Everyone knows LinkedIn. Our issue is not awareness or even participation, with over 700 million members worldwide.

But the encroachment of humble brags and career announcements into members’ feeds has obscured the true purpose – to be a real, vibrant community of professionals growing together.

THE CHALLENGE

The richness of the community on LinkedIn (and ever-evolving nature of their content and conversation) is LinkedIn’s best kept secret.

A secret we needed to unlock by getting members to follow those who are active content posters.

Without that, members don’t get the content that could enliven their feeds and bring that richer experience to life. But how do you follow people and conversations when you don’t even know they exist?

BRIEF

Move the experience on LinkedIn away from basic functionality and stereotypical depictions, and instead bring to life what it means to be professional for one of our members – Gabrielle Union.

Redefining professional means breaking down barriers surrounding the world of work.

Vulnerability. Transparency. Truth. That’s professional.

This campaign aims to shift the narrative from the polished and practiced to the raw and real.

When we’re honest at work about our goals, our happiness, our disappointments and struggles, we connect in a powerful way that can create change and success.

Enter Gabrielle Union: talented and passionate actor, activist, producer, entrepreneur, and Mom. She’s a leading voice in authentically being yourself, and that’s what makes her the perfect person to lead honest conversations about what it means to be your real professional self today. The Real Professional card game tackles a variety of topics that she has personal experience with and prompts her unfiltered and honest responses. In turn those responses welcome all Professionals to LinkedIn to listen and self-define professionalism, together.

OUR STRATEGY

Rather than promote a type of content, or the existence of this rich community, our strategy was to use the exceptional story of one of our members to engage people with a level of honesty not usually associated with the platform. By doing so we wanted to viscerally connect Member to Member and build the community through community.

The strategy was not simply to change perceptions of the brand, or even tackle the misperceptions of the platform, it was to drive meaningful engagement with our target – infrequent members who visit the platform less than once a week.

OUR APPROACH

To give people a taster experience and unlock the realness of the LinkedIn community by shining a spotlight on an exceptional example within it.

To drive meaningful conversations on LinkedIn, with the aim to break down barriers surrounding the world of work, we focused on sparking those conversations directly on the platform. A content series “Getting Real with Gabrielle Union” in which she spoke about Imposter syndrome, scarcity, mental health and intersectional feminism was posted from Gabrielle’s profile and LinkedIn’s handle on LinkedIn and the conversation ensued. The content was specifically cadenced so Gabrielle’s could contribute to cultural periods: Black History Month and Women’s History Month. :15s and :06s of Gabrielle’s powerful responses were placed on other social channels to drive members to LinkedIn. Gabrielle leveraged her social following, posting bespoke content to her Instagram Stories and TikTok. Gabrielle did an interview with Daniel Roth, Editor in Chief of LinkedIn News where she discussed uplifting other Black entrepreneurs, in a Q&A with LinkedIn Content Creators and directly to LinkedIn employees to spark internal conversation.

CHANGE IN SENTIMENT

The campaign enjoyed an overwhelmingly positive sentiment on Social Media with a ratio of positive-to-Neutral of 74%.

RESULTED IN MORE ENGAGEMENT

We also drove engagements on LI by three times average Influencers engagements (exceeding all paid benchmarks).

GROWTH IN FOLLOWERS

Gabrielle Union also fueled a 63% growth of members choosing to follow other people on the platform engaging in important conversions. Which not only demonstrated the success of the campaign in engaging members with the content itself, but by following Gabrielle it helped shape the nature of their feeds going forward.