MrBeast vertically integrates supply chains to produce himself and his content

Evidence

Specific rooms of MrBeast’s resemble or replicate film and television; part of the escape room is designed to look like the Netflix television show Floor Is Lava, a show in which contestants attempt to get money by navigating an obstacle course without touching the floor. Another centerpiece of MrBeast’s escape room is a room filled with candy. When his contestants arrive in this room, one hundred bars of chocolate fall from the sky. The contestants must open them all to find a golden ticket to progress. As they unwrap the many bars of chocolate—again taking part in a Willy Wonka-esque situation in which power is asserted through the wonders and delights of mass production—MrBeast takes the moment to introduce us to a new line of chocolate bars, bars that are ostensibly sustainable and healthy, with ethical sourcing of cacao and only five ingredients. The video is an ad, like many of MrBeast’s videos are—be they for chocolate, or for a mobile game advertised during his Squid Game video, or for his chain of ghost kitchen burger restaurants, MrBeast Burger. While Donaldson may not be as vertically integrated as Jeffree Star, he has used the popularity of his videos to branch out beyond the making of content into the development of branded goods and services. He, too, has used the warehouse to produce himself as a product, an influencer, a lure of attention, as well as the owner of the warehouse. He is a vertically integrated individual who uses the material infrastructures of supply chains to build up and protect his precarity, differentiating himself from other, seemingly similar, influencers by reinventing himself through the logic of late capitalist supply chains. After Donaldson introduces us to his chocolate bar, we’re told that if we purchase one, we’ll be entered into a contest. Some bars have a golden ticket inside. If we get one of these tickets, then we get to go to his warehouse, an opportunity to become content for the MrBeast content factory, allowing our body to be bent and molded into an emotionally expressive, relatable video. — Grant Bollmer, Katherine Guinness, The Influencer Factory, 335

Categorization

• XREF: Directly supplies the case-study application the reader needs: a real creator analyzed through Bollmer’s warehouse/house/car/market framework and the vertical-integration claim.
• DEFINE: Concretely shows what ‘vertically integrated individual’ means via MrBeast — the influencer as both product and owner of the warehouse.
• ADDENDUM: MrBeast’s contest turning consumers into content for his factory parallels the grafting/digestion logic — the warehouse converting audience into material for the next product cycle.
• QUESTION: Worth chasing: where exactly is the surplus realized if the consumer’s body becomes the content commodity?