VaynerX is expanding its marketing services portfolio with a new agency brand dedicated to the attention economy. The holding company founded by entrepreneur Gary Vaynerchuk has long positioned social and earned media as table stakes for modern marketers. The Tamara Group responds to the needs of a growing number of CMOs who are under pressure to crank out more content, faster, to feed an increasingly algorithmically dictated online ecosystem dominated by platforms like YouTube and TikTok.
“Even five years ago, volume was the scariest thing ever for [CMOs],” said Ryan Harwood, who is taking on the CEO role at Tamara Group while maintaining his post leading VaynerX’s publishing division, Gallery Media Group. “They now realize that volume, in order to reach many different cohorts, is the new version of quality and quantity.”
With a name doubling as a tribute to Vaynerchuk’s mother and an acronym for the The Attention, Media, And Relevance Agency, Tamara Group made its debut at the Possible conference in Miami, Florida, on Monday. Ulta Beauty, Mrs. Meyer's Clean Day, Hisense, Method and Petsmart are among its launch partners.
The roster is about half new business and half existing VaynerX clients, according to Harwood. Existing clients transitioning to Tamara Group, such as Ulta Beauty, Method and PetSmart, are doing so with either signifcantly expanded scopes of work or to leverage the agency’s more specialized expertise. Tamara Group will also factor heavily into VaynerX’s presence at Cannes Lions, a major industry gathering in June.
This is the third agency brand under the VaynerX umbrella after VaynerMedia and communications arm ChukMedia, with talent drawn from across the holding company and nearly 100 employees. The Tamara Group weds expertise in publishing — Harwood started the women’s lifestyle site PureWow before bringing the venture to VaynerX and starting Gallery Media Group in 2017 — with more traditional agency service areas, including creative strategy, social content, influencer campaigns and events.
“I wanted to take some of the best talent from Gallery, I wanted to take some of the best talent from Vayner and I wanted to hire externally for some areas that I thought we can fill in the gaps to make the type of agency we wanted to,” said Harwood.
Even as the shop covers a wide field, Tamara Group is chiefly focused on people making content, the executive emphasized. Whereas a traditional agency might divvy up its teams’ responsibilities so 80% of employees tackle strategy and creative and the other 20% handle production, Tamara Group tries to flip that calculus.
“We are a production-first [company] that happens to do creative strategy, media, influencer, experiential,” said Harwood. “We want a majority making at all times. That’s where we want their dollars going.”
Preserving a social-first advantage
The Tamara Group arrives as other agencies retool their production arms to contend with social- and creator-first marketing mandates, stingier clients and the rise of generative artificial intelligence, which has exacerbated the content flood.
WPP in January unified its production agencies, including Hogarth, into a single integrated unit as part of a larger turnaround strategy anchored in four core service areas. Omnicom made a similar move two years ago. But where other agencies are experiencing consolidation, Tamara Group helps to more clearly delineate what VaynerX has to offer brands, Harwood explained.
“It’s not replacing anything,” said Harwood. “If anything, I’d say we have more clarity than ever at the VaynerX level, where we have three full-service agencies now and we have a media publishing company and everybody knows what they do.”
Hardwood declined to share specific revenue targets for Tamara Group for 2026, but noted that the situation is “fluid” given that the agency is brand-new. There is no shortage of brands investing in social-first content, where VaynerX was an early mover. As other agencies specialize further in this area, Harwood still sees the group as having a leg up due to its staff and founder being true practitioners of social (Vaynerchuk, beyond his agency endeavors, is a prolific content creator). To differentiate, Tamara Group will also look into services tied to some of Vaynerchuk’s personal interests, like helping brands develop collectibles strategies and adapting for generative and answer engine optimization in the AI era.
“There’s absolutely more competition than ever when it comes to the social space,” said Harwood. “I still think that the craft and being obsessive about the craft allows us to have an advantage at all times.”
