YouTube and influencer business trends newsletter February 18

Hi, this is Amanda Perelli and welcome back to Insider Influencers, our weekly rundown on the business of influencers, creators, and social-media platforms. Sign up for the newsletter here.

In this week’s edition:

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YouTube star Jimmy Donaldson (MrBeast) launched a pop-up “MrBeast Burger” restaurant in December with the goal of building a permanent brand, not just a one-off viral stunt.

To do so, Donaldson partnered with Virtual Dining Concepts, a company that works with celebrities to launch delivery-only food brands.

Dan Whateley spoke with Virtual Dining Concepts’ CEO to learn more about the business of influencer “ghost kitchens.”

Here’s what he said:

Virtual Dining Concepts helped the MrBeast team design a menu, secure restaurant partners, and create training materials so every product would taste the same nationwide.
The company enlisted a network of 300 “ghost kitchens” (some that it owned), which paid an all-inclusive platform fee to cook and sell MrBeast menu items.
The company is planning to expand to 1,000 restaurants by the end of the second quarter.

As TikTok has grown in popularity, both upstart and legacy media companies are joining the app.

“45% of our new audience growth in 2020 was from TikTok,” Barstool Sports’ CEO Erika Nardini told Insider last month.

Dan Whateley spoke with four media companies about how to build an engaged audience on TikTok:

Barstool Sports has 12 million TikTok followers and has focused on posting content that fits with what’s popular on the app, rather than repurposing its existing IP.
NPR’s “Planet Money” has about 300,000 TikTok followers and built and audience by converting its podcast and video content into short, funny economics explainer videos.
Yahoo News has 1 million TikTok followers and regularly interacts with users in the comments section of videos.

The cofounders of Studio71 have teamed up again to launch a new talent-management firm for creators.

The firm, Underscore Talent, has signed over 60 clients so far and is focused on helping digital stars expand content into areas like TV formats and short-form video.

I spoke to with Underscore Talent execs at about their plans:

The firm is interested in expanding clients into TV formats with partners like Roku or Amazon Prime.
Underscore wants to help clients create passive, ad-based revenue streams by repurposing YouTube videos for Facebook.
It also wants to launch direct-to-consumer brands with clients.

The 19th, a nonprofit newsroom covering gender, politics, and policy, launched last January.

Mark Stenberg spoke with cofounders Emily Ramshaw and Amanda Zamora on how they set it up for growth and how they plan to grow after the Trump era.

Table of Contents

More creator industry coverage from Insider:

Industry updates:

This week from Insider’s digital culture team:

most disliked youtubers list — Jake Paul, Jeffree Star, and Logan Paul were among the influencers of whom survey respondents had an unfavorable opinion.

Insider reporter Palmer Haasch surveyed 1,000 people to figure out how well certain influencers are known and liked.

Data revealed which personalities had high unfavorability rankings.

Controversial YouTuber Jake Paul topped the list, with his brother Logan in second.

Logan is the most well-known influencer on this list, with 30.6% of respondents saying that they knew who he was and putting him close to other big-name internet personalities like Joe Rogan, who was known by 37.2% of those surveyed.