Why my new car content brand is an instant smash!

It's all about choosing the right product...

I’m a huge car nerd. I always have been, ever since I was old enough to start ‘brumming’ toy cars along the living room carpet. The fact my son appears to be heading in the same direction is a very proud dad moment.

As a result of this, I’ve occasionally shoe-horned car-based content into the Mark Ellis Reviews YouTube channel. Sometimes, it works. Sometimes, it’s a bit of a stretch.

This gave me an idea.

Straddling more than one niche is a perilous game of content creation. The platforms on which we publish content and the audiences that jump on board are notoriously strict on what does and doesn’t work.

It’s a tightrope and one from which I’ve come close to falling on a few occasions. As much as there is a crossover between tech and cars, there’s no guarantee that a viewer who enjoyed my M4 iPad Pro review is going to relish a deep dive into the BMW i5 M60. And yes, the latter is what’s featured on the channel today.

Regardless, I’m not the sort of creator who can stick resolutely to one topic - I need to spread my wings. It’s why I started publishing behind-the-scenes vlogs, and it’s why we’ve decided to spin up a completely separate car content brand.

Mark Ellis Motors (I know this sounds a bit like a car dealership, but I rather like it - and who knows where I’ll end up in the future) is now up and running and already drawing in a sizeable audience. We’ve decided to focus purely on short-form content, to begin with, on Instagram and TikTok. I started posting videos to both platforms seriously last weekend, and we’ve already amassed nearly 800 followers (the lion’s share is, predictably, on TikTok). This is a superb start and the strategy has worked perfectly - immediately.

It’s a simple strategy, too - I’m using an anchor to kick off the narrative of a normal guy who loves cars. That anchor is the Range Rover Sport I bought a couple of weeks ago. It’s a late 2018 model with 34,000 miles on the clock, and it has a bit of an image problem. And an insurance problem. And, potentially, a reliability problem. This means that it’s an incredibly divisive product - just like the iPhone - and that means the audience is there to be had. My Range Rover Sport is, to put no finer point on it, a content machine.

The audience I’ve targeted and immediately encountered is split cleanly down the middle. On one side, we have the Range Rover fans and car enthusiasts who have either owned a Land Rover or who simply admire nice motors. On the other side, we have the people who think I’m utterly nuts for having traded in a BMW M2 for a car which has a less-than-stellar reputation.

Views have already started pouring in - again mostly on TikTok. The content is of an intentionally low production value (everything is shot on my phone), and the topics are short, sharp, tongue-in-cheek, and often emotive. A minute-long walk around of my new car has surpassed 80,000 views on TikTok, and every other video I’ve published has quickly sailed past the 1,000-view mark. More satisfyingly, the engagement in the comments section is superb; as I’ve noted previously, this is what drives a content brand to greater heights, and I’m seeing the effect of it already on Mark Ellis Motors.

“Lovely car, mate!”

“That’s going to spend more time in the garage than on the road LOLZ.”

“Wait for the insurance bill.”

“I keep thinking about getting one of these, but the stories have put me off. Can’t wait to follow your journey.”

“Has it been stolen yet?”

It’s like an iPhone versus Samsung comparison video - the comments and in-fighting between commenters just keep going. I couldn’t have wished for anything more.

The long-term strategy, as you might guess, is to launch a YouTube channel for Mark Ellis Motors. Before that, I want to continue building this short-form persona and adding to those numbers. The Range Rover is, after all, just the anchor for the brand - we want to feature more cars from different manufacturers, but for that, we need the numbers, which is why I’m focusing on building them through videos of my own car for now. The good news is that we have existing relationships with the likes of BMW, Porsche, and BYD, but Mark Ellis Motors is designed to get me far more wholesomely into the automotive industry as a recognised voice with a sizeable audience.

It’s very early days, but we’re off to one hell of a start with this and I can’t wait to see where it goes. If you’re into cars, you can check out Mark Ellis Motors on Instagram and TikTok, but if you couldn’t give two hoots, I hope this story has at least given you some inspiration for your content brand.