Marcus Krzastek was recently promoted to president of international at VaynerMedia, which gives him oversight of the APAC region. On his first visit to Australia, Krzastek sat down with B&T to discuss what he has learnt about the Australian market, the potential of GenAI in the creative process, and insights into the real Gary Vaynerchuk – entrepreneur and founder of VaynerMedia.
Marcus Krzastek is in a hurry. In February, the long-serving VaynerMedia executive was promoted to oversee operations across its Asia-Pacific (APAC) and Europe, Middle East, and Africa (EMEA) regions, leading more than 600 staff.
A few months later, Krzastek has been on a whirlwind tour of the APAC region to get to know different teams, clients and cultures. He spoke to B&T on a whistle stop visit of Australia (for the first time) of only 36 hours, before jetting off to his next location (Singapore).
“I’m just trying to keep my body as confused as possible right now, and hopefully it doesn’t figure out what’s going on until I’m back in London,” he said rather coherently for a jet lag candidate.
On what he has learned so far about the APAC region, he added: “There’s a lot of really great work being done across the different markets. And within APAC there is a really strong understanding of what the future state of marketing is going to look like.”
This includes trying to incorporate locally relevant creative at scale across social and digital platforms.
“A lot of the discussions that we have had is how do you bring it to life in a way that’s strategic and cost efficient,” he said.
VaynerMedia has 300 staff across APAC in countries including Singapore, India, Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia. In Australia, the business has 40 staff, led by country manager Karen Coleman.
The agency recently appointed former TikTok marketer Denny Handlin to lead its creative, who told B&T that he was impressed by campaigns including Twistie’s chicken versus cheese campaign fronted by Robert Irwin and G Flip (see video below). And in case you were wondering, Handlin or Krzastek are both Team Cheese.
What clients want
Krzastek said that there are three things that APAC clients are looking for from VaynerMedia.
“Almost every client is getting to a place where they realise they need locally nuanced, culturally-informed creative in order to break through. And that’s across both organic and paid channels—there’s a real interest in understanding how they can get there,” he said.
“The second thing is that there is a real interest in understanding the dynamics of influencers, not just mid to large influencers for distribution and creative, but a more nuanced influencer ecosystem that we live in now.
“This is everything from big names all the way down the scale to micro influencers. There is a growing appetite for influencers as creators, and utilising them to give you more creative diversity, not necessarily paying them for the distribution.”
The third talking point from clients is how to use GenAI technology, where and how to use it.
“That’s an undercurrent of almost every discussion we have with folks, across creative and also strategy,” Krzastek said. “I would say that the most practical creative use cases we’ve seen is the still imagery we work with some clients, essentially being able to take key visuals and then utilise Gen AI to add diversification to backgrounds.”
Krzastek said that GenAI “turnkey solutions” for video social content that may be cost and time effective are “not really yet ready for prime time” and at an experimental stage.
VaynerMedia clients are also using AI tools internally for tasks such as insight gathering and referencing, as well as accessing historic data on campaign performance.
The potential of GenAI to enable creativity has a high ceiling, but Krzastek stresses that a “human filter” filter is required to ensure creative is “interesting and impactful”, hence the appointment of Handlin to lead creativity at VaynerMedia.
“If we could clone multiple Dennys, that is the ideal future state,” he said.
Denny Handlin, pictured above, joined VaynerMedia as executive creative officer in March and has previously held creative roles at Facebook, Clemenger BBDO, BWM Dentsu and Ogilvy.
He told B&T that he has acted as a sponge in his first couple of months, and has been impressed by the work that he has seen from the likes of PepsiCo (Twisties, Mountain Dew, Doritos, Smiths, Rockstar, Sunbites), Visa, Optus, SevenWestMedia, McCormick, Shark Ninja and Carlton & United Breweries (Hard Rated, Vodka Cruiser, Pure Blonde, Carlton).
“In terms of the AI thing, having come from platform side, there’s a clear investment in terms to continue to democratise creativity and give people the power to build different versions of creative that can perform and be iterated on in the back end of the platform,” he said.
“It’s always going to be a tool to help empower creativity, but there’s always going to have to be a human element to help deliver these things. If you think about the calculator, it didn’t remove the need for people to do maths. It’s there to get to things faster, whether it be through ideation or different experimentation.
“The good thing is that there’s gonna be a lot of different ideas out in the world. And what will always happen is that the best ideas and creativity will float to the top.”
The real ‘Gary Vee’
VaynerMedia, a social-first creative and media agency was founded by Gary Vaynerchuk in 2009 and now operates across the world.
Its current strategy is to win more creative and media agency of record accounts across the APAC region, rather than project work.
Krzastek joined Vayner in its foundation year and is one of Gary Vee’s closest lieutenants.
“Watching Gary Vee operate over the years has been fun and very energising,” he said. “When you have a conversation with him, he’s always got seven different things on the go and is navigating them at any time, but we operate in an ecosystem where there is an openness to ideas and trying things out.
“When people see his Instagram or TikTok, they assume that he’s like ‘The Devil Wears Prada’, and someone who’s just like, go, go, go, all the time, grinding teams out. In reality he has a really good balance and is a very empathetic leader to those around him and has assembled a fantastic team.”
Australia is the latest example of VaynerMedia’s ethos and has been rapidly growing. It’s also one place that Krzastek hopes to visit again, and next time for longer than 36 hours.
