• by Richard Whitman , Columnist, June 7, 2015

Social media poster boy, Gary Vaynerchuk is opening up shop in Chattanooga. His New York-based agency, VaynerMedia, which he launched in 2009 with his brother AJ, has grown to 500 employees and is looking to move beyond focusing predominantly on social media for its clients.

Vaynerchuk plans to staff the new office with 10-12 people initially who will serve 4-5 clients. Why Chattanooga? VaynerMedia VP Mickey Cloud said, "We're really excited about what is going on in Chattanooga with the entrepreneurial scene and the encouragement and enthusiasm that the city has for technology, for startups and for entrepreneurs. We've always had startup and tech DNA in our blood since Gary and AJ came from the tech scene, not the marketing world."

In 2015 the agency, which has offices in New York, San Francisco and LA, achieved $40 million in revenue, up 79 percent from 2013. 

Of the shift away from social media, Vaynerchuk said, “I don’t think there is a social media, I think social media is a slang term for the current state of the Internet. Our behavior is far from a social media agency.”