BIG Automotive

Automotive media is in a bad place right now. Tons of creators are leaving companies because they're pissed off. Significant changes have already happened at Donut Media. Hunigan, across town, is basically dead, and across the Atlantic, Carthrodiil is struggling after most of their people bailed. What's going on? Well, here'some insider info. Earlier there's a bigger point here. Okay, hang on. That footage was recorded about three weeks ago, and I gotta add some additional info right from the get-go. At that time, I already knew about some changes in automotive media that weren't announced until t But it's the same t Nobody has been completely honest about the problems causing everyone to quit big automotive channels. Even the people who quit don't really tell you the whole story. If you work in this industry, But I'm getting ahead of myself. Since I'm not Then you can decide whether or not to believe what I'm gonna say. In a little over three years with Donut, I worked on about 130 videos. Combined, those have 260 million views. And the channel grew from 4 million to 8 million subscribers w I was a member of Donut'small creative team. Those are a dozen or so people be That's in addition to the hosts who are all really active be I did research, writing, supervised other writer'scripts, pitched ideas, something I did field production, worked with private car owners and collectors, and sourced ve I worked with partners like car manufacturers, racetracks, and muse I took on a lot of work, and a big reason is because a creative team These people end up being your friends. Some of that is down to the shared love of cars, but a bigger fact is because we're all creating somet I worked hard on every single one of those 130 videos, not because I got paid a lot, I didn't. I worked hard because I knew my friends were relying on me, and I knew they were gonna work just as hard for me. We all shared the same drive to make somet But the reasons I left Donut are affecting an entire industry, the people on screen and be Hundreds of people, not just the ones making why I quit videos. In most of those videos, they pull their punches too, either because they don't want to get sued or they don't want to burn bridges. So I made t A few days later, I received a phone call from someone influential in automotive media. It's a relatively small community, and word gets around. I was told that multiple people were concerned about what I was planning to say. I didn't Outlets So in the interest of self-preservation, I took the advice and delayed that means there are times So why did I leave? And why are so many others leaving too? The short answer is money, and that's not about the pay. You kind of expect to be underpaid when you're a creator working for someone else. You're playing with someone else's money, so they hedge their bets a bit. They pay you as little as possible, just in case what you create doesn't cover its own costs. The salary wasn'the reason I left, and it The problem is where the money is coming from. Investors. That's not individual investors, it's venture capital firms, and private equity groups. For several years, large investors have been buying up automotive media companies. Most of those media companies were started by small communities of people who were passionate about cars and content creation. That includes entertainment-focused companies T So these investors buy up media outlets because they're profitable. That's kind of the point of investing, to grow your money. The investors aren't interested in cars, media, or content creation. They just want to own a profitable business, and there's not The problems start because the investors want to constantly increase profit margins. Quite a lot, as it turns out. So they implement a bunch of changes, hoping to do that. The there's not a lot of wiggle room in the budgets. It's another reason why the creative team doesn't get paid a whole lot. And once investors get involved, with big plans for rapid growth, they tend to divert money from those budgets to projects that they t But they're not always right about that. For example, investors These are a bunch of business people, and the investors t Unfortunately, those people'salaries drastically and immediately increase expenses. When Donut got bought, I went from being two steps away from the person at the top to nine levels down in an organizational chart. All of a sudden, we had all these extra mouths to feed, and it wasn't clear how they were actually contributing to the content, the product the business was built on. All of those managers know their only job is to make more money for the investors. The only way to do that quickly is to immediately cut other costs to offset all those new salaries, including their own. Cost-cutting means either layoffs or cutting production budgets, and in many cases, both. So the directive to the creative team ends up being do more with less, less money, and less creative people. In other words, make content that gets more views and generates more revenue without more of the resources that are essential to that. The same business people also funnel resources into courting advertisers instead of content creation. The logic goes something The branded spots that you see in YouTube videos generate revenue, so if we push that, we'll generate even more revenue. The obvious problem is that people aren't watc If that suffers, fewer eyes are on the branded spots and revenue declines. Of course, the business types realize that, but instead of giving the creative team the resources it needs to make popular content, they incentivize the creatives. But creatives aren'the sort of people who can be bribed or threatened to work harder. You can'tell us, I will pay you more to have better ideas. We're pretty much creating as hard as we can all the time. Creative people are internally and intrinsically driven to create. We're kind of And our goal is already to make the most entertaining and therefore most popular content that we can make. You motivate creatives by giving them the freedom and the resources to make the t But that's another issue. The new managers don't believe in us. I remember fighting against management to get a specific project made. It wasn't even mine. A director had an amazing idea, but it was going to cost more than a typical video. Management didn't want to fund something just because a couple of creatives said this is going to be huge, because honestly, the suits kind of treat us Even though we've been building an audience for years and we know them and what they like and what kind of content will do n The suits don't want to take risks on ideas because they don't have the experience to differentiate a good idea from a bad one. All they can see is the difference between an expensive idea and a cheap one. Of course, not every idea you come up with is a good one. I certainly made some iffy content, some that I'm even embarrassed about. But even my worst performing videos covered their costs. And that was a big reason why I left. If I made a video that got a million views or five million views, I got paid the same. And the production costs were covered either way. So my employer's money was never at risk, even when I did my worst work. But all of the reward for those successes went somewhere else. And that wasn't going to the new investors. The creative team'success paid for spiraling expenses and organization that was getting ever more bloated with managers and leaders People who didn'take the time to understand what we do or why it was so successful. People who then demand growth without understanding how we grew to where we are in the first place. So they make decisions t And they pin the blame on the content instead of listening to the creative teams who've been doing they then treat creatives In other words, they t And not in the creative people and the t So that's it. Creators We're tired of being told to do more with less than getting blamed when that doesn't magically increase revenue. And we're tired of being dismissed and treated I didn't want to work in conditions So did about half the creative team. And there are more people leaving soon, including on the advice of council. I've decided to leave t I look forward to seeing your comments.