Marketers have long relied on Hollywood’s leading men for endorsements. Think Daniel Craig for Loewe, Robert Pattinson for Dior, or Matthew McConaughey for Lincoln.
Now, the Swedish legal AI startup Legora has Jude Law.
Last month, Legora debuted a campaign centered around the idea that “law just got more attractive.” Law, for anyone unfamiliar, was crowned Sexiest Man Alive by People magazine in 2004. Get it?
“The legal AI company Legora called me. Ring, ring,” Law says in one spot, using a stapler on the desk he’s sitting at to mimic a phone. “‘Hello, Mr. Law…Will you be the incredible face of our new brand?’ I told them, ‘Ugh, yeah sure, but let’s not make this about me. Let’s make this about me talking about your brand, Legora, in an attractive way.’”
The campaign is a play to drive brand awareness for the company as it rapidly scales, Stuart Shingler, VP of marketing at the startup, told Marketing Brew. The brand, which was most recently valued at $5.6 billion, closed a $550 million Series D funding round in March and attracted another $50 million at the end of April. The tech is already used by companies like the bank Barclays and the law firm Linklaters, and to attract more corporate customers, it’s working on diversifying its marketing strategy, developing athlete partnerships in the sports world, and building OOH campaigns in key legal hubs like London and New York.
The star-centric strategy is somewhat standout for an enterprise software company, as celebrity spokespeople are often far more common in the world of consumer-facing goods and services. But the world of AI-assisted legal services is growing fast; fellow legal AI startup Harvey raised a cool $200 million itself in March, and the AI-powered legal tech sector is projected to grow rapidly in the coming years.
Designed in collaboration with Swedish agency NoA Åkestam Holst, Legora’s campaign was designed to not only grab attention, but also explain what the company is to consumers, Shingler said.
“We felt that there was this cultural tension in people’s aspirations of what it would be like to be a lawyer and what actually the day-to-day had become, which was very admin-laden,” he said. “We said to [the agency], ‘Give us something that’s going to get talked about.’”
Mix it up
Legora is promoting the Law campaign globally, Shingler said, including through LinkedIn, which has been a prominent hub for Legora given that it’s a B2B enterprise sales company. The broad-based appeal of Law and the creative itself means Legora is also going broader, including posting on TikTok and Instagram, he told us.
Get marketing news you’ll actually want to read
Marketing Brew informs marketing pros of the latest on brand strategy, social media, and ad tech via our weekday newsletter, virtual events, marketing conferences, and digital guides.
Legora also invested in print and OOH for the campaign, with a focus on key legal hubs like New York, which Shingler called “the epicenter of the legal world,” as well as London.
Shingler’s hope is that the ads starring Law will help Legora stand out from other AI companies, whose ad creative, he said, tends to look alike.
“A lot of people can picture in their head right now what an AI-native company’s billboard looks like,” he said. “There is a bit of a pattern to how a lot of AI companies are presenting themselves to the world. We thought, we can really stand out as being something different if we take a very different approach. OOH would give us an excellent chance to do that.”
OOH has been a key marketing medium for Legora even outside of the Law campaign. The company has shown up at legal conferences, including New York’s Legalweek, which took place in March, Shingler said; Legora took out OOH ads on transit routes that conference attendees were likely to take to the event and wrapped vehicles used for transportation to and from the conference.
It also activated around the Masters in Augusta, Georgia, last month, according to Shingler. The company bought billboard space near Augusta Regional Airport and on the way to Augusta National, where the tournament is held.
Why did Legora show up near a golf tournament? It probably doesn’t hurt that lawyers tend to love golf, and the company has been beefing up its sports partnerships more broadly, Shingler said. Highlighting athlete stories is a key part of Legora’s broader sports partnership strategy, he told us.
“It’s more effective to have a story that people can relate to than to just be one of many logos that get seen when people turn up to a match,” he said.
In March, the company partnered with Swedish golfer Ludvig Åberg and his caddie, Joe Skovron, on a campaign. The ad, shot in black and white, features Åberg golfing with Skovron and displays the text, “We are to lawyers what caddies are to golfers.” In April, Legora tapped seven-time MLB All-Star Aaron Judge and his team, the New York Yankees, for another partnership centered on the idea of “the long game.”
“We want to do something that resonates in New York, but again, find the stories that we can do [with] the athletes,” Shingler said, adding that partnerships like that one are “something that we will continue to do.”
