• by Richard Whitman , Columnist, January 5, 2017

If you follow Gary Vaynerchuk on Instagram, Snapchat or any of his social media platforms, you quickly realize he has a lot to say, has accomplished a great deal and, yes, posts a TON of those inspirational quotes that are supposed to make the rest of us mere minions grind our way to success. Alas, most of us will never reach the Vaynerchuk stratosphere but that's perfectly fine. Otherwise, there'd be no minions left to swoon over Gary at his every appearance or obsess over his endless videos shot by DRock who, apparently, never sleeps.

Anyway, this week Gary Vaynerchuk, along with his business partner Stephen Ross and RSE Ventures has acquired PureWow, a lifestyle publishing entity which focuses on older Millennial and GenX women. If you have to ask what the terms of the deal were, you are dumb. I mean, really? When are the terms of a deal ever truly revealed? And why should they be? That's shit's private as Gary might say.

The acquisition will become the primary element of a VaynerMedia unit called The Gallery under which PureWow will be housed and where other entities acquired to reach different demographic groups will reside. The acquisition is, of course, part of the not-so-recent trend of agencies attempting to improve their content marketing game.

PureWow CEO Ryan Harwood will become CEO of The Gallery which, along with VaynerMedia, will reside under Vaynerchuk’s holding company, VaynerX.

From a market trend perspective, the acquisition makes a lot of sense on a two-pronged front. First, PureWow, an up and running publishing company, will immediately allow VaynerMedia to provide additional content creation services to its clients. Second, it's a survival move as well. As more and more publishing companies -- think Buzzfeed --increasingly wend their way into the territory of the traditional ad agency -- creating marketing that helps brands sell products – those publishing companies threaten the very existence of ad agencies. So it's a no brainer that creating or scooping up publishing entities is a smart thing for an agency to do.

This post has been revised.