Driven by digital vision

Not content with heralding paradigm shifts in computing, tech titans such as Apple’s Steve Jobs and Google’s Sergey Brin achieved something equally as monumental: they redefined the public’s idea of an inventor.

Gone were enduring tropes of crazed, silver-haired men toiling pointlessly in chaotic, test-tube-strewn laboratories (à la Back to the Future’s Doc Brown). In came the new reality of young, buccaneering, street-smart entrepreneurs who, often from humble domestic garages and bedrooms, conjured machines, systems and computer code that would one day reweave the very fabric of human existence.

Alex Wellen slots neatly into this modern rendering. He may be CEO of the world’s largest automotive media company, MotorTrend Group, but inventing is in his bones. As a young boy, Wellen would tinker attentively in his home workshop alongside his engineer father, a hands-on schooling that culminated in him patenting a double-sided ping-pong paddle at the age of 20.

“That launched my entire career,” Wellen says. “And, ultimately, that led to law school and books and a whole bunch of other things that I could have never predicted.”

A multimedia empire

Right now, the place in which Wellen finds himself is at the pinnacle of a 75-year-old business undergoing an era-defining digital transformation. Initially an authoritative and disruptive print magazine launched by American publishing mogul Robert Peterson in 1949, the MotorTrend brand is busy changing its perception as purely a magazine – a successful one at that – into a multimedia platform.

It encompasses a car-buyers’ guide that serves as a de facto bible for consumers (2.3 million listings and counting), a globally distributed TV network in partnership with heavyweights such as Discovery Plus, Max and Roku (70 million viewers on regular TV, and 100 million on free ad-supported streaming television, aka FAST) and a formidable social media presence (70 million followers).

All up, more than 50 individual sub-brands are docked with MotorTrend’s content mothership – a division of Warner Bros. Discovery.

“It’s much bigger than any of us could ever have imagined,” Wellen says, who has seen print’s contribution to the business go from 65 percent to five percent in the six years since he left his post as CNN’s Chief Product Officer to helm MotorTrend.

“Automotive and media are definitely having a ‘moment’. When disruption happens, it either sorts out the companies that aren’t going to make it, or it creates a lot of opportunity.

“We embraced the spirit of our founder, Robert Peterson, and said, ‘OK, we’re going to be as disruptive as possible. We’re going to be true to our name and define the trend, not only backwards but forwards.’”

Risk and reward

While reanimating MotorTrend in the digital space was, by Wellen’s own admission, a risky hand to play, the gamble has since produced financial windfalls, with the company more than quadrupling digital revenue – even as incomes dipped on its traditional platforms.

“The only way to do that is to take big swings,” he says. “And so we took them with [TV shows] Top Gear America and Kevin Hart’s Muscle Car Crew. We’ve done animated series like Super Turbo Story Time, we’ve done Motor Mythbusters to help educate people about how cars work, and a documentary, NASCAR 2020: Under Pressure, which won us an Emmy.

“I love the idea of locking arms with partners and jumping off the cliff together. I think that’s cool.”

In line with his bullish ethos, Wellen is an advocate of thinking big with MotorTrend’s choice of partners.

“You can do lots of small partnerships with many different advertisers or marketeers, but you won’t get the results that will actually move the needle for either business,” he says.

“In my experience, multiyear, multimillion-dollar long-term relationships where we are integrating deeply and really having each other’s backs as partners, make a difference.”

Passion for storytelling

Talk with Wellen for any length of time and you cannot help but notice his savant-like ability to pull inspirational quotes from thin air.

When discussing the importance of quality over quantity, he quotes French mathematician and philosopher Blaise Pascal (“I have made this letter longer than usual, only because I have not had the time to make it shorter”).

When addressing the importance of recruitment, he ventriloquizes author Jim Collins of Good to Great fame (“If we get the right people on the bus, the right people in the right seats, and the wrong people off the bus, then we’ll figure out how to take it someplace”).

But his recitals are not performative theater designed to underscore how many books he has read. Rather, they feed into Wellen’s appetite for sharing engaging narratives.

“I’ve always been very curious and a storyteller,” he says. “And over the years, I’ve been interested in not only the stories that you tell but how you tell them.

“When you take the kind of stories we tell, our coverage and how we distribute it, the result is a highly engaged audience that’s extremely influential and comes to us six months or a year out from buying a car. And we have a responsibility to get it right.”

To commemorate the brand’s 75th birthday, and ‘unlock the lifestyle’ for a broader audience, the MotorTrend crew added even more high-octane events to its calendar, including Super Street After Dark, an edgy, streetcar-focused summer jamboree in Los Angeles aimed toward a young, diverse crowd; and expanded the Hot Rod Power Tour West in 2024, due to popular demand, to five cities and five days.

“The world needs MotorTrend more than ever before,” Wellen says, sounding every bit the inventor about to deliver his killer pitch. “A trusted source to help them through what is a very complex but exciting time.”