Latest / Brighter Path: Data, Marketing, Entertainment, and Storytelling / DHAR MANN Isn’t Just a Top Creator. He’s Becoming a Studio.

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DHAR MANN Isn’t Just a Top Creator. He’s Becoming a Studio. · Brighter Path: Data, Marketing, Entertainment, and Storytelling

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  So we get about 400 million plus long form views a week.
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  So, you know, in comparison, that's about three times the
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  Super Bowl audience every single week.
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  And on any given day, our videos get more views than the Game of
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  Thrones finale. Darman Studios has been making
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  some moves recently that individually, probably don't
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  look that surprising. There's a deal with Disney to
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  produce 20 episodes aimed at kids, tweens, teens and
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  families. There's a growing relationship
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  with brands, including Old Navy. There's original scripted
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  programming for Samsung TV, Plus another deal involving Fox and
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  Holy Water. And behind all of that is a
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  production operation with more than 65 sets, multiple crews and
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  roughly 220 employees. I knew most of those pieces
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  before I started looking into this.
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  What I hadn't really thought about was what happens when you
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  put all of them together, because at some point,
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  describing Darman as a YouTube creator starts to miss quite a
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  lot of what the company actually does.
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  And that sent me down two different paths.
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  The first was trying to understand what Darman Studios
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  has actually become. Is this still fundamentally a
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  creator business that has gotten very large, or are we watching
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  the development of something closer to a new kind of
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  entertainment studio? But the second question ended up
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  being the one I found more interesting.
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  How much power does Darman actually have to move an
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  audience? And I don't mean 28 million
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  YouTube subscribers, more than 170 million followers across
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  platforms, or another video getting 3 or 4 million views.
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  Those numbers tell us Darman has scale.
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  They don't necessarily tell us what that scale can do.
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  What I wanted to understand was what happens after somebody
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  watches. If Darman introduces an actor,
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  do people become interested in that actor outside the video?
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  When Old Navy becomes part of a story, does any of that
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  attention move toward the brand or the product?
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  And now that Darman Studios is producing programming for
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  companies like Samsung and Disney, can that audience
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  relationship travel beyond the channels where it was originally
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  built? That last question matters
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  because the company Darman has built looks very different when
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  you view it through that lens. It didn't begin with a studio
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  trying to find an audience. It began with an audience, and
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  over time, an increasingly sophisticated production
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  business was built around it. Darman found a storytelling
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  format that connected the audience, grew production
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  expanded with it, and eventually that meant more sets, more
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  crews, recurring actors, new formats, and distribution beyond
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  YouTube. Today, the scale of that
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  operation is pretty striking. Darman Studios has described an
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  operation with more than 65 sets and as many as 10 crews working
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  simultaneously, producing around 5 television length videos every
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  week. The company has roughly 220
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  employees and has continued expanding its physical
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  production footprint. But the number I find more
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  interesting is the speed. The company can reportedly take
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  a television length story from script to screen in roughly 3
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  weeks, sometimes faster. That tells you something about
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  the system Darman has built, because this isn't a company
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  reinventing its production process.
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  Every time somebody has a new idea, there's a recognizable
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  storytelling grammar. There are recurring actors.
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  Sets already exist, crews can work simultaneously.
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  The distribution system is already there, and the audience
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  is constantly responding to what comes out of it.
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  That last piece is especially important.
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  Darman Studios is producing into an audience relationship that
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  already exists. The team can see what people
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  watch, what they finish, which characters connect, what people
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  comment on, and what gets shared.
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  Then another piece of content arrives a few days later, and
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  the cycle starts again. You can debate the creative
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  formula, the stories are deliberately accessible, the
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  conflicts tend to be very clear, and the moral structure is
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  usually easy to recognize. But from a production and
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  audience perspective, that consistency creates something
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  valuable. Dharman Studios doesn't have to
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  rediscover how his content works every time it starts another
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  production. And this is where I started
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  thinking less about the size of the audience and more about the
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  relationship with it. A subscriber number tells me how
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  many people Darman has accumulated.
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  What I'm more interested in is what those people do after they
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  watch. That distinction between scale
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  and movement is something I spent a lot of time thinking
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  about with entertainment in general.
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  A movie can generate enormous awareness without converting
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  that awareness into ticket sales.
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  A celebrity can have millions of followers without being able to
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  move people toward a product. A trailer can produce huge view
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  counts while search, conversation, and purchase
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  intent remain relatively flat. Creators aren't automatically
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  different. So I started looking for places
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  where Dharman's audience actually moved.
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  Old Navy ended up being one of the more useful examples.
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  The relationship developed around a pretty simple creative
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  premise. Could people actually tell the
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  difference between an Old Navy outfit and something much more
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  expensive? Instead of starting with a
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  traditional product message, they tested the idea with
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  people, had them guess which clothing was expensive and which
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  was Old Navy, and built the content around those reactions
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  that eventually expanded into a broader Old Navy series.
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  Using Darman Studios storytelling approach.
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  The campaign generated more than three times the viewership of
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  Old Navy's regular content and 13 times the view through rate.
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  But the figure that caught my attention was a reported 5.5
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  point increase in purchase intent.
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  Purchase intent is still one step removed from somebody
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  actually buying the product, but it takes the measurement much
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  farther than views. The audience wasn't simply
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  watching branded entertainment. The response was beginning to
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  show up closer to consideration. And when you combine that with
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  the way the campaign was developed, I think the Old Navy
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  relationship becomes much more useful for understanding Darman
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  Studios than another video reaching millions of people.
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  Think about what Old Navy was getting access to.
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  There was the audience, obviously, but there was also
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  the creative idea, the storytelling format, the
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  production infrastructure, casting, distribution, and an
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  existing feedback loop with viewers that starts to look
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  different from the basic creator model, where a brand has a
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  message and rents access to somebody else's followers.
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  Here, the creator company becomes part of how the brand
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  story gets built, and that helps explain why the physical
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  production operation matters. If Darman had 28 million
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  subscribers but still operated like an individual creator,
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  there would be a limit to the kinds of relationships the
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  business could support. Once you have multiple crews,
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  dozens of sets, writers, actors, production systems, and the
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  ability to deliver content at high frequency, you can start
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  selling something beyond access to an audience.
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  You can sell the capability to make things for other companies.
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  Samsung is an interesting example.
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  Darman Studios produced an original scripted series called
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  Unlikely Romances for Samsung TV Plus.
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  This went beyond extending the existing Darman library onto
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  another service. The studio was producing
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  original entertainment specifically for another
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  distribution environment. That tells us the production
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  system can travel. The next question is whether the
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  audience travels with it, and I think that distinction becomes
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  increasingly important as Darman Studios expands.
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  There's already a relationship involving Fox Entertainment and
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  Holy Water, around 40 vertical titles.
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  There's connected TV distribution, there are brand
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  partnerships, and now there's Disney.
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  Each one takes the production capability into a different
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  environment. So there are really two assets
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  developing alongside each other here. 1 is the ability to
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  produce content at scale. The other is the relationship
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  with the audience that helped build that production system in
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  the 1st place. The production side is already
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  moving well beyond YouTube. What happens with the audience
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  side could determine how valuable that expansion becomes.
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  And that brings me to Disney, because this may become the most
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  interesting test yet. Disney could work with Darman in
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  a lot of ways. It could advertise around his
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  content. It could use him as creator
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  talent in a campaign. It could bring him into an event
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  or have him promote an existing Disney property.
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  The relationship announced in August goes further.
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  Disney ordered 20 episodes that Darman Studios will produce
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  aimed at kids, tweens, teens and families.
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  The specifics of how that programming will ultimately be
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  distributed will matter, but the more immediate point is what
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  Disney is commissioning Darman Studios to do.
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  It's commissioning the company to make entertainment, and the
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  language Disney has been using around creators helps explain
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  why that relationship is worth watching.
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  At Disney's Created in LA event, Dana Walden talked about the
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  ability creators have to understand their audiences
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  because they hear from them constantly and can react in real
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  time. Disney also described the
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  relationship between creators and the company as something
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  closer to an exchange, where each side brings capabilities
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  the other doesn't have in quite the same way.
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  That framing makes a lot of sense when you look at Doorman.
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  Disney has capabilities Darman Studios doesn't have.
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  It has decades of premium entertainment experience,
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  enormous intellectual property, global distribution, marketing,
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  consumer products, theme parks, and the ability to take a
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  successful story and extend it across a much larger commercial
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  system. Darman Studios has been built
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  from a very different starting point.
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  It began with a direct audience relationship, developed a
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  repeatable storytelling system around that audience, and then
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  build increasingly sophisticated production infrastructure around
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  the content. And that's where I started using
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  the phrase creator native studio in my notes.
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  I'm not presenting that as some official industry category.
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  I find it useful because it describes the order in which the
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  business developed. The audience came first, content
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  grew around the audience, production infrastructure grew
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  around the content, distribution expanded, brand relationships
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  became more sophisticated, and now outside entertainment
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  companies are commissioning programming from the studio.
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  That sequence matters. A traditional studio can spend
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  months or years developing a new television series before it
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  really knows how an audience is going to respond.
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  That doesn't mean every traditional studio operates the
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  same way, and it definitely doesn't mean Dorman's model
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  produces better entertainment. The difference is the
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  information available around the production process.
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  Dorman Studios is making content inside a relationship that is
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  already active. It can release something, see
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  the response, and be back in front of the audience again very
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  quickly. Over time, that creates a lot of
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  behavioral information around which stories, actors, themes
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  and formats connect. And now companies outside
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  Darman's own channels are beginning to plug into that
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  production system. For brands, Old Navy gives us an
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  early look at what that could mean.
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  The brand isn't limited to buying an endorsement or an
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  integration. It can work with the creator
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  company on the actual storytelling.
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  For platforms like Samsung, Darman Studios can supply
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  original programming. For Disney, the relationship
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  moves another step because a traditional entertainment
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  company is commissioning Darman Studios to make programming for
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  an audience segment Disney cares deeply about.
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  The question I'm left with is how much of Darman's advantage
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  survives each of those transitions?
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  We know Darman can repeatedly activate a very large audience
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  inside his existing environment. Old Navy gives us evidence that
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  the influence can move farther toward a brand and into purchase
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  consideration. Talent that became recognizable
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  through Darman stories has also been able to build audiences
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  around those characters and identities.
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  Audience portability is the next important test.
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  Can Darman Studios put something in another environment and bring
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  meaningful audience behavior with it?
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  That's a different kind of power, and it's one reason I
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  think the next phase of Darman Studios may tell us something
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  much bigger about creator built entertainment companies.
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  There are plenty of creators building businesses around their
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  audiences, but they aren't all building the same thing.
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  Some have gone heavily into consumer products.
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  Others are developing premium entertainment, physical
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  experiences, commerce or intellectual property.
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  Darman's version is unusually centered on scripted production.
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  That creates opportunity, but it also creates some real
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  questions. The company still depends
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  heavily on platforms it doesn't control.
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  It's storytelling formula is very recognizable, which has
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  helped create consistency but could make creative expansion
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  more complicated. But the question I'm watching
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  most closely is still the audience.
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  Imagine the Disney programming arrives in a different
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  distribution environment. The useful measurement won't be
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  how many followers Darman has on launch day.
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  It will be what those followers do.
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  Do they search for the program? Do they follow the actors?
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  Do they move into the platform carrying it?
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  Do they complete an episode and come back for another one?
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  And does that behavior create enough value for the
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  relationship between Disney and Darman Studios to expand?
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  The same measurement applies to brands.
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  If another Old Navy type partnership happens, the
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  opportunity is to move the measurement beyond viewership
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  and towards search, product consideration and eventually
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  commerce. And there's another test around
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  talent that I think could become important.
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  If Darman Studios really is developing into a studio, can it
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  repeatedly introduce performers or characters that build
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  meaningful audiences outside of Darman's own channels?
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  Those are harder tests than accumulating another 10 million
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  followers, but they're also much more useful for understanding
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  what this company could become. When I started looking into
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  Dharman, I thought the interesting question was whether
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  he had become big enough to call what he built a studio.
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  I don't think size is really the deciding factor anymore.
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  The production infrastructure is there.
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  Multiple crews are producing simultaneously.
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  Other companies are commissioning original
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  programming. Brands are using the company for
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  deeper storytelling relationships.
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  The business has already expanded well beyond the
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  operating model most people associate with an individual
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  creator. What I'm more interested in now
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  is how portable the asset underneath all of that becomes.
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  Dharman built this company around a direct relationship
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  with an audience. If that relationship can move
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  with the production into Disney, Samsung brands, new intellectual
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  property and other parts of entertainment, the value of the
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  company starts expanding in a very different way.
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  And if the production travels faster than the audience, that
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  tells us something equally important about the limits of
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  the creator native studio model. That is why I think the Disney
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  relationship is going to be particularly interesting to
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  watch. The next stage of Darman Studios
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  probably won't be defined by whether it gets bigger.
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  It will be defined by what travels the production clearly
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  can. The audience is the next test.
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  If you enjoy looking at entertainment through what
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  audiences actually do after they pay attention, follow brighter
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  path. That's what I'll keep digging
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  into here.