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Mr. Beast needs no introduction.
He also really doesn't need a full breakdown like we would give other creators I have featured in our Creator Case Studies.
So, instead of the normal breakdowns and images I'd share with stats, I'm going to be jumping right into the psychology he uses in his methodology, and the images will be a tool to help teach you those methods.
Bit of a different format, but we're dealing with a bit of a different creator here!
And, for those of you living under a rock, we're dealing with the world's best creator, sitting at 228M YouTube subscribers at the moment, and consistently making earth shaking moves.
Curiosity Gap
This one is probably the most obvious, as Mr. Beast is a master storyteller and hooks the audience in, but then keeps them wanting more (without giving too much away, of course).
The Curiosity Gap is a marketing lever that involves creating a gap between what your audience knows and what they want to know!
In this video I'm using as an example above, Mr. Beast tells us within the first 5 seconds that he tied up an FBI Agent and if he steals $100,000 from him before midnight, he keeps it.
So not only did Mr. Beast set up his hook and curiosity gap within 5 seconds, but he jumps right into the story and has us at the edge of our seat needing to know what happens!
We've also seen powerful usage of Curiosity Gap in Creator Case Studies from Deep Pocket Monster and Jeff Nippard.
Both of which have their own unique spin on it - as you should as well!
Costly Signaling
Mr. Beast has leveraged Costly Signaling since the early days when he got his first sponsor (example above), and now uses it in MASSIVE ways.
Costly Signaling is a marketing lever that states that the more money you spend (or more effort you put in), the more likely people are to listen.
An example would be a college degree holding more value than a Udemy course, or a handwritten letter being more meaningful than a text.
You may have heard the story of how Mr. Beast was being given $5,000 for the sponsorship of that video on the left, and then persuaded the sponsors to increase it to $10,000, just so he could give it away.
In a more recent video, Mr. Beast was VERY open about how much it cost him to recreate the viral hit show “Squid Game” in real life.
Both of these are an example of Mr. Beast using Costly Signaling, but also play into other levers as well!
Borrowing Authority
This is something I teach quite often, and one of the easier levers to use to build authority when you don’t have any (or much) yet. It’s so effective, even the world’s top creators like Mr. Beast and Alex Hormozi continue using it.
Borrowing Authority involves leveraging another brand or individual with existing credibility or authority.
This is closely related to another lever I teach: Leveraging Familiarity.
Even as potentially the world’s greatest creator, Mr. Beast still borrows authority and leverages familiarity from other brands, creators, authorities and pop culture.
We’ve seen him do this with Squid Game and Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory, all the way to his early days of saying Logan Paul’s name 100,000 times (and getting 23 MILLION views).
He has now expanded on this and leveraged tons of creators ranging from PewDiePie all the way to Ninja and tons of smaller streamers.
FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out) / Scarcity
Who would want to potentially miss out on thousands of dollars?
I know I wouldn’t. And Mr. Beast knows this too.
It’s our nature as humans to not want to miss out on things, and you’ve likely experienced FOMO in countless different ways, which is why it is such a powerful marketing lever.
An example of this might be when stores give you $15 off if used by a certain date, as opposed to just giving you a coupon (also playing on Loss Aversion).
Mr. Beast uses FOMO in a multitude of ways, consistently telling us to subscribe if we don’t want to miss out on things, but he also takes it to a whole new level with his video giveaways shown below.
In one he gives his forty millionth subscriber 40 cars, and in another he gives his hundred millionth subscriber an entire island.
So what does that tell us?
If we don’t want to miss the chance to get MASSIVE rewards from Mr. Beast, we better subscribe.
Labor Illusion Effect
Closely related to Costly Signaling, Mr. Beast used The Labor Illusion Effect to go viral in some of his earlier videos.
The reason this is a bit more closely related to The Labor Illusion Effect is because of the extended effort Mr. Beast puts into a seemingly mundane and challenging tasks.
The signals for us here is that the more effort is also equivalent to higher value.
An example would be similar to how I said “I have spent DAYS studying Gary Vee’s LinkedIn Strategy” in one of my recent posts. Days Spent = More Value!
For this one I wanted to start with one we have already covered in Borrowing Authority, AND one that can also be related to Costly Signaling: Mr. Beast saying Logan Paul 100,000 times...
Mr. Beast used The Labor Illusion Effect in a lot of his early videos, before he had thousands of dollars to give away or spend on content, including another video that got 35 MILLION views of him reading the longest english word.
So an extremely boring, mundane task, but a LOT of effort put into completing it.
Signature Series
Signature Series are by far my favorite marketing levers to use because they allow us to add all our other marketing levers into content that we can repeat over and over again while still being uniquely captivating each time.
Even Mr. Beast knows the power of this, and that’s why he uses signature series to continue putting out some of his best content on repeat, by changing one variable within the style of video.
Signature Series are regularly released, hyper-repeatable content that stand out in saturated markets, offering a unique and captivating experience each time.
Mr. Beast actually has a handful of different Signature Series (as most of the creators we research do); but I think the best way to highlight a signature series in a quick bit is to show you one specific example.
For Mr. Beast’s Signature Series “$1 vs. $X” the second item and price is the variable anchor that changes each time.
As you can see, it allows Mr. Beast to leverage familiarity, and use costly signaling over and over again with one small swap to the style.
How To Replicate The Psychology of Mr. Beast
There's obviously a full book that can be written and learned from Mr. Beast on more than just some of these psychological levers, but there are a few that stand out for us to take immediate advantage of.
First, here's the TL;DR of The Psychology Of Mr. Beast above:
- Curiosity Gap
- Costly Signaling
- Borrowing Authority
- FOMO / Scarcity
- Labor Illusion Effect
- Signature Series
You're going to want to take advantage of curiosity gap and storytelling in virtually ANY of your content creation/branding, but the most powerful levers for growth here are going to be borrowing authority, leveraging familiarity (I discussed this with borrowing authority), and signature series.
Layering in FOMO and scarcity tends to be more powerful when it comes to conversion levers, but using it for leads is great as well!
