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In the early days, the internet brought together like-minded enthusiasts on forums such as Detailing World and was an essential catalyst to community growth. As social media gradually took over from forums, the audience for detailing kept growing exponentially to the point where some Facebook groups are in excess of 100,000 members. YouTube added yet more fuel to the fire with enthusiasts uploading videos of their work and how they achieved it. For some, thanks to monetisation, this became their day job – the likes of Ammo NYC (2.25M subscribers), The Detail Geek (3.28M) and Pan The Organiser (1.06M subscribers) in the USA, Forensic Detailing (355K subscribers) and Car Cleaning Guru (328K subscribers) in the UK, have all been very successful with nearly three quarters of a billion views between them. Newer platforms such as TikTok are also breaking records and bringing in a younger audience globally with the likes of Detailing Girl in the Netherlands approaching 250K followers, and newcomers like UK-based Geeky Detail Reviews approaching 100k followers in less than two years.
Unsurprisingly, detailing product manufacturers have also hit the socials hard, often collaborating with the aforementioned influencers to boost their follower figures. This includes long established companies like Meguiar’s (140K on YouTube), and Auto Finesse (231K on YouTube), both of which had a huge following prior to hitting the socials. There’s also a long list of companies that relied on social media from the start to build their brand, such as DIY Detail (487K followers across platforms) and Stjarnagloss (466K follows across platforms). Alongside influencers and manufacturers, professional detailers themselves are also profiting hugely from their endeavours online – a good example would be Jim White in the UK, who records each of his customer cars being detailed and publishes them to his White Details 120,000 subscribers. As a consequence, his services are amongst the most in demand in the UK, and he is one of many other big names like Paul Dalton, Jay Purcell, and Kelly Harris who have leveraged social media into paying customers.
You might be wondering why detailing has been so successful online, rapidly out growing other pastimes and hobbies that have found a following on the socials. There are dozens of reasons for this, some simply enjoy the ASMR aspect of watching the process, some like how what they see on screen is something they can actually do at home, others are perhaps seeking out advice and technical guidance, but the biggest draw is likely the fact it involves cars. In the early days you had a small number of detailing enthusiasts who were also into cars, now you have a huge number of car enthusiasts who are also into detailing – for many, the cars are still the stars. What better way to see what your dream car is like up close than to watch someone clean it minute detail? This is why other car-based content is so popular – whether it is mechanical work or road testing, there is a vivacious appetite among enthusiasts for anything on four wheels.
While the influencers make their money from the platforms they publish on, paid subscription options like Patreon, and manufacturer sponsorships, for professional detailers and manufacturers, the challenge is to make all the effort profitable. Quite often we see a brand dip their toe into social media and after a couple of months they fail to gain momentum, while we also see professional detailers posting their work religiously but fail to garner the monetary reward. For some of these, social media has proven to be little more than a cost centre, with hours spent in vain trying to reap rewards. While this is no ‘how-to’ guide, the winning formula seems to revolve around ‘lifestyle’ – be that ‘luxury’ with £1,000 waxes people just have to have, or ‘scene’ with some Quick Detailer that is secret among bagged VWs or crusty JDM drifters. If you can appeal to a niche that people identify with, you can usually name your service price or sell as much stock as your warehouse can handle. On the one hand there is an art to this – tapping into whatever trend is peaking – but there is also considerable science to making the algorithms work for you, something that itself has bred a whole new troop of social media experts for hire.
Conversely to all this fame and success, there are plenty of brands and professionals that have shunned the superficial world of social media fame. As laudable and brave as that may be, the fact nobody is talking about them, buying their products, or booking their services, suggest that commercially speaking, they made the wrong call. So one could say that while investing into Social Media is no guarantee of commercial success, failing to engage presents a very good chance of failure.
Alen Medraf, Appearance Technology Group (UK) on Social Media
