LinkedIn partnered with Park Pictures, Cartel, and The Mill to launch 'That's Premium,' the first-ever brand campaign for LinkedIn Premium, running across the
LinkedIn Bets on Cinematic Storytelling to Launch Its First Premium Brand Campaign
LinkedIn's 'That's Premium' is the platform's first-ever dedicated brand campaign for LinkedIn Premium, launched in February 2024 in the United States, comprising three cinematic films distributed across connected TV, paid social, paid digital, online video, and creators, and running through mid-March 2024.
LinkedIn, the world's largest professional network, entered new creative territory with this campaign. Rather than defaulting to feature-led product advertising, the brand commissioned three fully realised narrative films — titled 'Office,' 'Presentation,' and 'Interview' — each dramatising a recognisable moment from a professional's working life. The central creative premise holds that LinkedIn Premium offers professionals a smarter, more confident path to opportunity, and the campaign expresses that premise through whimsical metaphor and unexpected storytelling rather than direct demonstration. The Clapboard Score for 'That's Premium' is 71 out of 100, reflecting strong creative ambition and production craft within a category not traditionally known for either.
The campaign reached audiences across the United States through a broad multi-channel media plan. Connected TV placements positioned the films as genuine broadcast-quality content. Paid social and paid digital executions extended reach across professional and general audiences, while online video formats allowed the full narrative arcs to breathe. The inclusion of creators as a channel signals LinkedIn's intent to meet professionals inside their existing content habits rather than interrupting them. The campaign ran from its February 2024 launch through mid- to late March 2024, according to coverage published by Ads of the World and Ads of Brands, giving it a concentrated but meaningful window across the US market during a period of documented professional restlessness.
LinkedIn Premium sits inside a competitive professional services landscape defined by genuine consumer uncertainty. According to the primary campaign brief cited by Ads of the World, 85 percent of professionals in the United States were considering changing jobs in 2024 — a figure that gives the 'That's Premium' campaign both its urgency and its emotional permission structure. That level of career mobility intent represents an unusually large addressable audience for a premium subscription product, and it explains why LinkedIn chose 2024 as the moment to make its first dedicated brand investment in the Premium tier.
The global online recruitment market provides additional strategic context. According to Ken Research and Global Growth Insights, the market was estimated at roughly 30 to 37 billion dollars globally in 2024, growing at approximately six to seven percent annually. In the United States, where LinkedIn commands the dominant position in professional networking, that growth trajectory makes the case for investing in brand awareness rather than purely performance-led acquisition. The campaign's multi-channel approach — spanning connected TV, paid social, paid digital, and online video — reflects a deliberate effort to move LinkedIn Premium from a feature understood primarily by power users into a benefit understood by the broader professional population.
LinkedIn Premium competes for subscription spend and professional attention against platforms including Indeed and ZipRecruiter, both of which have invested heavily in performance-based recruitment marketing in the US market. Where those competitors tend to emphasise volume of job listings and speed of matching, LinkedIn's strategic choice with 'That's Premium' is to emphasise personal growth, confidence, and insider intelligence. The campaign's core proof point — that LinkedIn Premium subscribers are 2.6 times more likely to get hired on average, as stated in LinkedIn's own campaign materials — anchors an emotionally resonant creative strategy in a concrete, competitive claim.
Terence Neale directed all three films in the 'That's Premium' campaign. Neale, a Cannes Grand Prix-winning filmmaker working through Park Pictures, brought a visual sensibility more commonly associated with prestige drama than professional services advertising. According to LBB Online, Neale was drawn to the campaign's themes of imposter syndrome and awkward human interaction — territory that sits at the intersection of comedy, vulnerability, and professional aspiration. That emotional specificity gives each film a distinct tonal character while keeping the three executions coherent as a campaign system.
The cinematography was handled by Kaname Onoyama, whose work gives the films their polished, widescreen quality. Production design and set design were led by Pirra, whose environments — an open-plan office, a presentation room, an interview setting — are instantly recognisable to any working professional in the United States while being stylised just enough to signal the films' heightened, whimsical register. Composer Sam Spiegelman provided original music, and the edit was handled by Leo Scott of Cartel, whose rhythm and pacing give the metaphorical storytelling room to land without overstaying. The Mill served as post-production house, with creative direction in post led by Matt Pascuzzi. Executive producer Rozanne Rocha-Gray oversaw production, with Jim Cole serving as first assistant director.
The creative team behind the campaign included Tavia Holmes, Ian Campbell Hill, and Rebecca Friedman. LBB Online described the films as highly cinematic and whimsical, noting that the approach positioned LinkedIn Premium as a practical career-advancement tool rather than a networking subscription. Each of the three films — 'Office,' 'Presentation,' and 'Interview' — uses a specific LinkedIn Premium feature as its narrative engine, allowing product utility and emotional storytelling to operate simultaneously rather than in sequence. The result is advertising that functions as content, a deliberate strategy for connected TV and online video environments where audience patience for conventional formats is limited.
No independently verified third-party performance metrics for the 'That's Premium' campaign are publicly available at the time of writing. LinkedIn has not published figures relating to paid subscriber growth, click-through rates, or brand lift studies attributable to this campaign in the United States.
The campaign did, however, receive recognition from the Webby Awards with a nomination in the Branded Content — Business to Business category, according to the Webby Awards official results page. That nomination places 'That's Premium' among a small group of brand campaigns judged to have achieved meaningful creative distinction within the professional and B2B content space — a significant signal for a platform entering brand advertising for its Premium product for the first time.
Structurally, the campaign demonstrates several characteristics associated with effective performance across connected TV and paid digital environments. The use of three distinct films rather than a single hero creative reduces frequency fatigue across a multi-week run, a particular advantage in a campaign that extended from February through mid- to late March 2024 in the US market. The whimsical narrative device in each film creates a moment of genuine surprise — a proven mechanism for halting passive scroll behaviour in paid social and online video contexts. The multi-channel deployment across connected TV, paid social, paid digital, and online video, supplemented by a creator channel, reflects a layered reach strategy designed to compound awareness rather than rely on any single format. The Clapboard Score of 71 out of 100 reflects the campaign's successful execution of an ambitious creative brief, tempered by the absence of verified performance data and the challenge of measuring brand-level impact for a subscription product in a competitive professional services market.
'That's Premium' is LinkedIn's first dedicated brand campaign for LinkedIn Premium, launched in the United States in February 2024. It comprises three cinematic films directed by Terence Neale of Park Pictures, distributed across connected TV, paid social, paid digital, and online video, running through mid-March 2024.
Terence Neale of Park Pictures directed all three films. Neale is a Cannes Grand Prix-winning filmmaker. The campaign also involved editor Leo Scott of Cartel, post-production house The Mill with creative direction by Matt Pascuzzi, and cinematographer Kaname Onoyama.
The campaign highlights LinkedIn Premium tools including Top Applicant Jobs and LinkedIn Learning. According to LinkedIn's own campaign materials, Premium subscribers are 2.6 times more likely to get hired on average, and the three films each dramatise a distinct career situation tied to these features.
LinkedIn ran 'That's Premium' exclusively in the United States. The campaign appeared across connected TV, paid social, paid digital, online video, and creators, launching in February 2024 and running through mid- to late March 2024, according to coverage by Ads of the World and Ads of Brands.
The campaign received a Webby Awards nomination in the Branded Content — Business to Business category, according to the Webby Awards official results page. No additional verified award wins are publicly documented at the time of writing. The campaign holds a Clapboard Score of 71 out of 100.
LinkedIn launched 'That's Premium' in response to documented professional restlessness in the United States. According to LinkedIn's campaign brief as cited by Ads of the World, 85 percent of US professionals were considering changing jobs in 2024, creating a large and motivated audience for a career-advancement subscription product.
.webp)
Creative Collaboration Platform: The Backbone of Modern Creative WorkWhat is a creative collaboration platform?Clapboard defines a creative collaboration platform as the operational core for today’s distributed creative teams. This is not a collection of digital collaboration tools stitched together; Clapboard’s system
Understanding the Creative Production MarketplaceWhat is a Creative Production Marketplace?Clapboard defines a creative production marketplace as a structured ecosystem where brands, agencies, and production talent converge to execute video, advertising, and branded content at scale. Unlike the legacy agency or freelanREAD FULL ARTICLE
The Urgent Need for a Creative Production Operating SystemWhy Traditional Creative Production Models Break DownClapboard sees the creative production landscape shifting under pressure. Content velocity is no longer a buzzword—it’s a mandate. Modern advertising demands relentless output across dozens of channels, each wREAD FULL ARTICLE
