Raising your influencer IQ with Christopher Douglas

Christopher Douglas is the senior manager of strategy at Billion Dollar Boy, a global creator agency. He’s joining Marketing Brew at our Perfecting Your Influencer IQ event in New York on Tuesday, June 25.

Ahead of the event, Douglas shared with us how he thinks about the space, and what advice he has for marketers looking to take their influencer marketing strategy to the next level.

Walk us through your strategy for working with creators. As a global creator agency, Billion Dollar Boy partners with leading brands spanning retail, food and beverage, CPG, fashion, beauty, gaming, automotive, technology, and other industries. We’ve built successful partnerships with brands like Heineken, King, PepsiCo, and L’Oréal by helping them grow at scale through creator work, pushing the boundaries of creativity in the process. We guide brands on their creator strategies and connect them with vetted content creators to reach their target audience and creator marketing goals.

Why are creators important for a marketing strategy? Do brands have any effective alternatives to working with creators and influencers? Creator marketing is a completely unique and highly effective model that’s becoming the focal point of many marketing strategies, instead of just an aspect of one. It’s not one that can be easily substituted, and the industry is starting to recognize and respect that more, especially as the creator economy is set to reach a global valuation of half a trillion dollars by 2027. There are so many creators that brands can choose to work with, each with their own audience, community, and persona. So brands can adjust their strategies and partnerships depending on desired outcomes, the type of content they wish to publish, target audience, and budget. With creator marketing, brands also often benefit from added earned media value and a high level of content output.

What is the biggest challenge when working with creators and influencers? Being timely to trends can be a challenge for brands. Creators are constantly living on the edge of trends, you could consider it a part of their job description. The challenge lies with brands that are more traditional in their approach to advertising—there’s a lot of planning, forethought, and process that gets in the way of being able to execute quick-turn trend-led content with creators. The brands that have embraced the chaos see incredible results.

Which platforms do you consider to be the most important in the creator space? Are there any that you consider to be underrated or underutilized? TikTok and Instagram are the most popular for those in the creator marketing industry because they offer brands the best value and performance for their creator partnership dollars. Some underdog platforms include Discord, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Reddit, Shorts, Snapchat, and Twitch. LinkedIn is having a moment right now, as B2B marketers are thinking of creative ways to cut through corporate content by leveraging B2B creators on the platform.

What advice do you have for other brands that are considering making a bigger play in the creator economy space? Creators hold such a valuable skill set and strong ties to their communities, which can help brands authentically break through to these communities. Make sure to stay true to your brand by partnering with creators who can ensure that your brand voice comes through in every story they tell and who reaches your target audience.

Correction 6/21/24: This story has been updated since it was first published to correct Christopher Douglas's title.