MOTIVATION MONDAY
Our Founder and President Permele Doyle was interviewed on TheSelect7, a curated exploration into the worlds of motivation, food, beauty + wellness, travel, fashion, home design and social media.
Meet Permele Doyle | She was there when Tom Ford was still a baby — talking about the brand (not the man), and more specifically, the beauty brand. In 2010, Permele Doyle — now an entrepreneur, but then a recent UVA grad — landed a communications job at the Estée Lauder Companies working on a small team that over the next five years would launch and grow Tom Ford Beauty, to much acclaim. It was there, at the dawn of the Instagram era, that Doyle discovered something new that really lit her up: designing social media campaigns with bloggers and individual creators. To say that she left that enviable position to start her own full-service influencer marketing agency sounds impressive…now. But back then, it probably sounded crazy — firstly because the Tom Ford Beauty brand was on fire (and why on earth would she leave?) and second, because ‘influencer’ wasn’t even a word people were using yet. Make no mistake, this is a woman who knows how to follow her intuition. What began as a casual conversation with her best friend from college about all the ways he could use social media to grow his recently launched digital agency in London, ended with Doyle joining him and partner with a New York office. And BOOM! Billion Dollar Boy was born.
Capitalizing on their odd-but-memorable company name, they decided to focus first on helping brands reach the somewhat elusive male demographic, as a strategic way to gain a foothold in the market. The plan worked. Successful influencer campaigns for Bonobos and Bentley helped the agency get the attention of companies like L’Oreal’s Garnier, which became their first big account. Now, with a growing team and a client roster that includes Grand Marnier, Kate Spade, Shiseido Group, MARS Food, Pandora Jewelry and BMW, Doyle helms the New York office but frequently visits the London headquarters, and is in the process of opening a third office in New Orleans. If that choice of location sounds random, it wasn’t. Turns out, the man of her dreams was not Billion Dollar Boy (though she felt like she was married to the biz for 5+ years), it’s New Orleans native Garner Robinson, her fiancé. And now the pair live in the house that Faulkner built. Well, almost. It’s where author William Faulkner lived in the French Quarter in the 1920s, a historic building that was converted into a bookshop in the 80s, which Robinson and a partner purchased in 2019. (Doyle, who now splits her time between Nola and NYC, is doing the marketing.) But in the middle of renovating the building’s upstairs residence, the Coronavirus threw a wrench in the couple’s plans, including the ones for their wedding, set to take place this summer in her family’s favorite vacation spot, a seaside region in southern Italy called Salento. Disappointed but adaptable (as a high-performer in a fast-paced and constantly changing industry must learn to be), Doyle has made peace with the decision to reschedule the nuptials for Summer 2021 and is trying to make the most of a national lockdown that’s required the jetsetter to hit pause. Thankful for the time to reconnect with family, she says she’s getting used to the slower pace. But we wouldn’t be surprised if she emerges from quarantine with 20 new strategies to make TikTok her bitch. Welcome to Permele’s week.
Read the full article on TheSelect7.
← Back to News