It’s a gathering that will bring together CEOs and CMOs, owners of NFTs and MBAs, trading card and pin collectors and a healthy dose of social media creators, podcasters and influencers. VeeCon, which runs Aug. 9-11 in downtown Los Angeles, is at its core an expression of the multitudes contained by serial entrepreneur Gary Vaynerchuk.
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“We want to be the coolest business conference,” Vaynerchuk told Variety . The event will highlight Vaynerchuk’s various businesses with a strong emphasis on his budding kids brand VeeFriends. It also hopes to buck the downtrend in the world of Web3, NFTs and disruptive digital technologies by growing the VeeFriends characters and storytelling eco-system through digital and video content.
“The world underestimates the sheer power and attention that sits on social media,” Vaynerchuk says. “A lot of people wish it wasn’t that way.”
Vaynerchuk’s VaynerWatt arm has teamed with “CocoMelon” producer Moonbug Entertainment to produce VeeFriends as an animated shorts set to debut in the fall on YouTube Kids. The VeeCon event will feature a number of brand activitations from Vaynerchuk’s other businesses, which include marketing and branding services for blue-chip brands. Vaynerchuk is also active in the collectibles and trading card sector, which will be well represented at the weekend event with the “Gary’s Garage Sale” marketplace area.
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 Cessario and others. Panel session descriptions range from “Trust in Client and Community Relationships” to “The $150+ Billion Industry on Everyone’s Mind: The Creator Economy” to “Is It Time for Another Look at Blockchain?” Vaynerchuk will give open and closing remarks, focusing on business trends and themes that he sees on the horizon.
The event is free to attend for the owners of nearly 11,000 drawings of the original VeeFriends characters (VeeFriends the Series 1) that Vaynerchuk drew by hand in 2021 and sold as NFTs. Since then, Vaynerchuk has worked to build up a fan base with digital shorts, merchandise and now a more traditional presentation of 20 three-minute episodes. Given that Vaynerchuk has been able to establish the brand via social media and YouTube, he made the YouTube Kids platform his target for the series.
“VeeFriends has been positioned as ‘Pokemon meets Sesame Street,’ ” he says. “The ‘Sesame Street’ is the Jim Henson of it all — the positive impact. The Pokemon is the collectibility of it all.”
The first VeeCon was staged in Minneapolis in 2022. Last year it alighted in Indianapolis. Vaynerchuk and partners have mostly kept a low profile other than promoting it through their existing fan, business and pop culture networks. This time out, he expects a range of 2,000 up to as many as 8,000 attendees.
Among his many roles, Vaynerchuk is a best-selling author who signed a 10-book deal for business and self-help titles with HarperCollins in 2008, on the strength of a keynote speech he gave at the Web 2.0 conference in New York. His first tome, “Crush It!,” was published in 2009.
A decade before, Vaynerchuk emerged as a young and savvy digital entrepreneur who saw the e-commerce potential of online networks. His family emigrated from Belarus when he was a youth in 1978. In 1996 Vaynerchuk transformed his family’s retail liquor business in Edison, N.J. by opening one of the first e-commerce alchohol sites, WineLibrary.com. It grew to a $40 miillion a year business. Ten years later, he was an early adopter of DIY video series on YouTube. He hosted “The Wine Library” series offering reviews and commentary. Today he hosts the daily business podcast “The GaryVee Audio Experience.”
In 2009 Vaynerchuk teamed with his brother, A.J. Vaynerchuk, to launch a full-fledged advertising agency. More recently, Gary Vaynerchuk has helped launch lifestyle brands and projects including men-focused ONE37 and a line of sneakers with K-Swiss from 2017-2019.
Vaynerchuk points to his experience with VeeFriends as an example of the infinite opportunities available to content creators with a strong vision and a willingness to collaborate.
“I find myself flexible as a creator,” he says. “In everything I do, there’s five, four, three things that are the most important things that I hold on a pedestal that I can’t compromise on. A big part of the VeeFriends universe is — find your passion and lean into it.”
(Pictured: Gary Vaynerchuk at VeeCon)
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