Episode #109 features Ben Billups, founder and CEO of Billups, the largest independent out-of-home specialist agency in the US.
We’ve wanted to get Ben on the show for a long time and finally managed to pin him down while he was in London.
Ben founded Billups back in 2003 and has since grown it into a global business spanning 23 countries and nearly 500 people. But beyond the scale, what fascinated us was hearing how someone on the media and planning side thinks about creativity, craft and the future of OOH.
We kicked off with Ben’s first billboard ever — an eBay x Hawaiian Airlines campaign — and the feeling of seeing work live out in the wild for the first time.
Then onto the big stuff.
First up, Jordan Brand’s incredible Prudential Tower Jumpman takeover in Chicago. A huge projection piece that turned the skyline into a basketball icon and showed what happens when ambition meets scale.
Next came one of our favourite campaign titles ever: e.l.f. Beauty’s “So Many Dicks, So Few Everyone Else.” Ben talked us through how the work hijacked finance bro culture with sharp copy, smart placement and brilliant timing.
We also discussed Nike’s reactive Dodgers World Series work, created in real time as LA celebrated victory – a wonderful tactical stunt that made headlines across the globe.
And then came perhaps the most topical story of the lot — Decathlon’s activation inspired by the global Microsoft outage and the infamous “Blue Screen of Death.” A perfect example of how quickly modern OOH can react to culture.
Along the way we chatted about entrepreneurship, building a company culture, why sport teaches you almost everything about leadership, and why the best out-of-home work still starts with a simple human truth.
Thanks Ben for coming on the show. We loved hearing the stories behind the scale.
Thanks also to Adrian at Soho Radio, Jon for the edit and our regular sponsors, who make the show possible:
