From his 125,000-square-foot production campus in Burbank — the largest creator-led studio in Los Angeles — Dhar Mann has left a strong stamp on the scripted social video landscape. With a global social media following of more than 137 million across 83 active channels, the entrepreneur and creator has built his Dhar Mann Studios empire on mission-driven, inspirational scripted content.
His YouTube content often tells underdog stories of victims standing up to their bullies, middle schoolers learning moral lessons and even an abusive boss getting a reality check. Five new 25-minute episodes drop weekly — and they’re reaching an audience that spans generations. The content aims to uplift, educate and spark conversation, according to the media mogul.
“If I had to compare our audience to something in traditional media, it’s like Disney Channel meets Lifetime,” Sean Atkins, CEO of Dhar Mann Studios and former MTV President, told TheWrap. “Parents are watching with their teens, and our content lives across platforms where the curve shifts depending on the viewer — older on Facebook, younger on YouTube or Snapchat.”
Now, Mann is scaling his studio’s ambitions beyond viral views. The creator studio has turned its online engagement into real-world impact by taking its show on the road. Dhar Mann Studios Live! aims to engage the “Dhar Mann Fam” by letting fans insert themselves in the content they consume online at home.
TheWrap sat down with Mann and Atkins about how they’ve positioned the studio as a creator-minded alternative to the legacy entertainment model and how they intend to scale and sustain their mission-driven storytelling. The following interview was edited for length and clarity.
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What was it like for you when CAA began representing your studio and people from traditional media started to take notice?
Dhar Mann: When I first started creating content … there weren’t very many people that took us seriously, but it wasn’t just me, it was most of the creator industry. And I have seen firsthand year after year how much the creator industry has grown, how much more interest is coming its way, how people are taking creators much more seriously.
In the beginning, we saw lots of different opportunities coming to creators. You saw licensing deals coming, where people are trying to license catalogs and giving upfront cash in order to get future revenue streams. Now we’re seeing investments happening for growth where large private equity funds are taking interest in creators and studios and putting hundreds of millions of dollars investing in this space. I think the next stage of this is the mergers and acquisitions that are going to start to take place.
One of the services that we have is called the Fifth Quarter Agency, and what we’ve gotten really good at is helping our clients, who are other creators, figure out how to create passive revenue streams through their existing content. One of the challenges of creators today is that when you do publish a video, the earnings of that video taper. Most of the revenue that you’re going to see for a video you’re going to receive within the first week. That creates a lot of anxiety to constantly have to create new content, but we’ve gotten really good at taking the same content and being able to syndicate it across different platforms, without the creator having to do more work.
We’ve helped creators scale up businesses where now they’re making additional seven to eight figures annually just through passive revenue streams.
Sean, you came from the traditional world. What surprised and intrigued you the most about Dhar Mann’s content?
Sean Atkins: I started my career at Disney, so it’s not surprising to me that I’m attracted to content that is generation wide, that is positive and inspirational. Finding someone who built that outside of the traditional ecosystem is really inspirational.
One of the greatest things that Dhar did is he didn’t come from the traditional media business, so he didn’t know all the things you had to do to put heavy overhead on top of business. I think that benefit for a lot of the creators is why they can exist at this very low economic threshold to build large businesses, because it’s a business that really works on volume.
How does the production pipeline differ from your Disney days?
Atkins: In Dhar’s world, they own the distribution. So there’s like no green light process other than Dhar and I talking with our creative teams, and what are we going to do today or this week or for Christmas or whatever it’s going to be.
If Disney Channel wanted to try and do what Dhar was doing, they first have to figure out the cost infrastructure issue, which is about 1/100 of where they are in today.
His studio basically created the scripted opportunity in digital, and the interesting thing when you think about scripted is that it is the dominant sort of creative structure. If we look at movies, TV, film, books, the fiction side of the equation is really sort of what’s driving it generally, from a revenue, certainly from a cultural impact. Dhar paved the way for that to be possible at scale, on these digital platforms, and in achieving what is basically top rated television show equivalency every night of the week, which is really unparalleled.
Why did you create your own app? Can you unpack that process and monetizing across platforms?
Atkins: In the old world, you were sort of beholden to your business model because it was so lucrative. But when you’re a creator, you don’t have that luxury. You’re always trying to think of what does my audience care about? Where are they migrating? What are they passionate about? What should I be doing for them? So you start to realize someone who might love Dhar Mann on YouTube might not be the same exact viewer who loves them on Facebook.
At the margins that these creators work at and the volume they have to work, making something bespoke for every single platform is very difficult, unless you get a certain amount of scale. But also, at the same time, just taking every piece of content, putting it everywhere, doesn’t mean it’s going to work, because of different platform requirements, platform nuances.
Were you nervous that your audience wouldn’t follow you to the app?
Mann: In business, my philosophy is you just try a lot of things and see what works. Like Sean said, you are just trying to serve your audience, trying to make your content more accessible, trying to make your content better, trying to meet the viewer where they are on the platform that they are.
We were very fortunate. When we launched our app, it launched all the way to No. 1 in the App Store globally. Last I checked, I think we had over 4 million users who use the app, so it is incredible seeing the type of reception that it’s gotten. But we’re speaking to other entrepreneurs, and the key is to just try a lot of things and not get so wrapped up in the outcome of everything.
And so, I wasn’t nervous. I was pleasantly surprised, but I’m always very impressed with how engaged our community is.
What’s next for Dhar Mann Studios?
Mann: We’re going to continue telling more brand and entrepreneurial stories. Also, we’re launching a podcast. The podcast will also be a new type of format where we are actually going to be interviewing guests, while also incorporating some of our cinematic storytelling during those interviews.
Atkins: The placement of brands in this sort of ecosystem, and what makes Dhar different in this space is that you have, for the first time, brands who are pretty protective of their brands, and for the first time, instead of having to go talk to a Shonda Rhymes 18 months ago, you can talk to Dhar and have always-on scripted integration, which has never been able to happen before, and at a scale that is unparalleled.
When they come to the facility, their minds get blown because of what [Dhar] built, like a Warner Brothers / Universal level back lot. They start to see, for the first time, the ability to really incorporate brand messages, particularly in the kind of positive, premium environment that Dhar has, and the fact that our consumption is 50% TV based is just the beginning of what I think the turn is going to be on how brands start to work with creators.
