Dhar Mann Says Brand Pledges Already Top AWNY’s $100M Creator Goal

Dhar Mann says the money behind Advertising Week New York’s $100 million creator-deal goal is already on the table. Mann, the conference’s first chief creator officer, told Digiday, in a report published Tuesday, that combined pledges from chief marketing officers he would not name already exceed the $100 million benchmark, though he does not expect contracts to be signed this week. He described the target in similar terms in an on-site interview with The Drum.

According to Digiday, Mann and the event’s organizers want the introductions made at the conference to produce $100 million in creator-brand business within 12 months, measured against creator budgets that hand-picked brands confirmed before the doors opened. The Drum reported that, for Mann, the figure is less about closing $100 million worth of deals during the week and more about creating the conditions for them to happen. The conference’s opening session was titled “The $100m Creator Challenge with Dhar Mann,” according to the Advertising Week schedule.

“People will meet people during this week that they otherwise would not have met in order to get those deals to happen,” Mann told Digiday. “I understand brands allocate Q4 budgets in Q1 or Q2, they’re not suddenly going to unlock dollars that did not exist.” He told The Drum he wanted to move past talking points: “I didn’t want to have 47 slides on authenticity. I wanted to actually show deals being made and happening in real time.”

The programming is built to force those meetings. Digiday reported that it includes a creator challenge with seven tasks that could earn a golden “Zillow” key, a “Masked CMO” segment hosted by Nick Cannon, invite-only creator karaoke with Christina Milian and a deal-making room with Fat Joe and Cannon. The Drum said Mann’s Creator Day is organized around seven steps for successful creator-brand partnerships and features CMOs from companies including Pepsi, Wendy’s and the NFL.

Mann’s pitch to marketers centers on trust. “Creators don’t just have built-in audiences, they have the thing that’s the hardest thing to get, which is trust,” he told The Drum. “It’s something that you can’t just pay for ads and get.” He told Digiday the knowledge gap runs both ways: when he asked some of the biggest creators in the world to pitch a brand on stage, he said, several replied, “Wait, are you serious? I don’t know how to do that.”

His own company is a test case for that shift. The Drum reported that Mann started making videos in his living room roughly eight years ago and that Dhar Mann Studios now has more than 170 million followers across platforms, a Samsung channel reaching more than 100 million households, 40 vertical dramas in production with Fox and a Disney partnership that puts its content in front of Disney+ subscribers. Mann told Digiday that AI tools have helped the studio roughly double its output, from about four to five hours of content a week to eight to 10.

Industry observers quoted by Digiday largely welcomed the approach. “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. Digiday noted that Advertising Week is not typically associated with inking contracts, and the pledge total is Mann’s own account; no signed deals had been announced. For more creator economy news, visit our Influencers page.

Verification: Mann’s pledge claim, the 12-month framing, the programming details and outside quotes come from Digiday (Alyssa Mercante and Seb Joseph, Oct. 6); the trust quotes and company figures come from The Drum (Julian Cannon, Oct. 6). The opening session title is from Advertising Week’s official schedule.