Creators on the stage of the Advertising Week conference in New York needed just eight minutes for an outdoor campaign concept and a video for Vans, Sean Atkins, head of Dhar Mann Studios, wrote on LinkedIn. When one commenter under the post worried about the depth of the brand, Atkins replied: “My point isn’t that it should be eight minutes.”
On the stage, four creators received a single brief for a billboard and a video from Vans chief marketing officer Daniel Cherry III. The programme promised their teams illustrators from the audience and gave the time for the task only as “Minutes to make both work”. The billboard design was to be created live in front of the audience.
In the same reply under the post, Atkins wrote that the old layered model of so-called experts detached from the customer no longer works. According to the post itself, creators can now handle strategy, media buying, creative, production and distribution. To marketing chiefs working on eight-week deadlines, Atkins advises giving creators a real brief and seeing what they come back with before the chiefs' next meeting ends. He closes the recommended strategy with the line “Then let them go.”
Dhar Mann, after whom Atkins's studio is named, is the conference's first Chief Creator Officer and put together this year's creator programme. When he invited creators to pitch ideas to a brand on stage, some of the world's biggest creators replied: “Wait, are you serious? I don’t know how to do that.”
In a 2025 study, people were worse at linking a creator ad to the brand
The commenter under Atkins's post feared for the brand. TikTok users attributed a creator ad to the right brand roughly half as often as a classic brand ad. The study was published by System1 with TikTok in June 2025. When a creator showed the brand prominently right at the start, their ads delivered a 2.3-fold increase in brand awareness.
Only 15% of the more than fifty senior marketers surveyed by Creativebrief in the first half of 2026 run social media and creator marketing through their existing creative, media or PR agency. Some 65% of respondents have trouble demonstrating a clear, measurable return on this work.
Influencer marketing investment in Czechia in 2025 grew by 29%, according to an estimate by the Association of Communication Agencies. Many commercial collaborations, the association says, remain unlabelled, even though that is illegal under the advertising regulation act.
How influencers label advertising was also examined by the European Commission together with consumer authorities, which published the results in February 2024. Only one in five of the influencers screened labelled commercial content systematically. For a Czech advertiser who follows Atkins's advice and lets creators go, the question remains who will watch over the brand and the labelling of the ad.
The judges on stage sit on Mann's council
According to the programme, the winners were to be chosen by the chief marketing officers of Vans and OUTFRONT. The Vans marketing chief belongs to Mann's Creator x Brand Council, and Mann himself counts the second judge among its members. The head of Mann's studio described the showcase, and two members of Mann's council judged it.
Mann and the conference organisers want it to produce $100 million in new deals between creators and brands within twelve months. Atkins wrote about that goal before the conference as “our target”. According to Mann, pledges from marketing chiefs have already exceeded the target. But none of them had been signed as an official deal as of 7 October 2026, according to Tubefilter.
The Vans marketing chief responded to the proposals from the stage, according to Atkins, with the line “I would totally do this.” Last year at Advertising Week, Mann devised a campaign live in front of the audience with a Gap executive. After the appearance, Gap and Mann sealed it as a paid partnership, a series of short videos for its Old Navy brand. Vans had not announced realising the billboard that the creators had minutes for on stage this year by 10 October.
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