Brands don’t benefit from playing it safe. Just ask IKEA, Chupa Chups, and their meatball-flavored lollipop.

Most brands would shy away from the idea of a campaign based around a meatball-flavored lollipop.

Even the ones daring enough to announce the pop as an April Fool’s joke would likely keep it contained to social media posts. They wouldn’t pour real R&D resources into producing the pops for customers to taste.

But IKEA and Chupa Chups are not most brands.

And their commitment to the bit is the reason their campaign, and other campaigns like it, drive 25% more organic views than safer ads.

That data comes from Billion Dollar Boy‘s new report, Creator Instinct: Unlocking the Social Code, which contains the social agency’s expert insights from producing over 5,000 pieces of creator-led content across the U.S. and U.K.

Billion Dollar Boy helped IKEA and Chupa Chups build their eye-catching campaign–the end result of which is actual, limited-edition meatball, gravy, and lingonberry-flavored lollipops being distributed to IKEA shoppers this summer.

The agency cites this project as a prime example of what brands can accomplish when they’re willing to be daring.

IKEA and Chupa Chups are “two brands that otherwise don’t have a reason to interact with each other, but there was this idea,” Becky Owen, Billion Dollar Boy’s CMO, tells Tubefilter. “This sense of, ‘How weird would it be?’ The magic of the actual collaboration came from the brands being curious. It was a curious idea.”

The Billion Dollar Boy team knew the campaign was “audacious and wild and weird,” Owen says, “but IKEA just followed this amazing idea and decided to be uncomfortable and go for that risk. And that risk has paid off so much for them.”

Vincenzo Riili, CMO at IKEA retailer Ingka Group, said IKEA was able to lean into the Chupa Chups collaboration because of “a clear brand identity, confidence in our audience, and a culture that rewards curiosity.”

“This is all expressed through a playful tone of voice,” he adds. “We know our audience expects us to be playful and a bit unconventional, which gives us permission to experiment. These aren’t random stunts, they are grounded in things people already love. Here, we simply took a familiar product and asked, ‘what if?,’ starting with April Fools’ Day.”

The lollipop campaign “may seem bold,” he explains, “but for us it’s simply about being consistent: approachable, surprising, and a little unexpected.”

For Billion Dollar Boy, IKEA’s willingness to go weird touches on the same hallmarks that make creator-led ad campaigns so successful. “Creators are so good at risk,” Owen says. “Creators don’t have all these guardrails they follow. They don’t have the brand book. They don’t have to go and talk to 20 different people to get approval for things. They enjoy the shock value. They enjoy the hook.”

The IKEA x Chupa Chups case study and the topic of risky advertising is just a part of Billion Dollar Boy’s report. Other chapters include why front loading brand shout-outs in creator videos can inhibit impact, why demonstrations and tutorials drive both views and brand growth, why successful branded creator content thrives on real emotional responses, and why the last three seconds of a social video is just as important as the first three.

Folks interested in reading Creator Instinct: Unlocking the Social Code can download the full report here.

Billion Dollar Boy will also present its findings at the upcoming Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity 2026, during its Patreon-sponsored event The Great Unlearn. The rooftop session will take place June 24 from 12:30 to 4 p.m. local time. Spaces are limited; you can register your interest here.

Billion Dollar Boy is a Tubefilter partner.