A growing number of women are turning LinkedIn into more than just a job-hunting platform — they’re using it as a stage for innovative and self-made marketing campaign ideas that demonstrate their marketing savvy. Aspiring creative and brand strategists are making an effort to get on the radar, directly pursuing the brands they admire and sometimes landing contracts in the process.
Pitches were quietly submitted via cold emails, but the LinkedIn community is embracing a public platform to pitch big ideas. They post mock campaigns and strategic proposals directly to their profiles, using the site’s professional reach to get their work in front of brand decision-makers. A trend that is truly effective in landing opportunities. Social media is blurring the lines between personal branding and business strategy.
Whether these self-initiated briefs are treated as full-scale client work or simply as creative explorations to flex your skills. “You have to be very confident in your skillset, and I think that’s one way to really build your confidence in just sharing your ideas,” said Chamiya Campbell, a marketing and brand strategist from Washington DC, who designed a brand partnership pitch, Glossier, Inc. x WNBA (Women’s National Basketball Association) Game Ready Beauty, and posted it as a slideshow to her LinkedIn feed and since she uploaded the post has over 6,000 views—and comments from Glossier beauty lovers and basketball fans.
With a master’s in fashion and business management, Campbell found her voice in fashion and beauty. “I’m a beauty lover in general. You don’t wanna know how many Sephora points I rack up,” Campbell remarks. “I think those two industries can be very hard to get your foot in the door. As a black woman coming into marketing and the industry, it can be very hard, and it can be like, well, where do you start?” Campbell said.
Behind each mini-campaign is a unique creative process that blends trend awareness, intuition, and personal insight in different ways. Campbell highlights the importance of identifying gaps in the market. “Glossier has been the WNBA partner for about four years, but they haven’t released a product. So I was like, there’s the gap. There’s the trend—Sha’Carri Richardson and her nails on the track or NBA players wearing full-beat faces on the court. There is a push and a want there from consumers,” Campbell says.
Rather than waiting for opportunities to create briefs or brand invitations, they took a proactive approach—developing and sharing their campaign pitches. “The projects and ideas that I was thinking of were more creative and what I would personally like to see. Each campaign pitch or idea I’m putting online is heavily fact-based to back it up with statistics. If the companies were to reach out, I could fully pitch the idea in the real world, too,” Campbell says.
While it might seem more direct to send a pitch straight to a brand (which they did), they’ve found that posting publicly can be far more effective in gaining attention. Visibility plays a key role in getting noticed beyond a generic inbox. “The companies are not going to reach out to you. I think that has just always been a struggle. They don’t know you because you’re not in their in-house team. They’re like, who is this person?” Campbell said.
Brands often don’t intentionally ignore pitches—they may overlook them, mistaking them for spam. By posting pitches online, creators increase their visibility and improve the chances that someone within the brand’s network, even beyond the direct marketing contact, will see the work. “I also just think that in full transparency, the job market has been difficult, and if you can’t find a job, become the job,” Campbell said.
“There’s a space growing for LinkedIn creators, and LinkedIn influencers are starting to become a thing—bringing a more dynamic and creative style to the platform normally on TikTok,” Campbell said. This shift in how creators share their ideas isn’t just changing how work gets noticed—it’s also pushing brands to rethink how closely they’re connected to their audiences, especially culturally. “That’s why it’s important to have creative strategists, brand strategists who are tapped into the community. Tune into the community more than anything. Oftentimes, brands almost hit the mark and almost get the idea, but they’re not as tapped into what their consumers actually want; they sometimes miss the mark,” Campbell said.
Forbes 30 Under 30 honoree and Founder of Miss EmpowHer, Caitlin Kumi, launched her marketing career as a Marketing Manager at Google—proof that strategy, creativity, and vision can be a powerful trifecta. But beyond building brand campaigns for one of the world’s biggest tech giants, she’s equally committed to building community—especially for women. Whether mentoring or empowering women, she uses her platform to help them navigate their careers and build wealth.
Kumi believes that consistency is key, which has been her guiding philosophy, “It just really takes one post, one moment, one yes, to change your life,” Kumi said. Kumi pinpoints that it always depends on the context and emphasizes that building a presence involves more than just posting on LinkedIn. “It’s also about the quality of your connections. If you know you are trying to land a job in a certain industry, you want to make sure you have connections that target companies and industries. It’s not just about mindlessly posting; you want to ensure that the audience you’re posting to is interested in your content. Because when they like and engage with your content, their audience is more likely to see that,” Kumi said.
For companies that you may consider pitching, brands set their budgets months or even a year in advance, so if you miss that planning window, there may be no extra budget available later on. “I believe when there’s the right opportunity, sometimes the budget just magically appears. When something starts to get traction or like motion on social media, brands and marketing teams like to capitalize on that moment,” Kumi said.
When asked how she found her voice on LinkedIn—earning recognition as a Top Voice—she shared that it came down to experimentation and treating her personal brand like a business. Social listening also played a significant role. Your audience will tell you what they want—through likes, shares, and comments. And even when engagement is quiet, if you really take the time to understand your audience, you can create content that resonates deeply. “I’m a marketer, so I naturally approached it like an A/B test. I’d develop three to five rough ideas, test them, and then double down on what was working while deprioritizing what wasn’t. Major corporations do, so treat yourself like a major corporation,” Kumi said.
LinkedIn has also become a stage for those underrepresented in leadership roles in advertising and marketing. LinkedIn allows you to bypass the gatekeepers and make yourself—and your thinking—undeniable. You have to bet on yourself, which means putting your best work where the right people can’t ignore it. It’s about owning your ideas on public platforms.