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Good morning! It's Friday, January 19th. Today, we’re unpacking MrBeast, his marketing strategy, and his hundred-million-dollar businesses!

THE FEATURE

The MrBeast Phenomenon: A Masterclass in Monetizing YouTube Stardom

When it comes to YouTube content creators, MrBeast is head and shoulders above the competition. 

With 232M subscribers, MrBeast pulls in $50M+ annually from YouTube alone. However, his YouTube revenue is nothing compared to the rest of his content creation empire. 

So, What’s the Business?

At 13 years old, Jimmy Donaldson took up the name MrBeast and began creating content on YouTube that mostly focused on video games. 

It wasn’t long until he found a community of fellow young YouTube content creators, and they became obsessed with learning the ins and outs of the platform. MrBeast has created content since 2012, and no other creator has effectively systemized the process of going viral like he has. 

By studying algorithms and following viewing trends, MrBeast isn’t just an expert in content creation. He’s an expert in human psychology: he knows what the masses want and serves it up on a silver platter. 

Some of what viewers respond to is depressingly simple, like his first breakthrough viral video where he counted to 100,000, a feat which took 40 hours to complete. Other MrBeast content shows a brighter side of humanity and still attracts hundreds of millions of views (building 100 wells in Africa and curing 1,000 people’s blindness). 

The real shock is that MrBeast doesn’t generate a profit on YouTube. All YouTube revenue goes right back into video production costs, which range between $500K to $1M per video! Larger projects come with even higher price tags, such as his Real Life Squid Game video, which cost $3.5M.

Let’s be clear: he’s not wasting money. In reality, he’s investing back into his brand to expand into direct-to-consumer products.  

The Innovation: Converting a Global Audience into Customers

The $50M+ MrBeast spends each year to produce high-quality content has resulted in global audience capture that the world’s biggest brands could only dream of:

• MrBeast: 232M subscribers

• MrBeast Gaming: 41.3M

• Beast Reacts: 31.9M

• MrBeast en Español: 25.3M

• MrBeast in Portuguese: 6.07M 

• MrBeast in Arabic: 3.04M

With multiple channels pumping out content and dubbing viral videos into 11 different languages, Mr. Beast has an unrivaled platform to promote his products worldwide. 

MrBeast funnels his viewers towards three primary businesses: MrBeast Store, Feastables, and MrBeast Burger.

The MrBeast store looks like your typical influencer merch store. The atypical part: it generates $3M a month. Obviously, his YouTube videos promote and feature the merch, but he also crafts a sense of exclusivity and urgency via limited edition item drops. 

Things get more complicated with MrBeast Burger, a burger chain with no physical storefront. Instead, it uses a cloud kitchen model that partners with hundreds of kitchens and restaurants nationwide, giving them the ingredients and instructions to make the Beast Burger and take orders online. By January of 2023, Beast Burger brought in $150M in revenue with $30M in net profit. 

His most lucrative business is Featables, a chocolate company designed to shake up the sweets industry that, in MrBeast’s view, hasn’t seen any innovation in 50 years. 

Feastable’s launch certainly shook things up: he placed 10 “Mystery Tickets” in the first batch of chocolate bars, which invited winners to take part in his Willy Wonka-themed video, complete with the chocolate river and rooms made out of marshmallows. In a talk on the All-In podcast, MrBeast revealed that Feastables generates “a couple hundred million” each year!

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