ADWEEK’s Social Media Week kicked off with a bang as creator Dhar Mann gave away a $1,000 Old Navy present certificates to a fortunate participant.
He was reviving successful collaboration he’d labored on with Old Navy father or mother firm Gap, the place individuals needed to guess whether or not an individual’s outfit is Old Navy or designer. Guess proper, and also you get a grand to spend at Old Navy shops.
The difficult a part of the temporary was that Old Navy had a message it wished to ship—that its clothes was modern however accessible—however Mann wished to ship with out truly saying these phrases.
He labored with Damon Berger, Gap’s svp of promoting shared companies, whom he met at a YouTube social gathering at Cannes. They first activated the collaboration reside onstage on the Advertising Week trade convention final October. Berger was barely involved due to how little management he’d have.
“I thought I’d get fired,” he joked onstage at Social Media Week.
The partnership has since deepened, and Mann mentioned that they’re now doing short-form activations and exploring deeper model involvement, together with a YouTube video launched two months in the past.
Mann didn’t have any model companions for the primary 5 years of his social media profession, he informed the Social Media Week viewers—one thing he had some anxiousness about, as he noticed different creators spin up partnerships. But he informed the group to be affected person. Today, Dhar Mann Studios can afford to be selective about which manufacturers it companions with.
The firm has 125,000 sq. foot studio facility containing 85 totally different units and areas, and its content material will get one billion views monthly, based on its CEO, former MTV president Sean Atkins. Atkins mentioned that manufacturers that need Mann to face on stage to hawk a product aren’t the kind of companions the studio appears to be like for.
For creators like Mann, who additionally companions carefully with the NFL and Adobe, model partnerships have grow to be about discovering collaborators who respect the inventive imaginative and prescient.