Dhar Mann took center stage at MIPCOM on Sunday for the market’s first-ever pre-opening headline session. He broke down the vision for his soon-to-open studio site, Creator City.
Mann founded Dhar Mann Studios and recently announced Creator City, a four-acre campus in L.A. with multiple sound stages and, he said, 175 sets able to house 15 productions concurrently.
“It’s basically where creators, brands, and culture [will] all come together in one place,” Mann said. “All of the sets that we have in our current studio, they’re unbranded, because five years ago nobody was taking me seriously, nobody was taking YouTubers very seriously.
“But now all the sets [at Creator City] are actual brands. When you see content being created, it’s not just a random coffee shop, it could be a Starbucks, it’s not just a random retail store, it could be a Target.”
DMS is working with a handful of brands that will be launch partners. “This is going to be the place that the top creators in the world come to make content [and] when they’re shooting content, it’s [with] actual real brands that live in the real world.”
The DMS founder, who talked about starting out shooting on a phone while struggling to pay his rent, added: “You’re going to start to see all kinds of storytelling around real brands coming out of that studio. We’re having our grand opening Super Bowl week.”
Talking of brands, Mann said DMS is expanding a relationship with consumer electronics giant Samsung that has already yielded one scripted series, Unlikely Romances, about seemingly improbable couples. There will be a new show called Unlikely Families.
“When it comes to family, it’s not always about blood, it’s often about love,” Mann said. “There’s so many people that became like brothers to me or father figures. This whole series is about families that come together due to unlikely circumstances, and they seem like they would never work out as a family. But against all odds, love is more important than blood. It’s coming out in the next couple months.”
DMS has struck deals with media giants Disney and Fox and the DMS founder said the future of entertainment is about bridging the traditional business and the creator economy. “There is such a magic that happens when folks from the traditional world and the creator world can come together,” he said.
DMS, meanwhile, is ramping up production. It will have a new original every month from later this year. “The future is definitely building IP,” Mann said. “Starting in December, every single month we are launching one new series on our YouTube.”
Mann was joined by former MTV and Disney exec Sean Atkins, CEO of DMS, and said the duo hashed out the content strategy for the studio based on a digital-first rather than traditional, business model.
“The thinking is just different for us, because of the low-cost model, because of the speed,” Mann said. “We’re able to just continue to throw as many darts on the wall and see which one sticks. We had the realization, as we’re working on pitching all these different platforms. One day I had a conversation with Sean, and it was like, ‘Why don’t we just do that ourselves, on our own YouTube?’”
A Pep Talk For Trad Media
Speaking to a room of TV folk, Mann was asked about the anxiety many staffers and execs in the traditional business are feeling amid waves of consolidation, fragmentation and change.
In a characteristically upbeat manner, he gave the Cannes crowd a pep talk. “Don’t get married to your job title, get more married to the skills that you have, and develop those,” he said.
“There’s so many people out there, such as myself, that really value those skills and are looking to work with folks like you. So, while I understand there’s a lot of doom and gloom, there are also so many exciting opportunities that are happening if you’re open to it.”