“We want to keep the raw car sound as the leading value of our content.” – interview with the leaders of Grumblo

In motorsports, the sound of the cars is one of the most important things and fortunately, we are not alone with this opinion. As the race tracks around the world are fading because world is moving towards of the e-series, the huge success of Grumblo also proves that the sound does matter! This is a kind of magic on the tracks, what we only will really appreciate, when we will lose it. Grumblo with its huge raw car sound database is working on to save even more and more sound for the posterity.

When did you establish the page and what was your purpose?

Thank you so much for this opportunity. I am Hassan Aman, Digital Marketing Manager at Grumblo. I have been working here since its inception. Grumblo.com was soft-launched in 2016 with a full launch in February 2017. Our social media channels went online with our main Grumblo.com website. I have requested our Chief Executive Officer, Markus Martelius to answer this question because Grumblo is his brainchild. 

“We founded Grumblo in late 2016 as a platform for pure car sound videos. We did our first full season internationally in 2017. Because we are enthusiasts serving enthusiasts, we want to keep the raw car sound as the leading value of our content. Hearing the noise tells so much about the car and the driver’s unique style as well, that removing it would take away a big chunk of the enjoyment. Also, I have a long history as a racing driver myself and I would definitely have loved to get to share videos of my car and my driving had someone provided that service to me. For this reason we have always strived to publish videos of as many participants per event as possible, regardless of the result they got from the competition itself. We wanted to be democratic towards all drivers in that sense.” – Markus Martelius, CoFounder and CEO at Grumblo.

Which are the main areas of the motorsportsyou are focusing on?

Our main focus at the moment is on auto-racing and tuned car culture. Basically, all genres of auto-racing and car culture. Grumblo’s most popular and regularly covered racing genres include Rally, Drifting, Hillclimb, Drag Racing,  and Rallymix/RallySprints. But we are constantly expanding our coverage to more genres each season.

The sound plays one of the main roles inyour videos (of course beside the visuals), why do you consider it so particularly important?

Markus explained that eloquently in the first question. For me, the sound of an engineholds the closest emotional relationship between a car enthusiast and a car. Our CEO, Markus Martelius is an expert when it comes to sounds of performance. He has been working with performance and race exhaust systems from an early age and with time he started building and racing his own cars. His dream was to build world’s largest database of raw car sound videos. I am happy to say that after 4 years, we are the biggest, independent website of Raw Car Sound Videos. As the world is slowly moving towards Electric Vehicles, we want to make sure the legacy of raw engine noise stays alive through our Raw Sound Database. The best sounds come from racing events that we cover.

You have partnerships in several countries, how hard is to make thesepartnerships?

Our video team members are responsible for filming race cars at events with a focus on individual cars. Forming these relationships was a bit tricky at the start but we learned and evolved with time. I would not say it is difficult but it does require some detailed work. For example, before collaborating with a content producer, we need to do our homework that involves research. This research includes the variety of racing events in the target country, the type of content it can generate for our global audience. Also, we need to look for potential business opportunities in these countries. Last but not least, finding local talent who can follow our standard guidelines to film. I will let our Head of Motorsport, Anssi Alatalo to address Media Partnerships with Event Organization.

“Event partnerships are a modern way to collaborate with Event Organizers and drivers. We start with an agreement on the media footage and end up with individual videos produced of all the participants in the event. This way the drivers and teams really get what they want, their own performance on a professional video, and the event gets a lot of publicity and views in the process. Usually, we find ways to do all of this in collaboration, free of charge.Getting agreements to these partnerships are not the hard part at all. The hardest part is to identify and reach the right events and people. Especially right now, a lot of the events are working hard to get back out there and the people are super busy. Once we get them on the phone and present the partnership model, it gets pretty easy from there on. We in Grumblo are also racers, team members, and event organizers and we know we have a partnership model that works and is beneficial to all the participants. We have a “product” that is easy to understand and that is the beauty of the partnership.” – Anssi Alatalo, Head of Motorsport at Grumblo

Do you have some international rewards or prizes in connection with your work?

Yes, we do. Both local and international. We are based out of Finland and we have been recognized as the Number 1 StartUp in Finland among 1600 trending startups quite often. Internationally, our most important recognition came quite recently with Red Herring Top 100. Grumblo.com was chosen as a Red Herring Top 100 2020 winner. The Red Herring Top 100 awards are one of the industry’s most prestigious recognitions highlighting the most exciting startups from Europe, Asia, and the Americas.

Link to our official Press Release 

You have some main media partners. Who are they and how did you make contact with them?

As Anssi explained earlier, it is a modern way to collaborate with Event Organizers and drivers. The list of our Media Partners is constantly increasing, but to name a few, they include Drift Kings International Series, VolRace, AKK Motorsport Finland, Baltic Drift Championship, Drift Competition Thailand,  and Norwegian Drift Championship.

What are the conditions that someone has to fulfill to apply and make movies for Grumblo?

Briefly, the most important conditions are following our filming guidelines and copyrights related policies depending on our collaboration. 

What are your most popular videos and from which countries comes the best scenes?

This question brought a smile on my face :). 2019 was fully focused on media disruption. We launched several video series last year and reached 100s of millions of people across the world. There are several video episodes that have broken the internet but I will list the 3 videos that are evergreen.

1. 1. How To Drive Crosskart Semog from Spain
   2. Builds Series Episode Mercedes Benz W 203.5 Black Smoke from Finland
   3. Top 5 Sounds Of Glory collection (featuring cars and drivers from multiple countries.)

There are unseen race cars and skilled drivers all around the world, it is a matter of finding them. But based on my experience so far, Thailand, Norway, Spain would make it to my top 3. Europe in general has great racing events, super skilled drivers, and race cars.

Did you expect success like this when you created the page, or is was it a surprise?

A bit of both I would say. We do events coverage as well as video entertainment for our global audience. Since our first event, we started noticing that our events coverage is going to get very popular among drivers and their fans. The immediate feedback was amazing and encouraging. During the first 2.5 years, we focused entirely on events coverage and building long-lasting relationships with the drivers. At the start of 2019, we started testing the video entertainment side of things on a bigger scale for petrolheads worldwide. The feedback and engagement from these tests encouraged us to launch several Video Series last year.

And finally…what are Grumblo’s plans for the future?

“In the coming months and years, we are definitely looking to take the car sounds as a content format to the next level. We are already big on Facebook Watch, reaching 120 million people per year there, but the next steps will involve the growth of our other platforms. We want to offer a more diverse coverage across content types and different genres of car enthusiasm as well as keep growing within the motorsports globally.” – Markus Martelius, CoFounder and CEO at Grumblo.

Thank you once again. Stay Safe, Stay Positive, and Let’s Keep Raw Noise Alive.

Hassan Aman, Digital Marketing Manager at Grumblo.