Billion Dollar Boy

Could TikTok’s bet on social on commerce insulate it against the threat of a US ban? Here's what our Europe CEO and Co-Founder Thomas Walters told The Drum: “If more brands, creators and businesses start to benefit more from the platform, TikTok could rally more support for their fight against the ban, which could be a potential strategy." Catch the deep dive into leveraging social commerce as a strategy against a #TikTokBan, link in comments.

At Billion Dollar Boy, we undertook a small research project for Pride Month. “A Journey of Queer Inclusion in Advertising: 50 Years of Breaking Barriers” explores how LGBTQ+ representation in marketing and advertising has evolved since the pivotal summer of 1969 and the Stonewall Inn riots. Despite progress, LGBTQ+ representation in ads remains limited, with just 3% of TV ads featuring LGBTQ+ individuals and even lower representation for trans people at 0.3%. Public perception overestimates this figure at 22%. What’s more, when included, the community is often depicted negatively or tokenistically. This display only scratches the surface of the last few decades of advertising featuring the LGBTQ+ community. Genuine support means moving beyond tokenism to reflect the diverse realities and broad spectrum of the LGBTQ+ community. A big shout-out to James Silverstone for championing this brilliant initiative and to our Proud Network for their support. Check out the display proudly hung in our London office below. #PrideMonth #LGBTQ #Inclusion #Advertising

Creators are subverting traditional entertainment, becoming an inherently diverse force of nature in advertising, but how did they show up at #CannesLions? Here's what we saw, did, heard and gasped at in the South of France, as told through quotes by industry experts and of course, creators themselves. #CannesLionsCreators #creatoreconomy

How to measure the ROI of influencer marketing? If you ask a full room of brands and agencies, each will have a different answer. Our Senior Manager of Strategy, Christopher Douglas joined the stage at Perfecting Your Influencer IQ by Marketing Brew in New York, explaining how we approach measurement at Billion Dollar Boy: - Educating brands on what to track and measure based on their overall campaign objectives. - Deploying a flexible measurement stack to fit each client's needs from simple to complex. - Bringing on measurement partners to provide a more rounded, three-dimensional view into content performance, revealing what drives scalable and repeatable outcomes. Duolingo KEEN #influencermarketing #creatoreconomy

Our BDB Europe Hive Insights day was a hit. 🐝 We invited 16 incredible candidates to our new London office to take part in our BDB Hive Insights Day. Our team gave an overview of the different agency teams, showcasing the exciting projects our interns could get the chance to work on. The candidates then tackled group tasks to present to the room. Capping off the day, each candidate had one-on-one interviews with BDB team members, offering a sneak peek into their potential future roles. A big thank you to Ed Bernardino & Fi Marlow for organising the day and to the BDB team for helping throughout! We can’t wait to welcome our interns next month. #Internship #CreatorEconomy #InfluencerAgency

The impact of #socialmedia and #socialcommerce on #marketing in the last three years is about as significant as digital’s impact on media over the last 30 years. Recent Omnicom Media Group research confirms that there’s a generational shift happening. Today, the gap of distinction between marketing to a 20-year-old and a 30-year-old is almost as wide as between a 12-year-old and a 50-year-old. Particularly around younger generations, the, er, influence of influencers and creators is undeniably powerful. Growing in power alongside this reality is the rise of the influencer agency. In this piece by Antoinette S., we speak to Krishna Subramanian of Captiv8, Jamie Ray of Buttermilk, Ryan Detert of Influential, Maureen Kerr of Arthur D. Little, Ted Murphy of IZEA, and Thomas Walters of Billion Dollar Boy.

How did the #creatoreconomy show up in Cannes this year? Ad Age spoke to our CMO Becky Owen, who revealed a slight disconnect between brands, agencies and creators: "Creators are largely talking about wanting more “humane” and “empathetic” treatment from their brand partners (such as being paid in a timely manner), while brands are concentrating on innovation in influencer marketing and “wanting to be more peer-to-peer with creators” before having laid a foundation for strong relationships with influencers in the first place. Read the full piece below. #CannesLionsCreators #CannesLions2024

The influencer marketing industry continues to rapidly grow because it works. But, it still remains a challenge for individual marketing teams and brands to accurately measure ROI. Our senior manager of strategy Christopher Douglas will join Josie Garcia of KEEN and Hitakshi Shah of Duolingo on stage at Marketing Brew's upcoming event to cover: - The shifting dynamics of the creator economy.  - Effective strategies for measuring creator campaign success. - The evolution of campaign effectiveness over time. - Proven tactics to win over the leadership team. Don’t miss Marketing Brew’s Perfecting Your Influencer IQ event on June 25 in NYC. Let us know if you’ll be there. Full details in the link in the comments. #InfluencerMarketing #Measurement #MarketingBrewLIVE

BDB is heading to VidCon. Catch our global CMO, Becky Owen, discussing the impact of AI on marketing and the creator economy with Peter Hollens of Inhouse Creators, Noah Jennings of The Brandlot and Goldie Chan of Warm Robots.  During this two-part session, we’ll deep dive into how marketers are approaching generative AI in the creator economy, digging into new attitudes and practices as well as how AI is changing the nature of marketing. If you're attending VidCon, make sure to join our workshop on Thursday, June 27 from 2:20-3:05pm. Catch the full details in the link in the comments. #CreatorEconomy #GenerativeAI #VidCon #VidConAN24

While creators are the lifeblood of our industry, they aren’t always treated as the valuble partners and small businesses they are. How can we support and show up for them? Our final panel at Cannes, hosted at Empower Cafe in partnership with WACL (Women in Advertising & Communications Leadership ), answered this very question at Empower Cafe. Cue the highlights from Nishma Patel Robb 🪩⚡️, Becky Owen, creator Alanna Doherty, Tobi Demuren, and Emily Trenouth: LinkedIn is attracting creators in droves, and they’re changing dynamics by brokering brand deals directly. Large brands fear risk and media backlash but have to learn to give creators more authority to direct their work. Sometimes, creators still feel that diversity is a check box rather than true inclusion, moving past tokenism in brand campaigns and events is must for the industry. Closing out, in words of the one and only Nishma (pictured in vibrant yellow): ”Don’t call it DEI, call it GROWTH.” Mic drop and period. Amazon #canneslionscreators #creatoreconomy #representme