How Weightmans leveraged storytelling to strengthen its brand

In an industry known for formality and hard edges, one UK law firm set out to humanise its brand through the power of storytelling. Weightmans – a top 40 UK law firm with nearly 200 years of heritage – launched its first-ever brand campaign in late 2024, taking a bold and deeply personal storytelling approach.

By spotlighting the childhood memories of its own leaders, Weightmans aimed to demonstrate that it is “the antithesis of the stereotypical, cutthroat, working-all-hours law firm”. The result was a campaign that resonated emotionally with audiences, delivered tangible business outcomes, and earned significant industry recognition.

This case study explores how Weightmans used storytelling to reframe its B2B brand, the challenges the firm set out to overcome, the strategy and execution behind the campaign, and the key lessons B2B marketers can take from its success.

Brand background and challenge

Weightmans LLP is a £123 million-turnover legal firm with offices across the UK, known for serving corporate and public sector clients. While the firm held a strong position in the market, it shared a common challenge with many in the legal sector: a perception of being overly corporate, aggressive, and impersonal. Legal marketing has traditionally leaned towards conservatism, often reinforcing a hard-edged, formal image.

Internally, Weightmans had already articulated a new brand purpose – “See the Possibility” – reflecting its belief in finding opportunities where others see obstacles. However, this purpose had yet to translate externally in a meaningful or visible way. The firm had done little broad marketing, and the brand’s differentiating values weren’t widely understood.

The challenge was twofold. First, to change market perceptions by presenting a more human, people-focused image of the firm. Second, to embed this new brand purpose internally, ensuring that employees not only believed in it but consistently conveyed it. As Sarah-Jane Howitt, the firm’s director of business development and communications, put it: “We wanted to demonstrate how we are the antithesis of the stereotypical, cutthroat, working-all-hours law firm so often envisaged.” To do this, Weightmans needed to move well beyond the standard corporate approach and embrace a more emotional, narrative-led style of marketing.

The storytelling strategy

Weightmans tackled the challenge with a strategy built on authentic personal storytelling. Instead of showcasing client wins or technical expertise, the campaign focused on the background stories of its own people – from senior partners to junior lawyers – to bring the firm’s values to life.

Liverpool-based agency Aurora was briefed to sideline the usual corporate tone and instead use emotion and nostalgia to spotlight the human side of the firm’s leadership. The campaign concept was tightly aligned with the “See the Possibility” purpose, presenting the idea that the personal journeys of Weightmans’ people reflect the firm’s ethos of finding potential in every situation.

The approach drew directly from childhood experiences. Leaders shared photos and memories from their youth, creating an emotional through-line between their past aspirations and their current roles. By showing how childhood dreams evolved into careers in law, the campaign created a powerful narrative of growth, authenticity, and purpose. It painted the firm not as a faceless legal entity but as a collective of real people with values and stories to share.

Crucially, this wasn’t just a marketing story – it was a cultural one. Launching the campaign internally first gave employees the chance to see themselves in the brand and feel ownership of the narrative. The stories being told were their own. This inside-out approach strengthened trust in the campaign and ensured the firm’s people would act as its most authentic advocates when the campaign rolled out externally.

At its core, this was a people-first, purpose-driven storytelling strategy. Rather than crafting a polished corporate message, Weightmans let its culture speak for itself – and it did so by empowering its employees to tell their stories in their own words. The result was a brand campaign that not only challenged industry expectations but also made the firm feel genuinely different in a sector often criticised for its sameness.

Execution and content approach

Weightmans’ storytelling campaign took shape as a multimedia content initiative centred on a short film. The flagship content piece, a 90-second video titled Real Leaders, featured genuine employees—including the managing partner and other senior staff—sharing childhood memories alongside present-day reflections. The film opened with nostalgic images of these individuals as children and teenagers, before transitioning to footage of them in their current roles at the firm.

This juxtaposition of “as a young child and as they are now” provided a warm, relatable contrast that underscored how early values and inspirations carried through into professional life. Rather than presenting the firm as a faceless legal machine, the campaign painted a picture of real people with heart, depth, and purpose. It conveyed the message that Weightmans is powered by its people—emphasising authenticity over polish by using real employees rather than actors.

The core video was supported by shorter edits and visual snippets tailored for social media. LinkedIn was chosen as the primary platform, targeting the firm’s B2B audience of clients and prospects. Already ranked as the second most engaged UK law firm on LinkedIn, Weightmans capitalised on this strength by encouraging its 1,500+ staff to share the campaign and post their own “leadership journey” stories using the hashtag #SeeThePossibility. These personal posts extended the reach and authenticity of the campaign, with every employee story acting as an organic continuation of the main narrative.

Execution was fast and integrated. The agency partner, Aurora, delivered the full campaign—from creative concept and video production to internal rollout and follow-on materials—within six weeks. Alongside the film, the team coordinated an internal launch event, produced thought leadership articles, and planned follow-up events to sustain momentum.

The campaign was rolled out across multiple channels, with the hero video appearing on LinkedIn, Weightmans’ website, and additional digital platforms. Importantly, this was not conceived as a one-off marketing push. It marked the first phase in a longer-term brand-building programme, which would include further films, articles, and even in-person events to continually reinforce the firm’s See the Possibility ethos.

Despite a modest budget and tight timeline, the creative execution felt anything but limited. The ingenuity on display earned recognition, including a Drum Award for Best Limited Budget Campaign. Supplementary content such as quirky animated shorts added an extra layer of charm and engagement. One such animation—featuring a metaphor involving a brick and an egg—performed particularly well, highlighting the brand’s ability to convey meaningful messages in a light and memorable way.

Every piece of content was crafted to be evergreen and shareable, enabling employees and partners to continue spreading the story in their own words. By making its people both the protagonists and the messengers, Weightmans ensured that its campaign retained a consistent, human voice across every touchpoint.

Results and impact

Weightmans’ Real Leaders campaign delivered not just emotional resonance, but measurable brand and business results. On LinkedIn, where the firm targeted its core B2B audience, the campaign significantly outperformed industry benchmarks. The video view rate reached 38.2%, exceeding the 35% high-performance threshold, while the video completion rate came in at 3.6%—well above the 2% benchmark typically seen for top-performing content. This suggests the stories were compelling enough to hold viewers’ attention from start to finish.

Cost-efficiency added to the campaign’s strength. The team achieved a cost per thousand impressions (CPM) of £9.40, around one-third below average for this audience. In short, the firm generated above-average engagement at below-average cost—an enviable outcome in any marketing effort.

This early momentum translated into wider brand impact. By April 2024, just a few months after launch, Weightmans had climbed to 5th place among the UK’s top 200 law firms in terms of average social post performance, putting it on par with firms significantly larger in size. Internally, the campaign energised staff, many of whom proudly shared their own leadership stories online. One lawyer reportedly became a LinkedIn influencer through regular, authentic participation in the campaign—demonstrating how powerful the initiative was in fostering brand advocacy from within.

According to Managing Partner John Schorah, the campaign didn’t just shape external perceptions but helped bring the firm’s purpose to life from the inside out. “Our purpose, See the Possibility, [has] come to life over the last year,” he said, “not only through our communications but in how our people have adopted and embraced it at every level of the firm.”

That cultural alignment was matched by tangible business growth. In the year following the campaign’s launch, Weightmans saw revenue rise by 12.6%. While no campaign works in isolation, Aurora’s case study described Real Leaders as a key lever in that performance. Weightmans itself credited the brand refresh as a contributing factor to one of its strongest financial years on record.

Recognition from the industry soon followed. At the 2025 LexisNexis Legal Awards, Weightmans won the Business Development Award, beating other leading firms’ campaigns. The campaign also secured global honours at the Drum Awards, taking home trophies for both Best Social Media Campaign and Best Limited Budget Campaign. These accolades offered validation that Real Leaders was not just a heartfelt brand moment—it was a strategic success that delivered on both cultural and commercial objectives.

Lessons for B2B marketers

Weightmans’ experience offers several insightful takeaways for B2B marketers looking to strengthen their brands through storytelling:

• Humanize your brand with authentic stories: Even in B2B industries, buyers are people driven by emotion and trust. Weightmans won hearts by sharing real personal stories of its team, making the brand relatable and memorable​. Authentic storytelling can humanize a corporate brand and build stronger emotional connections.

• Dare to defy industry norms: In a conservative sector that “usually” sticks to safe messaging, Weightmans stood out by doing something different – embracing nostalgia and warmth over jargon and polish​. Challenging your industry’s marketing stereotypes can be a powerful way to differentiate your brand in the minds of customers.

• Align storytelling with core purpose and values: A story strategy is most effective when it’s rooted in what your company genuinely stands for. Weightmans’ campaign was anchored to its See the Possibility purpose and showcased the firm’s people-focused values in action​. This alignment ensured the storytelling was credible and reinforcing of the desired brand positioning.

• Engage employees as brand advocates: The campaign’s reach was amplified by empowering Weightmans employees to participate and share content​. B2B marketers should remember that employees can be some of the best storytellers for your brand. When staff are proud of the story and eager to spread it, your message travels farther and carries greater authenticity.

• Integrate across channels and touchpoints: Storytelling in B2B works best as a sustained, multi-channel effort rather than a one-off ad. Weightmans combined video, social media, internal communications, PR, and future events into one holistic program​me. This ensured the narrative was repeatedly reinforced and reached audiences wherever they were, creating a larger cumulative impact.

• Measure impact and celebrate success: Finally, Weightmans tied its storytelling initiative to clear metrics – from LinkedIn engagement benchmarks to revenue growth – which demonstrated ROI and got leadership buy-in​. The external awards and internal accolades further validated the approach​. For B2B marketers, having data and recognition to show for a campaign helps secure continued support for creative brand-building efforts.

Weightmans’ story shows that behind every B2B brand, there are human stories waiting to be told. By courageously tapping into those stories and crafting a compelling narrative, even a 19th-century-founded law firm can reinvent its image for the modern era. The success of the See the Possibility campaign underlines that storytelling isn’t just a B2C tactic – it’s a powerful strategy for B2B brands to build trust, distinctiveness, and loyalty in the marketplace. As B2B marketers, taking a page from Weightmans’ playbook could very well help us see new possibilities for our own brand growth.