The #1 Metric Retailers Need to Master in the AI Era
The GaryVee Audio Experience
Gary Vaynerchuk
4.8 • 18.3K Ratings
🗓️ 27 January 2026
⏱️ 25 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In this episode, I sit down to talk about how retailers can take advantage of the current "attention world" we live in. I start by discussing the metrics that actually matter for retail, criticizing the industry's addiction to "silly reports" and subjective opinions, like brand lift studies. I argue that we are now in an era of Relevance Warfare and introduce the single most important metric for every retailer: Views Achieved. I dive deep into why your best organic creative is the key to winning with paid media and share my strong conviction that live social shopping, with platforms like Whatnot and TikTok Shop - is a colossal opportunity that too many are ignoring.
You’ll learn about:
The biggest mistake Fortune 500 companies made in the last 20 years.
Why brand loyalty is about to become more important than ever with AI.
Why you need to shift your mindset from "Social Media" to "Interest Media".
How to use your top-performing organic content for "Performance Selling".
The profound, often underestimated, value of being on LinkedIn.
My thoughts on AI influencers and how they will affect the market.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | I wanted to start by asking if anyone here, |
| 0:05.0 | just have a show of hands, knows the significance |
| 0:07.0 | of the number six, seven, anybody. |
| 0:10.0 | I'm making the Gen Ziers cringe a little bit. |
| 0:14.0 | This is the Gary Vee audio experience. |
| 0:18.0 | Six seven is actually the number of stores that Barnes & Noble opened last year. |
| 0:23.6 | And I say that because to me it is an amazing story, a bright spot in physical retail at a time |
| 0:29.6 | when there are a lot of grim stories about physical retail. |
| 0:32.6 | We all know about right aid and Big Lots and Joanne Fabrics and, you know, a number of them that went bankrupt. |
| 0:40.3 | But there's Barnes & Noble did something right. |
| 0:43.3 | Now Barnes & Noble about six years ago, they were taken private and it wasn't a foregone conclusion that they would end up in this growth spurt that they're in now. |
| 0:52.3 | What they did, one of the things that they did that |
| 0:54.9 | really worked for them was take advantage of TikTok and the book talk hashtag that the young |
| 1:01.4 | kids, as they say, like to use. So my first question for Gary, since we're going to start |
| 1:06.5 | this on the physical retail is like how, what do retailers need to do to be more like |
| 1:12.9 | Barnes & Noble and less like big lots get good deals on their leases and |
| 1:21.4 | operate those stores with a smart P&L and create demand through contemporary marketing that allows |
| 1:31.7 | it to be a viable store. |
| 1:32.9 | What do you think that the, what are the metrics now, if you're talking about, say |
| 1:38.2 | you're a legacy retailer and you are in, we're all in this world now where there's all |
| 1:42.8 | this information coming at us. |
| 1:44.3 | What are the real metrics that retailers need to be paying attention to that they might |
... |
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