Opportunities for everyday, social media stardom are seemingly innumerable and everywhere. But the prevalence of influencers’ success stories has created a costly problem for brands, which must allocate increasingly sizeable budgets if they want to establish sponsorship deals with popular influencers. When they do, they also face growing concerns surrounding consumers’ increasing skepticism of paid sponsorships.

Accordingly, some marketers seek out alternative options, like micro-influencers. From that point, it might have been a short hop to yet another form of influence: Enter employee influencers. Some path-breaking companies are calling on their existing employees to create organic, trendy content. An early adopter of this strategy, the beauty brand Lush already had chosen to forgo paid advertisements and rely completely on employee- and user-generated content as of 2019. 

More recently, the shapewear brand Skims and beauty brand Tarte have followed suit, launching campaigns that feature employees as models. In both cases, the influencer campaigns feature diverse groups of real women, all of whom already had established in-depth, close familiarity with the brands—expertise that they could share with interested consumers. In most cases, the companies do not pay for such employee-generated content, so any sales prompted by the videos represent a sizeable return on a null investment.

But the shift benefits the employees too. Recent reports suggest that a healthy majority of Gen Z aspires to become influencers or content creators in some capacity. Being selected by their employers to conduct such campaigns fulfills that desire, turning everyday workers into micro-influencers, drawing more views to their personal social media channels, and prompting positive impressions among their managers, as well as their followers.

Social media platforms like the idea as well. Notably, the existing algorithms applied by TikTok and Instagram tend to prioritize non-sponsored content, reflecting these platforms’ attempts to mitigate rising audience distrust and frustration with feeds filled only with solicitations or inauthentic promotions. 

Still, the substantial creative license that these brands afford to their employees—many of whom are young and relatively inexperienced with corporate standards—might lead to brand image concerns. Some content could create confusion if it fails to align with the brand’s strategic identity. Other posts might be even more problematic, if they exhibit behaviors the brand would prefer to disavow (e.g., using obscene language). They also run the risk of confidentiality leaks, such as if an employee carelessly displays trade secrets or experimental products that have yet to be released by the brand. 

To mitigate these concerns, brands’ in-house marketing teams might establish strict policies regarding what is appropriate, or not, in employee-generated content. They also might require mandatory approval before the employees may post the content. Such constraints necessarily impose limits on the creators’ content though, potentially undermining the very creativity that makes such influence attempts to appealing. 

Discussion Questions 

1. Which brands might benefit the most from employee-generated content? Are there certain brands that would not?
2. What are some other ways that companies can leverage employee-generated content?

Sources: Upton-Clark, “‘We Work at Salesforce, of Course We’re Going to Enjoy the Free Snacks’: Employees Are Becoming Influencers for Their Own Companies,” Fast Company, October 16, 2024; “The Hottest Influencers You’ve Never Heard of: Your Employees,” PR Week, July 2, 2024