Dhar Mann’s $100M AWNY deal target for creators is already pledged (so he says)

Mann’s central role signals the structural changes happening in the advertising industry as the creator economy’s growth demands more CMO attention and more marketing budget. His $100 million dollar deal goal is an attempt to make these deals happen faster and with more heft behind them.

Mann himself said the eye-bulging goal doesn’t mean there will be $100 million in contracts signed before the week is out, though he did point out Unilever’s massive creator spend as an example of how much money is to be made in this space. He also said that he had several conversations with CMOs he would not name, but that their combined pledges for AWNY already exceed the $100 million benchmark — though again, he doesn’t expect ink to be drying this week.

“People will meet people during this week that they otherwise would not have met in order to get those deals to happen,” he told Digiday. “I understand brands allocate Q4 budgets in Q1 or Q2, they’re not suddenly going to unlock dollars that did not exist.”

The goal is to make it easier to make connections that are often held up by corporate red tape and too many layers between creator and CMO. 

“If we just remove those layers and we’re able to have direct conversations it makes the deals not just so much easier to get done, but makes them so much more successful because it’s being able to brainstorm ideas and asking what’s possible versus what’s required,” Mann said. 

To do so, he is gamifying the process of connecting creators and brands with splashy events like a “creator challenge” tasking them with completing seven challenges to potentially earn a golden “Zillow” key, and the “Masked CMO,” a play on the Masked Singer, hosted by Nick Cannon. He’ll also host invite-only events for the highly motivated brands (read: looking to buy) and creators (read: looking to sell), like creator karaoke with pop star Christina Milian and a creator deal making room with rapper Fat Joe and Cannon. 

“It’s really smart, having the matchmaking piece set up where you’re actually going to do something tangible,” said Brad Hoos, CEO of influencer marketing agency The Outloud Group. “It’s still a very fragmented industry.”

Hoos thinks Mann is the “connector” that can bring this fragmentation into better focus. 

“He knows so many people that he’s going to be able to get a critical mass of creators and brands to be there, so he can single-handedly get it to where it becomes relevant,” Hoos said. “It just gets the flywheel spinning.”

Lauren Lyster, vp and head of social media at Go Fish Digital, connected Mann’s AWNY programming to the creator upfront question and the small percentage of creators who can operate like traditional media companies. “He has the wherewithal and the exposure to be able to create that scarcity and exclusivity,” she said. “This could be the model for how a particular group of creators can be going forward.”

Though Mann represents an incredibly specific tier of creator, the goal of his outsized influence at AWNY is to help make the space more recognizable for buyers.

Mann believes there’s a gap in the marketplace where CMOs are confused about what creators can actually deliver, and creators unsure of how to reach brands for larger, more long-term partnerships. He wants to bridge that gap, and act as a “creator mentor,” presenting the kinds of metrics and numbers that excite CMOs and likewise for creators. When asked, he said that the disconnect exists pretty equally on both ends of the deal table. 

“I would have thought it’d be more of a  brand problem,” he said “When I asked creators to participate [in the creator challenge at AWNY]… I said, ‘I’m going to have you on stage and pitch a brand some ideas.’ Some of the biggest creators in the world were like, ‘Wait, are you serious? I don’t know how to do that.’”

There’s also a push to show how these million-dollar-deals can be structured.

“With linear television or direct television, you have very clear rate cards… people understand what the going rate is for different types of opportunities. Having [creator deals] on a public stage like this is going to help set a standard,” said Lyster. “It’s going to be a very high level standard that is not going to be applicable, I think, to 90% of creators, but it may start that trickle down effect.”

“Advertisers like process. They like consistency. They like spots and dots,” said Jamie Gutfreund, founder of creator marketing consultancy Creator Vision. “[Dhar Mann’s team] think like operators. They come from business. They don’t come from straight entertainment. When you hear them talk, they talk pipeline, they talk revenue, they talk deal flow. His team has that language. So that makes it feel more consistent with the way that money flows into the industry.”

Still, Mann’s $100 million benchmark is a lofty one for AWNY which isn’t typically associated with inking contracts — but it’s more about what that benchmark represents. 

“Big round numbers are something that people can connect with,” Hoos said. “We’re not here to talk about authenticity and the importance of having the creators read a script. We’re to a point where to get people’s attention and to want to show up and engage, you have to add concrete, tangible business value.”

Karissa Tuccio, executive director of social at Mediassociates, said the big shiny deal number helps attract more creators, influencer agencies, and management companies. “Advertising Week positioning itself as a dealmaking venue for creators and brands is a way to stay relevant and give new audiences a reason to attend,” she added.

Three questions with Dhar Mann 

Beyond his plans for AWNY, Mann spoke to Digiday’s Alyssa Mercante about a few other topics, like the future of the creator economy:

On the future of creator-led in-person events:

“Last night we were at an event for our friend the Anzazal family, the popular YouTubers. They sold out the Prudential Center, that is like 15,000 people, and I think they sold it out within five minutes. I brought my friend and [AWNY] co-host with me, Big Boy, and he’s like, ‘Dhar, you realize that there’s not a lot of major artists that could sell out a stadium like that?’

I think it’s incredible the kinds of communities that creators continue to build, and I think that we’re going to continue to see them as a part of everyday life, whether that’s when we walk into a supermarket and buy, you know, an energy drink or a bag of chips, or whether we walk into a clothing store, or whether we go to a live event.”

On creators cutting out the middleman and agencies evolving:

“… Anytime there’s a third party involved in any transaction, as the world evolves, it relies on third parties less. We’ve seen that in the music industry. We’ve seen that in the transportation industry. We’ve seen that with hotels and AirBNB… I think that change is happening already. It’s been happening for quite some time, but I think agencies continue to evolve. 

… If agencies can treat their clients less in a transactional way, less as ‘How can I get a 10% fee or whatever on all the business that I’m bringing,’ and more so, ‘How can I help you build this into a much bigger thing?’ I think agencies will actually see that they would make way more money as being a part of that.

But the hard part is, and this is what I tell talent because, if I was to call agencies and say, ‘Hey, like the talent we have here is unbelievable… if you just look at the list of the people that are coming to our events… we have a lot of the top creators and celebrities. If I was to call agents, what are they going to say? ‘What’s the speaking fee? What’s my 10% in that?’ But, there’s certain things that people have to do that don’t result in dollars today, but if you do them, it helps result in dollars tomorrow. And so the agents that can understand that and pivot away from short-term thinking to more so how can I really help my client build a bigger business? Those are the ones that are going to be there for the long run.”

On generative AI in the creator economy: 

“For us, AI is not in place of creativity, it only enhances it. What’s really special is that we used to be able to make about four to five hours of content every single week, and now we make about eight to 10 hours of content every single week, so our output has almost doubled, and that’s required us to scale up quite a bit, create a lot of new jobs, create a lot of new opportunities, invest in an even bigger campus. So I think it’s just made our production capabilities and the amount of content that we put out expand. 

As far as generative AI, where you actually have content that is made through AI and not human, anytime we’ve tried to, let’s say, create a sign or a prop that was generative AI, we’ve still seen a lot of pushback. I don’t think that for an American audience, that is truly what they want. We’ve seen it adapt a lot faster in other parts of the world, like China. We’re still quite a ways away from consumers for it being acceptable for consumers.”

What we’ve heard

—as reported by Seb Joseph

“Big shout out to the holding companies in adland. They’ve done an amazing job upholding fake reports for their profit. I actually admire it tremendously. What an amazing job by these service providers who only think about their margin, not the clients. It’s a masterclass in tricking the Fortune 500. They should be commended for their business brilliance but condemned for their truth.” — Gary Vaynerchuk, CEO and Chairman at VaynerX, in a rare moment of restraint at Advertising Week New York. 

“Nowadays anyone could get a million views — not that it’s easy, but if you know the mechanic that you have to do, you could work it out. It’s about creating fandom, creating relevancy in a space, and something that I really, really focus on for all of our shows is how do we kind of show up in the marketplace? How do we show up, you know, in your feeds, etc. and really do something that’s memorable? Create that fandom where we don’t really have appointment-based viewing because we’re very much being discovered, but people are following us.” — Michael Vito Valentino, editor in chief of NowThis on how discovery has replaced appointment viewing during a panel discussion.

“[Our company brain is on] GCP [Google Cloud Platform] right now. [We’re] thinking about bringing AWS in the mix for a lot of work with Amazon that we cannot do in GCP. And data is mostly all scan sales data, along with all media spend data, the most granular level that you can get. So on the sales data, probably all the way down to the zip code, if you can. On the media spend dollars, same thing at the zip code level. And then we are starting to bring in all trade promotion data as well.” — Benoit Vatere, chief media and digital commerce officer at Liquid Death, responding to an audience question about how the company’s internal AI system is built during a session at Advertising Week New York.

AWNY by the numbers

• 3: The number of “hit” video shows NowThis produced last year, of the 20 shows it launched overall. This year, NowThis will produce 30 shows to get “an additional six” hits, Michael Vito Valentino, editor-in-chief of NowThis, said on a panel.
• Creator tech company Spotter has a creator where 60% of their views come from non-subscribers, according to co-founder and president Nic Paul. 
• NowThis created 20 shows last year and got three hits. This year its doing 30 shows to get six additional ones, per editor in chief Michael Vito Valentino, 
• 0: the number of water stations on the main floor of The Penn District.

On stage

• On the Tech stage at 10:50 a.m. Jason White, vp, ads, Sony Picture Entertainment, Sean Muzzy, president of Acxiom, and Nicole Scaglione, vp of CTV at Pubmatic, will tackle how advertisers can reach CTV audiences, at scale by combining premium entertainment IP, streaming experiences, built into CTV devices, and AI-powered programmatic buying, and turn that combination into measurable returns. 

• At 12:50 p.m. on the Creativity stage, Chloe Forero of Lyrical Lemonade TV, creator and filmmaker Gray Fagan, and Empire and Justified writer-producer Wendy Calhoun will explore how collaborations grow beyond sponsorships into original films, series and repeatable formats. That includes matching creators with the right ideas, preserving what makes them compelling and build IP that can travel across platforms.
  
• At 1:40 p.m. on the Media stage, ACC president Monica Chun, Andrew Gall, executive creative director of Seattle agency Copacino Fujikado, Burrell Communications Group Worldwide CSO God-Is Rivera, and Paper president Jason Ve will chew over “Brainrot culture,” looking at everything from absurd memes and AI-generated nonsense to catchphrases that seem to appear from nowhere, and how brands can learn from a culture built on participation, remixing and shared absurdity – not polished messages alone. 

• At 4:20 p.m. on the Media stage, Viral Nation’s CCO Nicholas Spiro, OnePay CMO Jessica Williams and AMC global media CMO will discuss what makes creator programs work and how to measure their impact beyond engagement. 

After hours

—as reported by Seb Joseph

Early 

• AW @ AW, hosted by Advance Women, 4:30 to 6:30pm. A happy hour for women across advertising, media, marketing and tech at 2 Gansevoort St, timed to finish before the dinners start. It’s ticketed on Eventbrite.
• Affinity Solutions happy hour, 5:00 to 7:00pm. Drinks and light bites at the Dynamo Room with people from advertising, media and tech.
• Tubi Rooftop Social, 5:30 to 7:30pm. Offsite and invite-only. The official guide doesn’t name the venue.

Dinner

• VIP dinner with Viral Nation, 6:00 to 9:00pm. An invite-only French-Mediterranean dinner for a curated group of CMOs and senior brand marketers.
• Unplugged Collective, The Supper Club, from dusk. An invite-only dinner with shared plates in Sir Richard’s Loft at Virgin Hotels NYC, 1227 Broadway. Guests get VIP transport to Strangers No More and entry once they’re there.

Late

• Advertising Week After Hours with Propeller, 6:00 to 10:00pm. Propeller and Happydemics host, with Equativ as supporting partner, at Little Rebel in the East Village. It’s an official fringe event and also marks five years of Propeller in the US. Invite only. This is the one with the heaviest ad tech and press crowd.
• Creator Karaoke with Christina Milian and Julianne Hough, 7:00 to 10:00pm. Part of Dhar Mann’s Chief Creator Officer programming, mixing creators, celebrities and CEOs. Apply through Partiful.
• Strangers No More, late. Unplugged Collective’s party is in its third year, and this time it’s a masquerade with a Phantom of the Opera theme. Its sponsors include Equativ, Yieldmo, InMobi, Seedtag, Sigma Software and HUMAN. Request an invite on the Unplugged site, and bring a mask.