The two most important assets of just about any organization are its people and its money. As an HR and Finance software provider, Workday helps you manage both, with data and insights that keep businesses competitive. Our audience is the people in charge of the workforce and the software they need: CFOs, CHROs, and CIOs.
Traditionally, these teams have been part of 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. They’re now center stage when it comes to tackling complex challenges, and there’s a lot of information being thrown at them daily.
Workday needed to cut through the clutter and occupy a more salient role in their minds - which meant bridging the gap between inspired, interesting work and incredibly niche (and overcrowded) media spaces. To meet our audience’s business needs, Workday had to showcase itself as a breakthrough, inspiring, exciting, and innovative partner.
If we wanted to reach our corporate audience - and get them to pay attention - we couldn’t act like every other B2B brand. We had to break convention. Think beyond traditional messaging and influencers. And what better place to do it than the beating social media heart of corporate America: LinkedIn. We decided to disrupt the normal daily feed of LinkedIn by launching the very first B2B rock star influencer – Billy Idol.
For the first time in LinkedIn history, a rock star became a B2B Influencer. With our help and in partnership with LinkedIn, Billy Idol created his own, legitimate profile. Billy entered the corporate stratosphere by boldly going where no rock star has dared to go before, and trolled corporate types with a warning: yes, Workday might make them great at their jobs, but they still can’t call each other rock stars. In doing so, LinkedIn became a creative platform…instead of a networking platform.
We created a layered engagement strategy designed to utilize the platform to its fullest potential through a combined Owned, Earned, and Paid activation, all with Billy Idol, professional rock star extraordinaire as our creative storytelling constant. In fact, Workday was the first brand to use LinkedIn and boosted organic content as the creative vehicle – rather than a box to check on the media plan.
We infiltrated the LinkedIn timeline with five bespoke social posts throughout the year with scroll-stopping video and long-form content trolling corporate types. Billy penned sassy thought leadership, posted videos calling out corporate types who dared to call each other ‘rock stars’, and goaded them again with posts directed at Workday’s CMO (full of secret compliments to Workday, of course).
Finally, Billy entered the comment section to keep the conversation going and push engagement back to Workday’s LinkedIn page. Billy engaged directly with Workday's top customers, executives, and industry thought leaders, provoking new engagement that disrupted the business-as-usual LinkedIn feed. And the social media debate continues to live on through comments, posts, and even job listings – are corporate rock stars even rock stars?
Our idea was rooted in our primary goal: to make Workday’s software a top-of-mind tool for rapidly growing organizations. However, to resonate with our select target—the C-suite—we decided to go beyond their inboxes because execs are inundated with 100+ emails a day (Belkins).
And we knew that engaging our audience with B2B content was going to be a challenge. 82% of business decision makers (BDMs) agreed B2B marketing is ‘boring, predictable’ (Alan Agency), and despite 75% of B2B marketers using influencer marketing, there are 6x as many influencers on Instagram than on LinkedIn (Sources: Ogilvy, Trendhero, Espirian). To capture attention in the B2B space, we needed to stand out from the sea of sameness.
By flipping the B2B marketing model on its head - and going for humanity and humor instead of rational messaging - we were able to not only reach our audience but also become an innovator on LinkedIn.
Seeing a snarling, leather-clad Billy Idol on LinkedIn trolling execs and trying to prove his worth disrupted the normal day-to-day business conversation, got people talking on LinkedIn, and delivered comedy gold. And Billy’s not done yet…keep an eye out for the encore!
Billy’s first video post resulted in a 12.36% engagement rate, 234% higher than LinkedIn’s 3.69% ER benchmark and 19,300% higher than the Workday page average ER. His posts have gathered a total of 3.1M social media impressions to date. Billy’s LinkedIn thought leader ads on average see a 1,169% higher Engagement Rate against other Workday ads. Workday was also the first brand to promote a non-employee thought leadership ad on the platform.
In addition, the (corporate) crowd went wild. Comment sentiment for Billy’s video post was overwhelmingly positive, with a groundswell of commentary from the exact corporate types we hoped to reach, current and prospective users of Workday.
Billy wasn’t the only one to gather attention, though. Workday gained over 20,000 new followers in the 20 days after Billy’s LinkedIn profile and his first post went live, an increase of 20.6% (vs. the previous 21 days).
And Billy’s not retired quite yet. He continues to troll the corporate types and Workday. From “sort of” congratulating Workday on making the Fortune 500, to a thought leadership piece around Vegas during Workday’s largest conference of the year: Rising. That simple copy and image post garnered an astounding 14.9% ER.
We’re continuing to facilitate new ways for him to engage our audience during key moments - including Workday’s events around the country and surrounding his own professional updates. Where will Billy pop up next? Corporate types better watch their back (and their LinkedIn feeds!).
