Hogan Lovells faced a social media challenge when it came to graduate recruitment. It felt its existing content was failing to engage the audience and was too corporate, so needed a fresh approach. It needed to align with evolving social media algorithms, which favour authenticity and full-screen, social-first film content. It also needed to reflect Hogan Lovells’ employer brand essence of being “defined by difference”, with content that stood out against other firms’ recruitment campaigns. One brave move was a leap into TikTok – so far an uncharted platform for the legal sector.

The new campaign prioritises Instagram and TikTok, enabling it to reach a diverse pool of students, including those from non-traditional legal backgrounds. To test TikTok as a channel, sb.inc and Hogan Lovells hosted a successful TikTok invite event, showcasing the platform’s potential to appeal to a wider audience. The content itself uses humour and memes rather than static corporate content, adapting current social media trends to Hogan Lovells’ niche. The film’s star current trainees, vacation scheme students, recruiters and partners to add authenticity and credibility to the channels. Students are invited to ask questions and responses are delivered via video, and they can meet each other and connect via the channel.

The TikTok event was oversubscribed and many of the potential recruits were from non-traditional law backgrounds or had diverse characteristics. Hogan Lovells has significantly more TikTok followers than any other recruiting law firm and has achieved a substantial increase in its Instagram following too. Feedback from students has been positive on both channels and the new approach has successfully rejuvenated the firm’s brand among students.