HP Interns: A playbook for Gen-Z internal comms

The context

Allen J. Dixon, Founder/CEO of The Lighthouse Agency, helped spearhead the creation of the viral TikTok account @hpinterns, showcasing the intern experience at HP with a mix of humorous, relatable content. Within just six weeks, the account surpassed 250,000 views, inspiring similar initiatives at other companies. The portfolio highlights an innovative approach to corporate content creation, strategy, and engagement — and its ability to connect with Gen-Z audiences.

The approach

Interns as characters, not extras

The first decision was the most important: treat the interns as the show, not HP as the show. Corporate accounts default to the company as protagonist, then pipe employee quotes through a brand voice filter. We flipped it. The interns ran point — on camera, on caption, on the call about what was funny that week. HP was the setting, not the speaker.

A format that could survive a content calendar

One-off viral moments are cheap. Repeatable formats are the actual unlock. We reverse-engineered three templates so the account could ship consistently without creative burnout on a team of interns also doing their day jobs:

1. Tech Interns vs. Social Media Interns. A culture-clash setup that only works inside a tech company. Built to be remade by any cohort, any summer.
2. Intern Outfits. “Guess the department of interns based on their work outfits.” A low-lift, high-retention daily — runway cadence, office setting, Gen-Z styling.
3. Free Lunch From Your Boss. “When your boss takes you to lunch and you act surprised when she offered to use her corporate card.” A workplace-anxiety reveal — the kind of content Gen-Z screenshots and sends to the group chat.

Each format had a named repeatable beat, a standard runtime, and a shot list that could be handed to a new intern on week one.

The outcome

In six weeks, @hpinterns crossed 250,000 views on TikTok — cold-start, no paid support, three named content formats doing the heavy lifting. Beyond the hero number, the engagement produced:

• Three repeatable content formats — Tech Interns vs. Social Media Interns, Intern Outfits, and Free Lunch From Your Boss — that the HP team retained after the engagement. The playbook ships again next class without us.
• A corporate content model that inspired similar initiatives at other companies.
• A demonstrated way for a Fortune 100 brand to speak to Gen-Z without sounding like a brand speaking to Gen-Z.

The deliverable was a TikTok account. The product was a reusable internal-comms system HP could run every summer.

We wanted HP to feel like somebody Gen-Z already knew, not somebody they’d been introduced to at a career fair. — Allen J. Dixon, Founder/CEO, The Lighthouse Agency