How Dhar Mann Turned After-School Specials Into A Billion-View Business

20:03and then based on that testing is the actual content that we'll publish on that platform.

20:09Peter Kafka:Same as a digital advertiser trying out different fonts and taglines and stock art to see which one gets the best response. Exactly. And we'll do that for thumbnails as well. So walk me through a 22-minute video. How long from ideation to the finished edit does that take? How many people touch it? And what's your budget for a piece like that? Yeah, great question. So, you know, whereas traditional filmmaking can take years to bring about a TV-length episode for us, we're able to iterate within 21 days. And so from the very first start of a script, we can go to screen in the matter of three weeks, and that is our longest division.

20:48So right now we're able to operate on a seven day cadence for our Facebook division. And if for some reason there's some sort of, you know, thing happening within culture or some collaboration opportunity or some brand partnership opportunity, we can actually squeeze and compress those timelines even more. The reason for that is because we have a turnkey studio where every single component that's required for filmmaking is in house. And so whether that's ideation or writing or producers or casting or set deck or set building, an art team, stunt choreography, studio teachers, you know, directors, shooters, editors, gaffers, you name it.

21:31We have everything in house. And because our team is able to collaborate and it's the same team working together, you know, very often, we're able to really expedite that production process. So, you know, anywhere between seven to 21 days per TV length episode, I would say for our divisions where we are going for longer content or higher quality, such as our partnerships with Samsung or Fox, where we're going into original content for fast channels or vertical drama films. You know, those projects can take about 30 to 45 days still in a much faster timeline than what you're traditionally.

22:10Peter Kafka:Yeah, I want to talk to you about the Samsung and Fox stuff in a second. But sticking with sort of the core of your business, which I'm assuming is these 22-minute YouTube videos, give me a ballpark of what an episode costs you to produce. Yeah, so just to clarify, I would say actually YouTube is now not the core of our business. You know, our business has diversified quite a bit in the past year, especially as we brought on folks from traditional media, such as, you know, our CEO, Sean Atkins, who used to be the president of MTV. So, you know, our business is quite diversified in the sense that, you know, about 40 % of our revenue now comes from social, about 20 % comes from YouTube.

22:53We have an in-house agency. We have a brand partnerships division. We have SVOD. We have Fast. You know, we have vertical dramas. But yeah, to answer your question, you know, it depends on the ambition of the project. And so for us, it's hard to say exactly what that budget is, but I would say we operate at about one one hundredth the cost of whatever traditional media is.

23:18Peter Kafka:Yeah, I mean, that's where I wanted to get at, right? Because we're still in a world where a Fox sitcom, I think their budgets are still in the$2 million an episode range. And they're trying to figure out how to get that down. I mean, are you talking$50 ,000,$100 ,000, much less than that for an episode? Yeah, we can certainly create content at that budget. It really depends on what the project is and what excites me about, you know, these different platforms that we're partnering with or us being able to take on brand partnerships is they're able to allow us to have much more ambitious storytelling.

23:53So we're able to go with bigger budgets. But to answer your question, we can create content, you know, in the$50 ,000 range

24:00Peter Kafka:for sure. For a 22 minute, what you think is the sort of equivalent of 22 minutes of television, you can do it for 50 ,000 bucks on YouTube. It serves your audience and they're happy with it. They're not saying, oh, this seems like a YouTube show. This is just a show they like. It's certainly possible. And I think the numbers certainly speak for themselves. You know, sure, you know, we could invest more in bigger scenes and more actors and bigger production and more expensive gear. But at the end of the day, you know, we still are averaging over, what is it, over 40 million daily long form views.

24:37And just for perspective, you know, that means we're getting more views than the Game of Thrones finale every single day. And on a weekly basis, we're getting about two times the Super Bowl audience. So to some degree, you know, the numbers speak for themselves in terms of the audience interest in that content. We'll be right back, but first a word from a sponsor. What if you could have the most reliable Wi-Fi at the same price for five years?

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27:07Peter Kafka:And we're back. Talk to me about branding and why these things are called Darman shows and why you're not in it. And how do people, how do you think about sort of people knowing what a Darman video versus clicking on a thumbnail and having no idea that it's a Darman video? And if those brands mean different things on different platforms, like do you expect the Samsung audience to know who you are in the way that a YouTube audience may not even know who you are, but they know what a Dharman video is? Great question. So the reason it's called Dharman Studios is because, again, I didn't start off with the goal of trying to create a studio or a company.

27:48I started off with the goal of just trying to help people. and in the beginning, I was just talking to camera as a one-person team, trying to get people - And it was Darman. Just was me. And at some point, as I started receiving income from Facebook, I realized that, oh, okay, well, I need to have a company because when it would ask you, what's your company name? I didn't want it to say Darman. So I was like, oh, well, why not just put studios at the end? And I think my logic at that time was Walt Disney put studios at the end of his name. uh so you know i i would love to say that i had the foresight that this was going to become you know what it is today but i certainly didn't um and the decision to not have me on camera uh started as a simply data analytics decision uh so when i would look at the retention graphs because of my original videos we'd have like a scripted um a scripted show and then at the end I would pop on and give some sort of a moral lesson that says, here's what this video is teaching us.

28:50And whenever I would see our retention graphs, as soon as I would come on at the end. As soon as you pop on screen, everyone clicks off. Ironically, if I'm in the beginning, you know, almost like the wonderful world of Disney where like Walt would start off a show. We don't see drops in retention if I'm to start. Because I know you're getting off screen soon. Exactly. That's why. And as I thought about it, I was like, this is actually quite a superpower because while most creators' businesses are talent-led or talent-based, I should say, ours is actually not dependent on me. So we are the first creator studio at scale that doesn't have the same level of key man risk.

29:33And that's intentional. And that's intentional. It happened by accident to start with, right? In the sense that I wasn't trying to get myself off of screen. I was just listening to the audience. And that listening to the audience has never really stopped. That's always core in our DNA. And that what makes us so different than I think how traditional media operates is we're able to get instant feedback from our audience and iterate around that feedback loop constantly. but as I started seeing what the data was suggesting and then as I realized that, hey, I could be on-screen talent and do one film a week or I could write and do four films a week, right?

30:16Or if I could find writers, then I could probably oversee 12 films a week. And if I could hire showrunners, then I could oversee 24 productions a week, right? So as I started thinking on a bigger scale. I just basically started hiring the necessary people that allowed storytelling to continue to exist without me. But there's still a certain Darman-ish DNA that's in every one of our stories. Just to give you an example, I'll get tagged in movies or stories on social media where if there's some, like, have you seen that Selena scene where she goes into a designer store, and then she wants to get a nice dress.

30:58And then the salesperson thinks -

30:59Peter Kafka:I'm shaking my head, sadly, but no, I do not know what you're talking about. So, Selena is one of the biggest pop stars in the world. She walks into this fancy store. The salesperson judges her and says, hey, you're not going to be able to afford anything because Selena is dressed down. And then as Selena is leaving now, hundreds of fans rush up to her and the salesperson is like, wait a second, who are you? Right? So, the whole point of it is don't judge a book by its cover. So anytime there's any sort of story or video out there that's like that, that's moral driven, I'll get tagged in the comments.

31:30And they'll be like, this feels like a Dhar Mann story. This feels like it. So I would say our brand and DNA is the moral storytelling. But there are certain sort of brand trademarks that also are easy to identify. So, for instance, even though I'm not in the shows, the fact that our sets are. Like if we have influencers come in to use our sets for one of their videos, all the comments are going to be like, you're at Dharaman Studios, you're at Dharaman Studios because they recognize our sets. Also, our way of storytelling in terms of our format, you know, follows a certain arc that is also identifiable.

32:07our retention, our score, our way of editing, everything is a brand element that our community is so engaged that they're able to identify.

32:18Peter Kafka:And so that branding is important to you. You think it does move from platform to platform? Because what I was sort of getting at is you have a huge audience, but there's also a huge audience that doesn't know who you are. They're like me five years ago when my kids say they're watching a Dhar Mann video. I'm like, what is that? Is that a person? And as you move to more platforms, you do more deals, is the hope my brand will move from platform to platform. I have enough fans that they are going to sort of move around and proselytize on my behalf. Or I'm making stuff that I expect people to click on if they've never heard of me and they're coming to me for the very first time.

32:54I think if you can succeed on digital, that's one of the hardest places to succeed, right? Because there are no gatekeepers. it's a direct relationship with your audience. There's no one within a platform that's going to say, hey, I'm going to push you to the top of our most interesting or new and noteworthy. You're really at the mercy of the audience and their interest. So I would say anyone who can succeed on digital has a much more likelihood of succeeding elsewhere. Second, we're actually fortunate enough to get some early data that indicates that our content is successful in other platforms.

33:30So one could argue, you know, YouTube, TikTok, Facebook, Snapchat, Spotify, all these are different platforms with their own audiences and US first international. And we've been able to succeed in all of these different platforms in all of these different audiences. But now as we, for instance, our very first partnership to go into the fast channel space was with Samsung. We are the first creator to partner with Samsung to create an original series for them. It started off with us just having our existing catalog as a 24-7 on Samsung TV Plus, where we reach over 100 million households. And just from the early data that we've gotten, it's been a very successful two-way partnership.

34:14Peter Kafka:That Samsung platform is sneakily giant, does not get talked a lot about on shows like this. But when I talk to people, they say, no, that's a real thing. People are really consuming a lot of stuff. And I'm getting so many people that now have discovered me through Samsung. And now that we're going to start our brand new series that airs next month in June, you know, the series is called Unlikely Romances. And so what does a Dharaman story have? You know, there's a lot of conflict. There is irony. There's some sort of a twist and it's more a lesson, right? Unlikely Romances was inspired by my own love story.

34:48I'm an Indian Sikh man who grew up in a very conservative family and married a Hispanic girl that follows a Christian faith. Very different upbringings and cultures. And that was hard for certain people to accept. So the whole idea was love doesn't always follow the rules.

35:09Peter Kafka:And is that is that branded as a Dhar Mann production? Correct. So that is very much. You still expect that brand moves from platform to platform. Exactly. But there are times where, you know, if we want to go beyond, let's say, the moral morality based storytelling or with our partnership with Fox, where they want us to produce 40 vertical films for them. You know, as anyone who knows the space, the micro dramas, anyone who knows the space, those are more steamy romances. And so, you know, one of the early indicators, again, because we are so audience first driven, we don't I don't decide that we're going to go into this opportunity just because it seems interesting.

35:47I start with, what does our audience want to see? And so we started polling our audience on Facebook and saying, are you interested in microdramas? And we found that over 75 % of our audience was already watching microdramas. And on average, our follower on Facebook was spending$5 a month on that platform. So to me, that was an indication that our audience wants us to move into microdramas. And as we had different discussions with all the top microdrama players, some were very much like, no, we have to go into steamy romance. We have to have these very intimate scenes. And that didn't feel like quite a fit for our brand.

36:23But with Fox, we were able to come up with an agreement where some would be steamy romances and those would not be branded Darman and others, they'd be more so like PG-13, I would say. And those would be branded Darman. And so it just depends on the type of content as to whether the name would be there. But I wouldn't say that we're only limited to morality-based dramas. How I see it is as if we are trying to build the next Disney, we will have our Disney animations, we'll have our Pixar, we'll have our Star Wars, we'll have our Marvels. Touchstones. Yeah, exactly.

37:00Peter Kafka:Last question for you. You are based in LA. Correct. Tons of stories, and I've done some about just the relentless sort of negative outlook in the traditional Hollywood industry, TV's movie productions way down, productions moving out, people are worried about losing their jobs to AI, the training AI. You are here presenting a different story saying, look, I'm growing really fast. I'm making a ton of stuff. Is what you're doing a realistic sort of option for a meaningful number of people who have grown up learning how to make traditional Hollywood content, making television shows, making movies?

37:39Peter Kafka:Or is there some skill set that's particular to you that isn't available to somebody else? Absolutely. I would say that Hollywood and traditional media is not disappearing. The line between traditional Hollywood and creators is disappearing. And we found tremendous success when we actually bring those two worlds together, such as before I started hiring folks that came from the traditional world, 95 % of our revenue two years ago depended on YouTube and Facebook. And now between those two platforms combined, less than 40 % is dependent on it because we're able to build a studio that thinks even beyond digital.

38:18And so I would say there's so many opportunities for people that come from traditional media that have tremendous experience that creators such as myself are looking for. So you just kind of have to see where the rising opportunities are, whether that's a creator-led studio, whether that's micro-dom dramas, it's always just shifting from one place to the next versus disappearing. And those that are the most agile, those that are willing to learn new skills and consider new opportunities are the ones that will succeed the most.

38:48Peter Kafka:Darman? Yeah. What's the best way? Should I just say, call you Dar, I call you Mr. Man, Darman. Great to see you. You can call me Dar. Thanks, Peter. I really appreciate it. Thanks for your time. This is great. This is awesome. Thank you. thanks again to Darman for joining us thanks to Charlotte Silver for producing and editing, thanks to our advertisers who keep this thing chugging along thanks to you guys for listening see you soon

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