Brands can’t just flip the ’employees as creators’ switch

Others, like Starbucks, are building new programs from scratch to elevate employee creators, which is  a slower, costlier route. These programs need their own measurement tools, close oversight, dedicated strategy and real rewards. 

That fissure is deepening as businesses hunt for fresh ways to stand out in a crowded creator market. A recent conversation Keith Bendes, chief strategy officer at Linqia, had with an exec brought that into focus. 

The exec, whom Bendes declined to name, had just built an employee creator program from the ground up at their company. The list of things that had to be worked out was long: how employees log their hours, whether content gets made on the clock and in-store or off it and elsewhere, whether customers’ faces and brand logos can appear in that in-store content, and how it all clears legal hurdles. 

“There’s just so much that you need to design that doesn’t really come into play when they’re not employees,” Bendes said. 

Remember the Amazon “FC Ambassadors? Launched in 2018, it put warehouse employees on Twitter and other platforms to talk up life inside Amazon’s fulfillment centers (that’s what the FC is short for), at a time when the company was under fire over working conditions. It’s an early, instructive case of exactly the challenges Bendes described. 

The ambassadors weren’t simply enthusiastic staff volunteering their voice — thy were compensated by Amazon for the work, which fed into a bigger controversy: parody and critics accused the program of astroturfing, and questions swirled about whether the “ambassadors” were disclosing the relationship clearly enough to meet FTC endorsement guidelines. Several accounts were also dogged by suspicions that they weren’t genuine employees at all, and some of the content read as too on-message to be natural, undermining the authenticity the format is supposed to trade on.

“For a program to work, there needs to be clear ownership (by marketing), simple metrics for success measurement, and a path for participation with clear return on effort,” said Heidi Tharp, founder of consultancy group Story Works LLC.

Blurred lines

The spectrum these programs are operating on is huge. They can be specific, directed work sent out through briefs that require completion, opt-in content creation opportunities that employees can participate in as they please, or somewhere in between —all with widely varying results. And that’s before we even get to the compensation part.

“We went from asking employees to do this for free, to paying them on commission, and we skipped the step in between where you pay someone for the work,” said Ben Zawacki, vp of growth at creator marketing platform GRIN. 

Zawacki also raised questions about program specifics (which Gap declined to provide; Starbucks declined to comment entirely) and how they will evolve over time. 

“What’s the commission rate? Are there tiers now, or will there be? Does any of this happen on the clock, or is it all on the employee’s own time? And which parts are actually defined for employees in writing, versus the parts nobody says out loud but both sides end up assuming once the program launches?” he wondered.

Though Gap told Digiday there’s no pressure for employees to meet quotas, it’s not clear if they’re meant to create content while on the clock, which could, naturally, affect their performance as retail employees. 

“You get to a point where you need to actually work, you can’t make content all day,” said Megan Vasquez, head of brand at Ecko Digital Media.

Making content while working is sort of the norm for Starbucks baristas, but that could quickly become a problem. 

“Let’s say there’s a manager at Starbucks…they need employees who could crank out X number of drinks per hour, and create a good environment for the people who are ordering,” he said. “If someone’s doing content creation, and that’s getting in the way of those things, that manager doesn’t care about the bigger picture.”

If Starbucks corporate doesn’t send out edicts to store managers preparing them for content-creating employees, this could become a problem.

Because posting content isn’t in a barista’s job description — not unless the contract says otherwise. And even then, a paycheck doesn’t guarantee talent. 

“You’re looking really for diamonds in the rough – the vast majority of the content is unusable – and when you find them, you better have a system where you can make more of that,” he said. “You’re spending all this time trying to teach them how to do something, and 99% of them will never be able to do it.”

Clear incentives help. Companies need to be smart about how they reward employee creators, according to Heike Young, a consultant with experience building out EGC programs at B2B tech companies. If a company can’t or won’t pay employees via bonuses or affiliate revenue , Young’s advice is to get execs and managers actively engaging with the content and hype employees up. That alone boosts the content’s reach and gives employees a reason to keep making it, Young added.

“Organimic momentum makes a big difference,” she said, noting that kicking off an employee creator programs is a higher risk than a traditional, consumer-focused creator program, as a lack of incentive or inconsistent support of the program can lead to unmotivated employees.

Risk vs. reward

Through all the highs and lows, it’s still unclear whether the juice from these programs is actually worth the squeeze. 

“Paid or not, the best creator partnerships start from real fandom, not from employment,”John Mathieu, vp and creative director or creator marketing platform Pearpop wondered. “Will audiences start scrolling past employee content once it reads as something they were incentivized to make rather than something they really wanted to make because they believe in the product? Too early to say.”

Does doubling as a content creator for your retail gig even provide a measure of job security? TikTok influencer Allegra Pinkowitz worked at Brandy Melville’s flagship SoHo for more than two years, often posting on the platform imploring viewers to come along to her shifts. She grew so popular that she was profiled in The Cut, which wrote about how young girls would flock to the store to get a glimpse of her working. The Hollywood Reporter reports Pinkowitz was fired last month because of the store’s slow sales. 

Maybe this is all just a passing phase. 

“My guess is that within a couple of years the branded employee creator program fades as a concept and the behavior gets absorbed into how certain roles work, the way keeping up a LinkedIn presence became part of B2B sales jobs without anyone announcing it,” said Zawacki.