As AI and the creator economy push more of daily life onto screens, consumers are craving analog experiences in the real world. Agency VaynerX calls the need to serve both sides the “relevance barbell”: algorithm-driven social content on one end and in-person experiences on the other. At Advertising Week New York 2026, VaynerX chairman Gary Vaynerchuk joined marketers from Target and JPMorgan Chase to discuss how experiential marketing fits into that balance.
VaynerX approaches experiential marketing as production days for social creative at scale. Pop-ups and branded events are not new, Vaynerchuk said, but they must be planned first as drivers of shareable content. Removing the silos between events and content teams saves money and makes execution smoother.
CMO Carla Hassan said JPMorgan Chase uses its 5,000-plus branches and events such as Chase Sapphire’s Dinner on the Court at Madison Square Garden to meet people and create content for digital channels at the same time.
In September, Target staged a two-day showcase of its design legacy at the New Museum during New York Fashion Week, tied to a recent campaign. Michelle Mesenburg, Target’s chief brand officer, said the goal is “creating experiences that are worth coming to and worth experiencing, so that they become worth sharing.” When people tell the story in their own words, the brand is amplified inside their communities.
Social content also helps with discoverability as AI search grows. Hassan noted that large language models scrape brand videos, and that information shapes how brands appear in consumer queries. Vaynerchuk argued that every brand is underspending on organic social “just for the purpose of the LLMs and AEO/GEO.”
Vaynerchuk criticized the money still spent on work “no one believes in” and called out agency holding companies for putting margins ahead of clients. He urged marketers to focus on consumers rather than awards, arguing that three people at an 80-person dinner can matter more to a business than millions of people seeing a commercial. Hassan added that her team gives people room to fail and learn.
The key shift is to ask “what content will this event produce?” before “what will we show?” Planning camera paths, creator invitations and shareable moments into the brief can turn one event into months of social assets. For another example of extending live experiences beyond the venue, see How the New York Jets Are Extending OOH Into ‘IRL Media’ for Fan Storytelling. For AI answer visibility, read Ranking Well but Missing From AI Answers — Why Zero-Click GEO Needs a Different Playbook Than SEO.
It is VaynerX’s term for balancing algorithm-driven digital content with real-world analog experiences, and connecting the two so events become social content.
Merge event and content planning, and design shareable moments, creator involvement and capture plans from the start.
Large language models ingest brand videos and content, which influences how brands appear in AI-generated answers.
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