I took over as editor-in-chief for Angus MacKenzie in November of 2011 when he transitioned into a corporate position primarily overseeing a new video initiative: the Motor Trend YouTube channel. By the time 2013 rolled around, I was proud to be able to say, “When I took over for Angus, the Motor Trend YouTube channel had 143,000 subscribers. A year later we had 500,000. Three months after that, we hit 1 million subscribers.”
Today, our channel has 3.7 million subscribers and just delivered its 1 billionth video view. That number is hard to visualize unless you’re talking about government budgets or the age of stars. To put it into context, 1 billion Motor Trend YouTube video views approximately equals:
- 4,978,014,801 minutes watched
- 82,966,913 hours watched
- 3,456,954 days watched
- 9,465 years watched
But how exactly did we get there? I chatted with Jim Gleason and Mike Suggett, the two guys who (along with Angus) started it all.
Jim was hired as an associate video producer back in 2005, and Mike came aboard full time a year later, back when Motor Trend video was transitioning from a half-hour cable show on TNN and Spike TV (remember those?) to the early days of online video. Jim and Mike helped grow the operation to include a YouTube channel and expanded from two guys stuffed in a storage closet to 27 staffers at peak. Along the way, Jim was promoted to creative director of the Motor Trend YouTube channel while Mike assumed the role of vice president in charge of original programming. Mike still holds that position, but Jim left last year to found his own video production company, Flux Media House.
To what do you attribute the YouTube channel’s success?
Jim Gleason: I think Angus MacKenzie really deserves a lot of credit for the success of Motor Trend‘s video channel. He knew from the very beginning that Motor Trend couldn’t continue to thrive as simply a magazine. Video was critical in his mind, and his support was essential for the success of the Motor Trend YouTube channel. Equally important was his hands-off managerial style, as that allowed us lots of creative freedom. We made so many awful videos but also a handful of great ones that really resonated with our audience. We learned so much in those super-creative early years, and I think that had a profound effect on how we shaped the channel in later years.
Mike Suggett: I think Angus’ programming strategy was key: the right combination of video adaptions of stories Motor Trend was already doing in print and online—the new car reviews and comparison tests—and new show concepts like “Roadkill” that featured engaging automotive experts in authentic situations that stretched across the wider automotive landscape. I believe “Roadkill” was born out of a simple conversation Angus and David [Freiburger of Hot Rod magazine] had one day in his office and the idea of turning the hilarious yet relatable experiences of David and the Hot Rod team into an episodic series. You had these very different shows, each with their own brand identity, tailored to different segments of the automotive enthusiast audience, all housed under the Motor Trend channel umbrella.
Another huge part of our success was the unique collection of directors, editors, producers, and hosts we assembled, a team that didn’t necessarily come up through the traditional Hollywood or broadcast system. We were a lot of people’s first directing jobs, first editing jobs, first on-camera jobs. They didn’t know what they didn’t know, so a lot of the ways we went out and shot, how lean our crews were, how quickly we evolved shows on the fly, it was much more reactive and flexible than what a lot of people were doing with automotive video or video in general. We also targeted a healthy combination of people who lived and breathed cars and people who were maybe agnostic to cars but knew how to tell great stories. Marrying those two perspectives together helped us create content that would respect the hardcore auto enthusiasts but could still engage the wider YouTube audience.
The old maxim for video was always: “Fast, good, and cheap; you can pick two of the three.” And I feel like we figured out that you can do all three when you have a special group of talent behind the cameras and in front of the cameras.
What were some early mistakes/learnings?
JG: We made so many mistakes in the beginning. I think the biggest one was not giving the YouTube crowd credit for being mature enough to consume real, meaty, and authentic content. In the early days of online video, there was this false belief that videos would only be successful if they were short and simple. Time proved that to be a misconception. I think we really started to hit a stride on YouTube when we began to produce longer-form videos with more in-depth content. I also think these long-form videos really helped create a shift internally at Motor Trend. For the first time, the executives saw real value in what we were doing with video.
MS: What works on video isn’t necessarily what works in editorial or in, say, Google search. And what works on YouTube isn’t necessarily what works on other video platforms. The YouTube audience itself, we found it to skew younger than our other Motor Trend platforms, with a pronounced preference for the fast, the sexy, the exotic, the aspirational. While there were others in the video space really targeting car buyers and potential buyers, we were focused on the dreams, the culture, the lifestyle, and the passion that binds car enthusiasts. I think that more emotional appeal had a lot to do with attracting an audience and building momentum on YouTube.
What kind of resistance did the channel face early on?
JG: I remember way early on, Mike and I were chomping at the bit to get some videos up on YouTube simply because we knew it would be the easiest way to validate what we were doing. At the time, Motor Trend was still very much a magazine-centric business and many of the higher-ups didn’t really see value in video, especially putting our videos on YouTube for free. It was an uphill battle convincing people that video was not only fun, but that it was our future. It seems like such a no-brainer now as we cross 1 billion views, but it took many years to get that momentum going, to convince people that this was the right direction.
MS: Internally, it seemed counterintuitive to put resources and time into something that pulled people away from our owned and operated websites. Why wouldn’t we just create video for our own website? But it soon became clear that YouTube was where the mass audience for video was converging, and if we could reach them, then some portion of that audience should be intrigued enough to check out our other Motor Trend platforms. Going to where the audience was instead of bringing that audience to us was a hard decision and opposed by various people internally until YouTube’s success, influence, and reach became undeniable.
At what point did you realize the channel was a “thing?”
JG: I remember making our first Motor Trend drag race film: a Mercedes E63 against a BMW M5. The day we filmed it was also the day we first met Randy Pobst, and he ended up competing in the race (and losing) in his Mazda6 race car. We were quite proud of the final edit. It had the perfect blend of hot cars, racing, and Randy Pobst. However, at the time, we were strictly forbidden to post anything on YouTube by the upper management. I said screw it (sorry, Angus) and just posted it up for fun one night. The next day, I checked the video, and it had something like 15,000 views. I took it down immediately for fear of being fired. But I knew at that moment that we were on to something.
MS: For me it was “World’s Greatest Drag Race,” the very first one, which predates the current Original Programming episodic model on the channel. Because that was the first video where we uploaded it, looked at it an hour later, and saw it had 100,000 views. We checked back a few hours later—I think I was at the airport—and it was at 400,000 views. The growth was unprecedented for us, and we knew that it was replicable; there was nothing specifically unique about any one of those cars. We had hit upon a format or a type of video that we could revisit again and again and pretty much guarantee seven-figure views. [At the time this was written, the original “World’s Greatest Drag Race” has logged more than 20.7 million views.]
What does 1 billion views mean to you?
JG: One billion views is such a huge milestone for the Motor Trend YouTube channel. For me, what is truly satisfying about that number is that a huge percentage of those views came from places other than the U.S. The accessibility that YouTube provides allowed us to reach an audience that was unthinkable in the magazine days.
MS: When we would meet with YouTube and talk about success, it was initially all about the number of subscribers. Because you knew who had the big followings and who didn’t.
But I think a billion views in a genre like automotive that wasn’t really YouTube friendly, or at least YouTube favored, that’s a big deal. We aren’t a vlog. We aren’t a music, fashion, or gaming channel. I don’t think automotive is even a drop-down category in YouTube, or at least it wasn’t for a long time. It took a lot of different bites at the apple to finally get to that number. We didn’t have one mega home run, a video that just transcended the pop culture; we hit a lot of doubles and singles. One billion is a testament I think to being authentic to the automotive community and respecting the differences, and obviously trying to program to what brings it all together: the passion.
What’s next? Where is this video thing going?
MS: I would say YouTube has been and still is an amazing place to reach a large-scale audience and put new video ideas and concepts in front of them and see what works. The cool thing about all of our shows is that episode 1 looks very different from episode 50. Almost in real time we have been responding and reacting to the audience and comments on the YouTube platform. It’s been a great place to workshop content.
Where do we go from here? Having come this far, we believe we have a really strong feel for the kind of automotive video content people want to see and, we believe, the right kind of video content people will actually pay for. Motor Trend OnDemand, our new subscription video platform, represents the evolution of everything we have done with video to date. It’s very exciting to think about a business model where the only programming concern is whether the video will resonate with the audience. In other words, Motor Trend OnDemand is an effort to actually program directly for the viewer and hopefully they will enjoy it and support it so we can just continue to feed those viewers. That is the next step for us.
JG: No idea what’s next, but I hope I’m around for Motor Trend‘s first all-electric/self-driving “World’s Greatest Drag Race!” On second thought …
Fun fact: Our YouTube channels single most-viewed video is, you guessed it, a drag race video done by Jason Cammisa when he was on staff at our sister magazine Automobile (a fact he loves to remind us). It has racked up 68.8 million views in just under four years.
More from Ed Loh:
- Can You Envision Chinese-Made Cars?
- Behold the All-New Motortrend.com
- Motor Trend Of The Year Awards: Behind the Scenes
- Where Are We Going — And Who Is Driving?
- Change of the Year
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