- MrBeast—a.k.a. Jimmy Donaldson—has achieved viral success by creating never-before-seen content—what he calls the “purple cow effect.” However, he says that replicating his results is difficult, as his high-production, resource-intensive projects require significant planning, funding, and innovation.
YouTube sensation MrBeast has figured out the formula for influencer success. The only problem for aspiring talent is that his discovery means few other people will be able to replicate his results.
That’s because in a world where everyone wants to go viral—be it their business Instagram account, personal TikTok, or LinkedIn profile—it’s getting even harder to cut through the noise.
This is what Jimmy Donaldson, a.k.a. MrBeast, has found in his 15 years of creating video content.
Now worth an estimated $85 million, with a stack of business ventures, philanthropic projects, and an Amazon TV series to his name, Donaldson is the poster boy for the digital creator career.
But Donaldson, who now heads an empire worth $700 million, per Business Insider, figured out early on that to go viral, a video has to be truly different from everything else out there.
“The thing is, to go viral, you have to do something that’s never been done before,” Donaldson told the Diary of a CEO podcast on an episode released yesterday.
“If you’re driving down the road, and you see a cow, who cares? It’s a cow.
“But if you’re driving down the road, and you see a purple cow, you’ve never seen that before, and it’s something you aren’t expecting. You’re going to go, ‘Holy shit.’ You’re going to tell your friend about it. You’re going to remember that. You’ll probably even think about it randomly once every couple of years: Why the fuck was there a purple cow?
“You can apply that same analogy to ideas. When you’re scrolling through social media to find a video to watch, there are things that have been done before. You’ll scroll past it, and you’ll never think about it again,” he added. “Just like you’ll never think about a cow on the side of the road.
“And then there are the purple cow ideas—which is what I try to do—that make you go, ‘What the fuck? I’ve never seen that. I have to click this or I’m not going to be able to sleep tonight.’”
Purple cows are difficult
The MrBeast channel is indeed packed with unique video titles.
“I spent 100 hours inside the Pyramids,” “7 days stranded at sea,” and “$10,000 every day you survive in a grocery store,” to name a few.
These projects also require extensive planning, cash, and access—all of which are achievable only by those at the very top of the content-creator pecking order.
Indeed, Donaldson has previously said it costs “millions” to produce his videos, a revelation made after X owner Elon Musk asked him to change his upload platform from YouTube.
Donaldson denied the request, saying the ad revenue from X wasn’t even large enough to cover the costs of his channel, let alone make a profit.
“To get that purple cow effect, [the videos have] never been done before,” the Kansas-born creator added. “And if something’s never been done before there’s usually a reason—’cause it’s very hard.
“You have to train yourself not to resent very difficult, complex, hard original problems and actually run toward them, because those are the ones that tend to have more of the purple cow effect, where people have to watch it,” added Donaldson.
“It’s pretty winner-take-all in the top videos, [so] you really have to lean into that purple cow effect.”
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