How did this young 14 year old named Marques Brownlee grow to become
titled "The Best Tech Reviewer on the Planet" and regularly meet with business
leaders like Bill Gates and Elon Musk and celebrities like Will Smith and Kobe Bryant?
This is exactly what we'll find out in this analysis.
As of making this video, Marques Brownlee or "MKBHD" as he is better known as
has over 1.8 billion views on his YouTube channel, over 10 million subscribers
and another 3.7 million followers on Twitter and 2.5 million on Instagram.
Apart from consistently improving his videos, Marques had to find ways of
reaching new audiences to speed up the growth of his channel
and I say speed up, because he actually had slow growth in his first three years on YouTube a
Apart from relying on luck and YouTube's algorithm to promote his videos,
Marques, like many other content creators on the platform collaborated with fellow
youtubers to make videos that would have twice the reach they normally would.
Not only did MKBHD master the art of YouTube collaborations eventually working with
YouTube celebrities like Casey Neistat, he took it to a whole new level.
Let me show you exactly how he progressed.
on April 22nd 2009 after having already
made 172 videos and being a small channel with around 750 subscribers
he began his first attempt at reaching new audiences by doing shout-outs for
other channels in his videos.
While this wasn't very effective marques was just getting started.
Two years later on August 30th 2011 he made his first
proper collaboration with fellow friend and tech reviewer Austin Evans.
After agreeing on a topic, both of them would film a part and upload the combined video
linking the collaborator's channel. In some cases they'd upload two separate
parts with viewers having to go to both channels to get the full picture.
After more than 30 videos with youtubers within his niche Marques fully grasped
the formula to successful collaborations. March 25th 2017 marked the day MKBHD
channel saw its biggest result from a collaboration. He released a video with
YouTube's most famous vlogger at the time, Casey Neistat.
Collaborating with famous youtubers like Casey Neistat and Peter McKinnon outside
of the tech review niche allowed Marques to tap into fresh audiences who might
have never heard of him before.
The results were astounding. The video with Casey for example, brought him over 35,000
subscribers in ONE SINGLE DAY.
This is the point where almost all successful YouTube content creators stop at.
Many think that making videos with YouTube celebrities is as high as one can go in terms of collaboration strategies.
But Marques? No. He completely broke through YouTube's standards venturing out of the
platform to make videos with some of the world's most influential people.
Marques Brownlee is a true genius when it comes to collaborations, very few people grasp
their mechanics as well as he does.
Here are his two main principles that set him up for success
Number 1: Always seeking a win-win-win outcome.
Marques will only do a collab, if he the counterpart and the viewers all benefit from it more
than from a video he would have made alone
and principle 2: always making videos that he himself would want to watch
this meant staying true to himself
and not sacrificing values in favor of getting extra views or money,
this also meant he automatically avoided the pitfall many youtubers go through when
they burn out from producing content they no longer enjoy.
Although Marques had the right mindset, he still had two big problems he needed
to resolve before being able to make videos with famous people outside of YouTube.
Problem number 1: How would he get in touch with the likes of Elon Musk
and Bill Gates who also happen to be some of the busiest people on the planet.
and Problem 2: Why in the world would they speak to a youtuber who is still a
student and films out of his dorm room? The odds were clearly against him.
You see YouTube or any of its content creators for that matter, regardless of
how big they were, were not treated seriously outside of the platform.
Here let me give you an example. The Consumer Electronics Show or CES for short,
is one of the largest annual trade shows featuring thousands of newly released
products and technologies. Well, what you didn't know is that even in 2014 when
Marques had 900 thousand subscribers on YouTube, he couldn't get
into CES without an exception being made because tech youtubers were still not
considered as real press. This means that even if you had hundreds of thousands of
monthly views, by default, you couldn't get into CES
but a person with a few readers on his tech website could. You get the idea, it was pretty ridiculous.
Fortunately this is now changing with Marques Brownlee being
one of the pioneers breaking down the stereotype, but at that time youtubers
lack of reputation was a real handicap he had to get rid of.
He was patient and did two things to tackle both problems.
1. He grew the counterpart's potential "WIN" to a size they couldn't ignore.
This meant continuing to improve the quality of his videos and growing his channel.
And the second thing he did, was build up his credibility and reputation as a high quality tech reviewer,
establishing himself up as an authority in his field.
For the specific techniques Marques used to start quickly growing his YouTube channel despite 3 years of slow growth,
check out the video analysis I linked in the description below.
In this video, we’re focusing on Marques’s more difficult task
of building up his personal brand's authority despite being a "youtuber"
and what exact steps he took to interview this growing list of famous and influential people.
The answer to how MKBHD started this series of impressive interviews
is actually hidden in the past. We have to go back to February 14th, 2013
when Google+ was still around. Marques Brownlee was one of the first to adopt
the service and grew a sizable following. Apart from bringing additional traffic
to his YouTube channel, his three plus years of solid engagement on the
platform allowed him to be selected as one of the few people who's questions
would be played for
guess who
President Obama.
Let’s go ahead and bring up the video that’s now unlisted:
Odds that it's going to happen. Mr President, let's transition to the economy next and go to one of the top voted YouTube
questions that was submitted. This one comes from Marques Brownlee, let's watch.
Hi Mr. President, my name is Marques and I'm a student in New Jersey
Marques actually said, the added exposure from this was nice but what was even better
was the legitimacy the video conveyed when people looked at tech blogs in 2013
it's the written blogs that had the most credibility. "On YouTube that's less so
the case" he said but here they can see "he's talking with the president,
he's reaching out to a lot of people"
This was his first small victory and his first step
in building himself up as an authority in his field.
His brand now had a small association with President Obama, which he could highlight when reaching
out to professionals in the industry. Marques's second victory was huge.
It came five months later in the summer of 2013, this time with Google stepping into the picture.
By the end of July 2013 with 400,000 subscribers on YouTube
It's likely that Google was already sending Marques products for review.
Here are some facts that point to this: On July 24th he already had Google's Nexus 7,
2 days before it was officially released
On August 1st, Google's highly anticipated Moto X smartphone had just been announced
yet Marques Brownlee, already had it. He also mentioned in an interview that he was
the only youtuber to be invited by Google for a Moto X hands-on review.
Which is also probably where he was able to film THIS scene, given that he didn't
have the colored models in any of his other videos.
The building where the video was filmed, also happens to be only 20 minutes away from his office.
I know. It's common practice for manufacturers to send out their products for tech
reviews to increase exposure, but here's what was different in this case.
August 2nd after Marques released the video explaining the features of the Moto X
Vic Gundotra then senior vice-president at Google, with almost 7
million followers on Google+ posted, "Marques Brownlee is the best technology
reviewer in the planet right now. You might want to follow him. Watch him
practice his craft below" linking his video.
On the same day, Guy Kawasaki, then adviser to Google owned Motorola, tweeted MKBHD's video twice, commenting:
"Hot video from MKBHD. Please retweet" Now besides the senior Google executives
clearly having their own agenda, which was to promote the newly launched and
highly anticipated Moto X, by putting Marques on a pedestal thereby maximizing
his positive review's reach to increase sales, this doesn't take away from the
fact that their actions seriously helped build up his reputation and credibility as a tech reviewer.
Apart from him being featured in President Obama's Q&A
session he now had a senior Google executive publicly praising him as the
best tech reviewer on the planet and another famous business figure
recommending his work. Combined, these were three incredibly powerful signs of
credibility that Marques could now use to open a great deal of doors that were
previously closed. Meeting influential figures was no longer a far-fetched dream.
These developments from summer of 2013 really set the stage for Marques
first interview with Dennis Woodside the CEO of Motorola Mobility. With Google
executives publicly praising him and Motorola Mobility even having
communicated with him during Moto X's software updates, Marques had a proven
track record and made it easy for the CEO to accept his interview.
Besides December 6th 2013 when the interview took place, was also right
after Moto G's mid-november release and thus an opportunity to further advertise
the phone to potential buyers among Marques' than seven hundred
eighty-seven thousand subscribers on YouTube. If Motorola already spent five
hundred million dollars in advertising, a free interview reaching close to a
million tech enthusiasts surely wouldn't hurt. Marques continued to make his own
videos and grow at a steady pace. Whenever he'd be covered in the news
reporters would now cite Vic Gundotra's quote, further solidifying the claims
strength and making it an inherent part of his reputation on the market.
Want to see just the effect it had? A business magazine named Fast Company interviewed
Marques on the 5th of November 2015 and added him to their list of most creative people,
citing the Google executive's quote in both articles.
Why am I mentioning Fast Company? Well watch this. Fast forward one month to December 15th
2015, the day when Marques Brownlee interviewed late basketball legend Kobe Bryant
listen carefully to what Kobe says when they greet each other
Following Fast company's news coverage of Marques who they were now in contact with
it's highly likely that they were the ones that invited him to join the
press conference for Kobe Bryant's upcoming Kobe 11 shoes, set to be
released on January 9th 2016. What better way to advertise the shoes advanced
technology than having MKBHD dedicate an entire interview to it. I mean he had
over three million subscribers and had been called the best tech reviewer on
the planet by Google after all. After two interviews with Neil deGrasse Tyson,
a chat with Apple senior vice president Craig Federighi and naturally being
picked by YouTube to take part in 2016's Democratic debate
the next interview was with Elon Musk. This one's really interesting because we get to see
exactly how the relationship developed up to the point where Elon agreed to be
interviewed by Marques. For this let's open up Twitter and go back in time
November 28th 2013 marked the day when Marques began tweeting at Elon Musk
Even with 750,000 YouTube subscribers at that point, Elon would not reply to any
of his messages. A whole three years and seven months later, Marques won in a
Tesla advertisement contest with Elon Musk mentioning MKBHD in his tweet for
the first time when announcing the winner. It took another six months for
Elon to finally reply to a casual tweet from Marques,
and once communication was established three more months for Marques to casually mention the
possibility of having a chat with Elon about tech whenever he's free and Elon
replying positively. Just as Marcus said, what was more important than a tweets
themselves, was the backing each of them got. Take a look at the final tweet where
Marques proposes the interview. It got an astounding 18.4 thousand likes
609 retweets and 249 comments
with people practically begging the interview to take place.
While an email might have also worked, Marques leveraged his existing popularity on the
platform to strengthen his messages appeal. Imagine if that same tweet were
to have close to no engagement. (pause) See the difference? Using Twitter also helped set
the right tone for the upcoming meeting, it will be a casual chat to geek over
tech they're passionate about, clearly a breath of fresh air for Elon after
stressful calls with analysts. Another point of interest is how indirectly
Marques makes the ask, casually putting it out there to make it very easy for Elon to refuse
as well as protecting his own reputation to avoid a public rejection.
You can assume he had the same low pressure approach when asking Bill Gates and Will Smith.
The only thing that would change with each request,
would be the growing list of his prior accomplishments and the potential
exposure they would get from meeting him. With you now having a clear picture of
how MKBHD quality reviews and engagement helped him build up his
reputation and get meetings with the likes of Elon Musk and Kobe Bryant,
let's quickly take a look at the wins his counterparts got from agreeing to meet with him.
Apart from increased personal publicity, out of the noteworthy examples,
Bill Gates advertised his annual letter, tracking the number of people who came
to his website on both occasions, and Elon Musk finally connected with Tesla's
true customers like Marques, especially at a time when reporters and short sellers
cast him and the company in a bad light.
What Mark has got out of these meetings apart from new viewers and increased media coverage,
was his increased authority as a tech reviewer. His personal brand fed off the strong
associations it now had with the famous people he met. He was no longer just a
college student making good tech reviews from a dorm room but actually grew into
becoming the best tech reviewer on the planet, whom people like Elon Musk and
Bill Gates found influential enough to agree to meet with. With this said,
this is why MKBHD deserves to be called YouTube's King of Collaborations.
Marques is now growing beyond YouTube with more room for him to spread his tech empire.
In fact Marcus changed his paradigm entirely from a YouTube centric one to a
viewer centric one.
Marques: "the day YouTube ever disappears. YouTube was down the other day
and I thought about this a lot. (laughs) If Youtube's ever gone
like yeah, we do have to think about what's next, which for me I think will
still stay in reviewing tech in online video but maybe it's somewhere else
If you enjoyed this video please leave a like to let me know and subscribe for
more data-driven insights and how successful youtubers like MKBHD got to
the heights they're at today. Thanks for watching!