So, SULT needed a social media manager.
Instead of asking everyone to send in a CV like a normal company, they basically threw the job onto Instagram and told people to get creative. “We’re not a regular brand. We’re a cool brand.”
And, as it turns out, that was a very effective way of attracting a completely ridiculous number of people who really, really wanted the job. What followed was the SULT Hunger Games!
SULT is the hydration brand founded by Milly G and Henry Porpora, and if you don’t live under a rock, you have probably come across them on Instagram or LinkedIn.
When Sophie Milham, their first hire, whose job was basically social media, ambassador and whatever else came her way, went back to work for Aimee Smale, her old employer, SULT needed someone new.
Rather than posting a standard vacancy and waiting for a thousand identical CVs to arrive, they decided to make the hiring process part of the content. The announcement went out on Instagram with very little hand-holding. And people absolutely ran with it.
Videos of SULT made by creators who wanted the job flooded Instagram. More than 1,500 people expressed interest in the role. At that point, I imagine the SULT team had two options: hire someone immediately or prepare for a very long week.
They chose option three, which was to make a series about it. The job application became the content.
The strange thing about the whole format is that the audience had no particular reason to care about who got a job at a hydration company. And yet they did. Because once you turn a recruitment process into a story, people want to know how the story ends.
One of the people who ended up getting through the process was Ana-Victoria Radbourne, who goes by Anie. She had seen Sophie Milham working there and thought the company looked like somewhere she’d love to work, so she messaged Sophie to ask whether they were hiring.
At the time, they weren’t. A few hours later, SULT announced the job. So Anie applied. She didn’t send a standard CV into the void. She made a piece of content for them, which meant SULT could immediately see how she approached the brief, how she thought and what she could actually produce.
Then, while she was still in the running, the story got even more surreal. Anie was approached about being part of the coverage of SULT’s hiring process for The Sunday Times, which meant she was suddenly talking to a national newspaper about a job she hadn’t even got yet.
By the time SULT got down to the final candidates, they gave Anie a folder of footage and asked her to make two videos from it. There wasn’t much room for bluffing there. She had to make something good. She did and she got the job.
SULT hired her. Everyone could go home. Except they couldn’t, because SULT had one more piece of content to make. The final reveal happened at Clapham Junction. On a billboard. How iconic is that!
The best part about all this is that the applicants weren’t sending their work into a private hiring portal where it would vanish after the role was filled. They were putting it on the internet, where it could potentially keep working for them long after the job had gone to somebody else.
Milly has spoken about how little time she spends looking at CVs compared with looking at what someone can actually create, particularly when hiring for creative roles.
And Henry has taken the idea further since the SULT campaign, developing a prototype called CV404 around the concept of showing what candidates can do through video rather than relying entirely on traditional applications. He has said he built the initial version in around five hours using Claude and Lovable.
At this point, SULT might genuinely be The Internet’s Favourite brand.
I saw someone say the other day that you mention SULT in a post and the impressions basically take care of themselves. Brands spend years trying to build that kind of pull. The brand has, at this stage, become its own distribution strategy. Probably the nicest possible thing to happen to their new social media manager.
That’s all for now. Until SULT inevitably does something else.
May the algorithm be ever in your favour!
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