Pocket.watch named Fernando Romero as its first President of Brand and Ad Sales in September 2026, tasking him with repositioning the company’s commercial unit as a long-term strategic partner for brand marketers. 

Fernando, a media executive with 30 years of experience who most recently oversaw more than $350 million in national digital advertising revenue as SVP of U.S. Digital Advertising Sales at TelevisaUnivision, arrives with a specific thesis: brands that route creator work through a separate campaign budget, disconnected from broader media strategy, are leaving return on the table.

“Smarter brands are now starting to think of creators at the inception, starting with that relationship,” Fernando says. Clock.Work, the brand and advertising division he now leads within pocket.watch, is built on the premise that brands willing to make that shift early will produce the most durable returns.

Founded roughly a decade ago, the Culver City, California-based company built its business primarily in kids and family content, and its YouTube network now draws more than 1.2 billion monthly U.S. views. It manages a roster of more than 75 creators and distributes content across more than 40 global platforms. Current Clock.Work brand partners include Nintendo, Hasbro, Paramount Pictures, and Mattel. “The company had all the pieces to help creators build entertainment franchises,” Fernando says.

Brands Are Finally Bringing Creators In Earlier

The commercial case Fernando is making to prospective partners depends on a shift in how advertising organizations plan. Historically, creator budgets were separated from broader media plans, treated as a distinct line item managed by different teams and agencies. Brands routinely arrived at creator partnerships after a campaign concept had already been set, adding talent as a finishing element rather than a foundational one.

That model is changing. Fernando describes forward-looking brands that now build creative strategy with creators from the start of the planning cycle rather than fitting creators into ideas already formed. His work in Hispanic media, where he watched brands that entered without cultural grounding struggle to connect with audiences, informs his view. “We start with creators first, which is the takeaway that we want versus this campaign approach,” he says.

For Clock.Work, that shift opens a different kind of sales conversation. Fernando’s pitch is that pocket.watch can offer brands access to creator talent and distribution through a single relationship, reducing the coordination burden of working with multiple separate vendors.

What Advertisers Still Get Wrong About Creator Relationships

Fernando identifies three places where brands consistently fall short in approaching creator partnerships, and addresses all three in his early client conversations. 

The first is the expectation of quick results. “Developing any relationship … we know that it’s an investment over time. It doesn’t just happen,” he says. Brands that arrive with campaign-speed expectations, he argues, tend to produce work that falls short of what the partnership could deliver over time.

The second is creator selection. Fernando says brands frequently default to assembling rosters from a narrow profile, choosing creators with similar audiences and content styles and assuming volume produces reach. “You don’t want to necessarily have the same cookie-cutter type of creator on every campaign,” he says, “because it’s not going to deliver the expanded audiences you might want.” Clock.Work selects creators for different reasons across a single brief, typically three to five partners with deliberately distinct audiences and content approaches.

The third is measurement alignment. Fernando describes “educational conversations” his team still has with clients about what success means, noting that a brand and its agency often reach different conclusions about whether a campaign delivered. His starting point with new partners is to align on what the brand considers a win, what creator profile fits the brief, and what the measurement timeframe will be.

‘Rabbit Hole’ Opens a Franchise Play for Brand Partners

When Fernando describes what Clock.Work can offer a brand at full scale, he points to “Rabbit Hole” as his primary example. The 10-episode variety series, which premiered on Disney+ and Hulu and features 36 creators whose combined social following totals 675 million, is pitched to prospective partners as an entry point into a developing franchise.

“You’re not just buying into a social placement or an opportunity,” he says. “You’re buying into a franchise that has a brand architect that can really grow.” Fernando draws the comparison to the Marvel Cinematic Universe, pointing to its capacity to generate spin-offs, live experiences, and audience engagement across multiple formats over years.

The creators involved, including Topper Guild, Jesser, Zhong, Matthew Beem, Papa Jake, and Dan Rhodes, each bring their own audiences to the property. Fernando argues that the aggregated fandom, combined with pocket.watch’s production and distribution infrastructure, produces integration possibilities a standard creator deal cannot replicate. “A brand can be featured in a challenge, can be featured in a game, can be introduced, can be discussed between creators,” he says. Brand activations can extend into supporting content and paid media built around specific episodes.

For 2027, Clock.Work is launching “Creators to Know,” an initiative designed to introduce pocket.watch’s talent to advertising partners in a curated format, pairing creator profiles with context on why the company selected each one and how they might align with specific brand objectives.

Sustained Brand Presence Yields More Than Campaign-Level Activation

Fernando’s experience at TelevisaUnivision, where commercial performance depends on sustained brand investment across a large portfolio, shaped his view on how creator partnerships need to build over time. He says pocket.watch has tracked directly what happens when brands treat the relationship as a year-to-year decision.

“We support it this year. We didn’t support it last year. We supported it this quarter. We’re not supporting it,” Fernando says, describing the pattern of brands that cycle in and out. The brands that have maintained consistent presence with pocket.watch, by contrast, have grown alongside the company’s expanding capabilities and audience. 

Because they were present through the development process, Fernando notes, they arrive at each new offering already informed rather than needing to restart the evaluation process. Brands that commit early and remain through the development of franchise IP build something that late entrants cannot acquire by buying into a proven property.

Revenue Growth and Franchise Performance Define the Year-One Test

Fernando describes his performance targets for 2027 in direct terms: revenue growth, expansion of advertiser partnerships, and renewals from existing clients. The trajectory of “Rabbit Hole” serves as the central proxy. Fernando points to strong early indicators from season one and ongoing conversations with Disney and Hulu about what the franchise can become as early evidence the model is working.

The larger ambition behind those benchmarks is a repositioning of how pocket.watch shows up in the media marketplace. The company’s next phase, Fernando says, extends beyond kids and family content into a broader youth culture platform, with Gen Alpha aging up and YouTube solidifying its role as a premium video destination. Clock.Work is the commercial vehicle for that expansion.

“There’s been a lot of people who can talk the talk,” Fernando says. “But there aren’t too many people that can walk the walk.”

Photos: Courtesy of pocket.watch

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