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Hi there,

Welcome back to another week of Brand Matters. This week, we're diving deep into the MrBeast phenomenon—dissecting how he built the most successful creator brand in history, and what his journey reveals about modern branding's biggest paradox.

Also in today's issue:

• Ad of the Week: LEGO channels Lionel Richie for a Christmas campaign that reminds kids to put down their phones

• Rebrand Watch: How Ragged Edge transformed fertility branding with warmth, not clinical distance

• PepsiCo unveils a bold new identity—modern, global, built to scale

• Coca-Cola doubles down on generative AI for its holiday campaign despite last year's backlash

Let's get started.

MrBeast: The Beauty, the Shadow, and the Branding Paradox

A genius. A faker. A legend. A horrible boss. A philanthropist. A business success. A hypocrite. An entertainment mastermind. Say what you want about MrBeast, love him or hate him, he's a phenomenon you can't ignore, especially if you care about personal branding.

He's not just YouTube's king, he's a creator who's cracked the algorithm so thoroughly that his content consistently dominates the platform. The real story isn't just the numbers—it's the lessons in how he's shaped (and been shaped by) the industry, the platforms, and the millions who watch, cheer, and criticize.

MrBeast is a force of nature. He started as a kid uploading gaming videos in 2012. Thirteen years later, he commands more than 449 million subscribers across his channels—more people than live in the United States and Canada combined. That's not just impressive. It's wild!

Let's cut through the hype and the hate and dissect his story and see what it really means to build a brand in the modern world.

Every Beast Has an Origin

Anyone who's actually made content knows the grind, the endless cycle of creating, tweaking, and posting, hoping something finally catches fire. Not everyone is built for this.

Jimmy Donaldson started out as a regular 12-year-old who liked video games and uploading videos. Most kids move on. He didn't. He dropped out of college to go all-in on YouTube, obsessing over the algorithm, testing, failing, and trying again.

His first viral hit? Counting to 100,000 on camera, a stunt that took nearly 40 hours. The next month, he counted to 200,000. He realized people couldn't look away from someone doing something extreme, so he kept pushing the limits.

Since then, he's been buried alive, locked himself in a room for a week with zero distractions, recreated "Squid Game" with a $456,000 prize, and even bought and gave away a private island. His philosophy: always go bigger, even if it means risking everything he's earned.

That willingness to bet it all, repeatedly, separates creators who plateau from those who break through.

Cracking the Code: The Science (and Art) of Virality

What does MrBeast's story really teach us about virality? Strip away the spectacle, and you find a method that's as much about mindset as mechanics.

Relentless Differentiation: MrBeast didn't just want to be seen; he wanted to be unforgettable. In a world stuffed with content, only the truly remarkable stands out. Safe is invisible. If you want attention, earn it with audacity.

Willingness to Risk: He reinvested everything he made, often risking his entire bankroll on the next big idea. The brands that break through put real skin in the game. Most creators optimize for profitability. Donaldson optimized for impact, trusting the returns would follow.

Audience Obsession: MrBeast's experiments weren't random—they were data-driven, audience-obsessed, and relentlessly optimized. He studied what made people care, share, and come back for more. This means moving beyond vanity metrics. Listen, iterate, and never assume you've "figured it out."

Narrative Escalation: MrBeast's content isn't just a series of stunts—it's an ongoing saga. He built a brand on anticipation, surprise, and the promise that the next story will always top the last. Each video is an episode in a larger story of impossible ambition.

Virality isn't luck. MrBeast's journey proves that in the attention economy, success favors the obsessed.

The Beauty: Philanthropy as Strategy

Donaldson rewrote the playbook on giving back. According to his own reporting and Beast Philanthropy's public records, he's given away more than $92.5 million—more than any other creator in history. Giving sits at the center of his brand.

Is he a modern saint? Not quite. It's philanthropy, yes—but it's also a masterclass in brand strategy. As MrBeast himself told CNBC: "I think on YouTube, it's different, and people just haven't realized it: positivity is just as clickbait as negativity."

But here's what most analyses miss: the business model behind it all. The giveaway videos generate massive viewership (often 100+ million views), which brings in ad revenue. Brand deals and sponsorships—drawn by those view counts—fund even bigger giveaways. Feastables chocolate bar sales create another revenue stream. It's a flywheel: generosity drives attention, attention drives revenue, revenue enables more generosity.

This model only works if the audience believes the generosity is real. Performative giving collapses under scrutiny. MrBeast's advantage and to be fair his vulnerability, is that he gives on a scale too large to fake. You can't pretend to plant 20 million trees or fund 1,000 cataract surgeries. The receipts exist.

Radical generosity isn't just good PR, it's a growth engine. In an era where founders build brands around purpose, MrBeast proves that giving back isn't just the right thing to do. It's also the smart thing.

The Empire: Diversification and Business Moves

MrBeast stopped being just a guy a long time ago, he's a corporation now. Like any ambitious enterprise, he had to expand into new categories.

• MrBeast Burger: Launched in 2020 as a virtual restaurant, using ghost kitchens and delivery apps to scale fast. It exploded to over 2,000 locations worldwide, with the first physical restaurant opening in 2022.

• Feastables: A snack brand built on quality, ethical sourcing, and fun. It debuted with gluten-free chocolate bars and a Willy Wonka-style sweepstakes (yes, a real chocolate factory was up for grabs). According to Donaldson, sales hit $10 million in the first few months.

• Lunchly: He teamed up with KSI and Logan Paul in 2024 to launch snack kits paired with Prime drinks and Feastables bars, positioned as a healthier, more exciting alternative to traditional lunch kits.

• MrBeast Lab: Collectible minifigures that reportedly raked in $65 million and became a top-selling action figure line.

MrBeast, the brand, doesn't just play in the streaming world. He's built an empire that spans industries, always chasing the next big thing, reaching further, and selling more.

But here's where the story gets complicated. When you scale this fast, when you push this hard, something eventually breaks. The bigger you get, the more the world wants to see what's behind the curtain.

The Shadow: When Scale Meets Scrutiny

Every brand that grows fast enough eventually faces a reckoning. For MrBeast, that moment arrived in 2024.

The allegations came in waves. Former employees shared stories that clashed sharply with the public persona. A leaked internal document, reportedly from the company, revealed a workplace culture that prioritized winning above all else. Some described public humiliation. Others talked about impossible expectations.

Then came the production issues. Contestants from "Beast Games"—his ambitious Amazon reality show—filed a class-action lawsuit alleging inadequate food, water, and medical care during filming. Some participants reported going hours without meals, insufficient access to medications, and at least five hospitalizations during production. Chaotic production conditions left participants feeling misled about what they'd signed up for.

MrBeast Burger, once a viral sensation, became a cautionary tale. Customer complaints about food quality, long delivery times, and inconsistent experiences piled up. Donaldson himself acknowledged the problems publicly, even considering shutting down the entire operation to protect his brand.

The pattern that emerges isn't about a single failure—it's about what happens when the pressure to go bigger never stops. When your brand runs on escalation, when each video has to top the last, when millions of dollars ride on every production, the system starts optimizing for spectacle over everything else.

Including, sometimes, the people who make it happen.

Why it matters:

Workplace culture isn't separate from brand reputation, it's foundational to it. Treat your team like disposable assets and eventually the world finds out. The same social media that amplifies your wins will amplify your failures. The platforms that made you famous will turn on you the moment the story shifts.

This isn't just about MrBeast. It's about what happens when you build for the algorithm instead of building for sustainability. When you optimize for clicks instead of culture. When the persona grows so large it consumes everything, including the people closest to it.

What Can You Learn: The Paradox of Modern Branding

MrBeast's journey isn't a blueprint—it's a stress test. He pushed every principle to its breaking point. That's what makes it useful.

Most brands won't give away $92 million. Most won't reach 449 million people. But the patterns that built him and the fractures that appeared… those are universal.

Make your differentiation undeniable, not comfortable. MrBeast didn't try to be 10% better than other creators. He did things nobody else would do. The brands that break through don't optimize around the edges—they redefine what's possible in their category. That doesn't require his budget. It requires his audacity.

Your culture will become your reputation. The workplace issues didn't stay internal—they became the story. In an era where employees have platforms and audiences have expectations, how you treat your team IS your brand. You can't hide it. You can't spin it. Small company or empire, this is non-negotiable.

Generosity only works if it's real. MrBeast's model works because the giving is too big to fake. But the principle scales down: if you're going to build a brand on purpose, on giving back, on making things better—it has to be structural, not decorative. Patagonia doesn't tweet about the environment and call it strategy. They change their supply chain. Find your version of that.

The pressure to escalate never stops. This is the real lesson. MrBeast's next video must top his last. Your next campaign must beat the previous. Each product launch needs to be bigger. The algorithm—whether it's YouTube's or your customer's expectations—always wants more. The question isn't whether you'll feel that pressure. It's whether you'll build a model that can sustain it.

Know what you're optimizing for. MrBeast optimized for views, for virality, for maximum impact. It worked. It also created a system that demands constant escalation and makes mistakes very public. What are you optimizing for? Growth at any cost? Profitability? Longevity? There's no right answer, but there are consequences to each choice.

The bigger question isn't whether you want MrBeast's success. It's whether you want his trade-offs. Because in modern branding, you don't get one without the other.

What Happens Next

Just weeks ago, MrBeast announced plans to launch online banking, crypto exchanges, investment management, and microfinance—all through a single mobile app. The ambition hasn't dimmed.

But here's what's really fascinating: most brands plateau. They find a formula that works and milk it until it stops working. MrBeast keeps pushing into new territory, keeps risking the empire he's built, keeps betting that bigger is better.

Maybe that relentless escalation is what built him. Maybe it's also what will break him.

Either way, we're watching the defining experiment in modern personal branding unfold in real time. The question isn't just what Jimmy Donaldson will do next—it's what his success and struggles will teach the next generation of creators, founders, and brand builders about what's possible and what's sustainable.

The beast is still hungry. The algorithm is still demanding. The world is still watching.

And somewhere in Los Angeles, a 26-year-old who changed his name to match his brand is planning the next impossible thing, wondering if there's a version of bigger that doesn't eventually consume everything.

Maybe he'll find it. Maybe he won't. Either way, the rest of us are taking notes.

Ad of the Week

LEGO Channels Lionel Richie

LEGO just dropped their Christmas ad, and it's Darth Vader singing Lionel Richie to a kid who won't get off his phone.

The setup is simple: 12-year-old Eddie would rather scroll than hang out with his family. His sister brings a whole army of LEGO minifigures to life—Spider-Man, Hot Dog Guy, Glinda, the works—and they sing him back downstairs with a rewritten version of "Hello" that includes the line "In my dreams you stepped on me a thousand times!"

That line alone makes the whole thing worth it. Every parent knows the 2am LEGO brick pain. It's specific, it's funny, and it doesn't feel like they're trying too hard.

Most brands making a "put down your phone" ad turn it into a sermon. LEGO just made Darth Vader sing a power ballad and let the absurdity do the work. Behind it all: 97,000 bricks, 220 animated characters, and enough craft to make it feel special without showing off about it.

The strategy is almost too simple: remind people that playing with LEGO is actually fun. No guilt trip. No lecture about family time. Just characters you recognize doing something ridiculous until you want to join in.

Sometimes the best creative doesn't overthink it.

Brand Watch

Gaia

Fertility branding can feel like visiting a hospital: clinical, cold, built on urgency and fear. Ragged Edge just proved there's another way with their rebrand of Gaia, a UK IVF clinic.

Where most fertility brands equate authority with distance, Gaia does the opposite. The rebrand is warm without being patronizing, scientific without being sterile. It's built on a simple insight: being emotionally intelligent doesn't make you less credible—it makes you more trustworthy.

The language shifted too. For years, fertility brands told people they were broken or running out of time. Gaia reframes IVF as an active choice, not a failure. The process gets dignity instead of shame.

This matters because design doesn't just change perception—it changes how people see themselves. When you're vulnerable and uncertain, understanding becomes expertise. Ragged Edge got that. They made empathy and authority work together instead of fighting each other.

Most rebrands just make things prettier. This one changed the story.

Lento Vibes

A bit of random inspo from around the grounds:

• Progressives Find a Branding Counterpoint: Zohran Mamdani’s campaign visuals—designed by Tyler Evans—offer a striking alternative to well-worn political aesthetics, redefining how progressive branding looks and feels. 👉 Read more

• Pro-Design Tools, Free Forever: Affinity (via Canva) goes free-forever: a high-end design suite combining photo, vector & layout tools with no subscription barrier. 👉 Check it out

• Corporate Identity That Travels: PepsiCo unveils a bold new identity—modern, global, built to scale—and signals a shift in how Big Food thinks about brand architecture and reach. 👉 See the rebrand

• Publishers Double-Down on Brand Campaigns: Reuters launches just its second ever brand campaign in its 174-year history—highlighting how legacy publishers are evolving into brand builders, not just newsgatherers. 👉 See the shift

• Gen Z Abandons Traditional TV for Microdramas” New data: 43 % of Gen Z prefer YouTube or TikTok over traditional television—micro-dramas are one of the key reasons. 👉 Learn why

• Publishers Fight for Traffic in the AI Era” As AI-powered search tools start delivering answers without clicks, publishers are facing a major traffic threat—and must rethink how they build and capture audiences. 👉 Find the tactics

• Coca-Cola Keeps Betting on AI—Despite Backlash: Coca‑Cola doubles down on generative AI for its holiday campaign—and insists the risk is worth the reward, even after mixed reactions last year. 👉 Read the full story