Dhar Mann wants to broker $100 million in creator/brand deals, and also he’s opening “Creator City” in Los Angeles

Dhar Mann has his name in lights at this year’s Advertising Week New York.

As the event’s first “Chief Creator Officer” (and keynote speaker) he came in with a pledge to liaise between brands and creators in hopes of brokering $100 million worth of sponsorship deals by the time AWNY ends.

According to Digiday, Mann claims he’s already reached that amount thanks to pledges from CMOs–though he wouldn’t name those CMOs, and none of the pledges are inked as official deals.

Mann told the outlet that because brands plan their marketing budgets quarters ahead, “they’re not suddenly going to unlock dollars that [do] not exist,” but he hopes creator/brand relationships fostered during AWNY will result in future campaigns.

“People will meet people during this week that they otherwise would not have met in order to get those deals to happen,” he said.

On top of personally holding conversations with brands and creators to encourage CMO spending in our space, Mann opened a challenge where creators who completed seven tasks could earn a golden Zillow key (not sure what that key entitles them to), and ran The Masked CMO, a Masked Singer parody hosted by Nick Cannon.

Mann (who makes his living as YouTube’s “moral philosopher,” publishing parable videos with titles like Ugly Girl FAKES PRETTY To Find Love, BILLIONAIRE PAYS Poor Boy To Date Her, and Middle Child FORCED TO HIDE Her Face From Family) said that despite growing mainstream interest in the creator industry, there is still a disconnect between CMOs and creators.

His plan is to link both sides: use hard numbers to show CMOs what creators can offer, and mentor creators who might find themselves pitching in brands’ boardrooms for the first time.

“I would have thought it’d be more of a brand problem,” he told Digiday. “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.'”

Mann wants his creator mentorship to extend beyond AWNY

During his keynote, he unveiled “Creator City,” his new Los Angeles-based, four-acre production campus.

“The creator economy was built on technology and platforms, but unlike the industries around it, it has never had a physical home of its own, the way technology has Silicon Valley, finance has Wall Street and entertainment has Hollywood,” Dhar Mann Studios said in a press release. “Creator City is Dhar’s vision for that home.”

Creator City offers five soundstages and resources for producing videos, podcasts, live events, and collaborative creator projects.

“Creator City will bring creators, Hollywood, brands and technology companies together to make content, build businesses, experiment, learn from one another and develop new partnerships,” the studio added.

The campus will open during Super Bowl weekend in February 2027–timed, undoubtedly, because Mann is also the NFL’s “Chief Kindness Officer.”

Both these endeavors–Man’s $100 million AWNY goal and Creator City launch–are attempts to give top brands and major studios more insight into our creator world, which is increasingly seen as ripe for plucking, but still not quite understood.