- MrBeast, the world’s most popular YouTuber, regularly works with brands on sponsorship deals.
- A recent court filing included six decks MrBeast’s team made to pitch brands such as GM, Ford, and LG.
- The documents show how a creator with hundreds of millions of fans positions himself to sponsors.
MrBeast has hundreds of millions of YouTube subscribers to serve ads to. A new set of documents filed in court in October lends new insight into how he sells his massive audience to brands for sponsorship deals.
The documents, which appeared in a filing tied to a MrBeast Burger lawsuit, feature partnership and endorsement pitch decks meant to woo brands such as Ford, General Motors, Walmart, and CarMax. The documents are dated between December 2022 and March 2023, when MrBeast, whose real name is Jimmy Donaldson, was represented by the talent firm Night. In a court filing, the president of MrBeast’s company, Jeffrey Housenbold, described the documents as “a compilation of six slide deck presentations concerning proposed partnership deals between Beast and six different market partners.”
A representative for MrBeast declined to comment for this story.
So, what does a MrBeast pitch deck look like?
Business Insider read through 163 slides from pitches for Ford, CarMax, Walmart, General Motors, LG, and The Super Mario Bros. Movie in order to better understand how the YouTuber makes a case to brands. As in most media pitches, MrBeast’s team focused on his audience demographics, scale, and splashy content.
In each deck, MrBeast’s team shared metrics such as subscriber and follower counts, monthly views, and unique viewers to showcase the scale of his YouTube empire.
The decks also highlighted MrBeast’s stunt-heavy content style. One of the first few slides in most decks referenced a 2021 video in which the YouTuber buried himself alive in a coffin for 50 hours alongside the text “MrBeast pushes through the impossible.” Donaldson later repeated the “buried alive” stunt in a 2023 video with Verizon as a sponsor.
MrBeast’s pitch decks also tended to emphasize to marketers that his videos could reach people who no longer watch linear television.
“The Next Generation Is Not Watching TV,” the MrBeast team wrote in many of the pitches. “Traditional media reach older audiences. Next gen consumers have drastically shifted to digital media — and specifically digital creators.”
Donaldson has pushed this idea of breaking from traditional media in the past. He told staffers in a leaked employee guide that he did not want to be part of Hollywood.
That message has resonated with certain advertisers seeking to target young men, who are generally considered challenging to reach with ads. Donaldson’s main platform is YouTube, but he’s soon launching a competition show, “Beast Games,” on Amazon’s Prime Video.
Other themes and notes that stood out in MrBeast’s 2023 pitch decks included:
- A focus on Donaldson’s philanthropic work, such as his tree-planting and ocean-cleaning projects.
- Details on the “Beast” audience, which skews young and male.
- Charts showing the different arms of MrBeast’s business, including his chocolate brand, Feastables.
- An overview of what the collaboration process would look like between the MrBeast production team and a brand, should they choose to work together.
- Case studies on how MrBeast has driven social engagement for other companies, such as the video-game developer Supercell and Illumination Entertainment.
MrBeast may struggle to court certain brands after a spate of negative press in recent months. Contestants on his Amazon show have raised safety concerns about the production, and accusations surfaced earlier this year that a former MrBeast employee sent inappropriate messages to a young teen. A MrBeast rep said in August that the Amazon show’s production was complicated by weather and other factors and that it would take steps to improve. Separately, MrBeast has said that he cut ties with the ex-employee and that he didn’t condone any inappropriate behavior.
While reports of that nature could give some advertisers pause, two ad-industry executives told BI plenty of deep-pocketed marketers would be happy to tap into MrBeast’s reach. The executives spoke on the condition of anonymity to protect client-platform relationships.
“The content doesn’t scare them,” said one ad-agency exec, who said their sports and entertainment clients were interested in advertising in the show.
Cost is another consideration. A second ad exec said MrBeast was cost-prohibitive for all but the top echelon of advertisers. “That type of property has a high minimum investment; the out-of-pocket can be so high,” the second ad exec said. “There’s so many other places to go.”
That said, MrBeast videos tend to steadily accumulate views over time — which is another selling point with advertisers.
Keep reading for more details from MrBeast’s pitch deck for General Motors, dated February 2023. Note: BI omitted some slides that were heavily redacted, as well as a few slides with minimal or repeated information.
