Workday is a finance and HR company with 50% of the Fortune 500 as customers. While it has grown massively since its founding in 2005, it struggles with brand awareness among prospective buyers: C-suite executives. To meet its goal of reaching $10 billion in annual revenue by 2025, Workday had to think big. We knew dramatic results would not be achieved by acting like every other B2B brand. So we flipped the business marketing model and injected the brand into pop culture. We went from narrow, rational, product-focused marketing to a wider, more emotional, fame-driven approach.

“You’re such a rock star!” Inside the halls of many offices, this is the ultimate compliment for a job well done. But how does that make real rock stars feel? The legends who have trained, toured and lived the hard rocker life to earn the title? Workday, the finance and HR company responsible for creating more rock stars than any other, enlisted three rock legends who went to find corporate types on their own turf and personally deliver the message: “Stop calling each other rock stars!” From crashing the office, to finding execs on the golf course, to making Billy Idol a B2B Influencer on LinkedIn- a first for Billy and the platform- the campaign took rock star rebellion and brought it straight to the corporate world, disrupting the usual B2B conversation.

The two most important assets of just about any organization are its people and its money. Because Workday helps you manage both, our audience was the people in charge of the workforce and the software they needed: CFOs (Chief Financial Officers), CHRO (Chief Human Resource Officers), and CIOs (Chief Information officers).

Traditionally, these have been back-office functions. Boring, predictable, and hardly sexy. If the software they used wasn’t broken, they weren’t looking for something new. But over the last several years, digital transformation has fundamentally changed the nature of their jobs and the challenges they’re looking to solve.

To help Workday grow, we needed to resonate with all of them – not just HR. And to help Workday truly break out from our B2B bubble, we needed to occupy a more salient role in their minds.

‘Rock Stars of Business” brought together three musical icons: Gwen Stefani Travis Barker, and Billy Idol to meet corporate execs on their own turf and continue to deliver message on behalf of the rock community: Stop calling each other rock stars. The legends popped up in cubicles, in the break room, in conference rooms, even the elevator, surprising execs with their signature style and talents, and delivering a sharp warning: Workday might make you great at finance and HR, but it doesn’t make you a rock star.

Our launch brought together an integrated band including exec comms, organic social, digital video, employees, paid media and PR. This TV spot represented Workday’s strongest concerted paid global launch, garnering over 25.3MM video impressions leveraging TV, social and digital video. Organic social continues to drive brand awareness with 3.1M+ social media impressions, 210K organic engagements, 513 mentions holding strong with a 99% positive/neutral sentiment, and 1.1K Workmate social shares. Workday was first to market with new LinkedIn capability boosting organic thought leader content with Billy Idol’s post resulting in a 12.36% engagement rate (234% higher than the 3.69% ER benchmark). Earned media included 16 high-profile media articles in top ad, broadcast, business, lifestyle, and tech outlets around the world. Our full-funnel approach delivered a 24x increase in visits to the campaign page, a 12x increase in engagement, and a historically low 54% bounce rate.