Troy Carter

Troy Carter builds brands; he builds businesses; he builds careers. As an artist manager and CEO of Atom Factory, a multidimensional management company, his expanding roster of musical innovators includes Lady Gaga, Mindless Behavior, and 14-year-old YouTube sensation Greyson Chance. As a marketing craftsman, Carter is a master at leveraging the power of digital media as the next-generation model to connect with fans, foster community, and cultivate brand loyalty. As a brand and corporate strategist, his portfolio of investments and startup endeavors read as a summary of the hottest trends in today's technology landscape, heralding his uncanny knack for identifying tomorrow's consumer trends today.

As Lady Gaga's manager, Carter—who has worked alongside the likes of Will Smith, Sean "Diddy" Combs, and the late Notorious B.I.G.—has helped cement the pop star's formidable online presence by cultivating and encouraging the philosophy of "fans first." And the results are apparent: in October 2010 Lady Gaga became the first musician to hit one billion YouTube views; in May 2011, she became the first Twitter user to reach 10 million followers. Beyond social media, Carter's brand strategy has culminated in Gaga's continued cultural pervasiveness—both because of the genuine loyalty between Gaga and her fans as well as through creative and compelling commercial partnerships with the likes of MAC, Google, Virgin Mobile, and Zynga.

Armed with the understanding that the nature of content consumption is changing along with the many other patterns of consumer behavior, Troy Carter reaps a wealth of competitive insights as a result of his unique perspective. He is continually in search of new platforms, methods, and technologies to improve the consumer-brand relationship and to create value for his partners, his clients, and the people they touch. Currently Carter, along with Lady Gaga, has begun development of Backplane, a new social-media platform that blends celebrity and technology.