience.”
In 2009, Vaynerchuk co-founded a full-fledged advertising agency with his brother AJ Vaynerchuk. More recently, Gary Vaynerchuk has helped launch lifestyle brands and projects, including the men’s-focused brand ONE37 and a sneaker line with K-Swiss from 2017 to 2019.
Vaynerchuk points to his experience with Vee Friends as an example of the endless possibilities available to content creators with a strong vision and a willingness to collaborate.
“As a creator, I’m flexible,” he says. “In everything I do, there are five, four, three things that are most important to me and I can’t compromise on them. A big part of the Vee Friends universe is finding your passion and going after it.”
(Pictured: Gary Vaynerchuk at VeeCon)
