The distance between getting fired for making videos at work and getting paid to make videos at work turns out to be about five years, which in internet time is roughly the span between the Reformation and the Industrial Revolution.

Gap Inc. announced last week that it was extending its creator program — the one that has generated some 30,000 posts reaching 154 million people since its debut — to employees across Old Navy, Gap, Athleta and Banana Republic. Workers who meet the threshold (500 followers, 18 years of age, a willingness to apply like everyone else) can earn commissions by sharing affiliate links on social media.

Damon Berger, Gap Inc.'s senior vice president for marketing shared services, was careful to note that participation is voluntary and "entirely separate from their regular job responsibilities." (One imagines the legal department nodding approvingly from the wings.)

The shift in corporate posture has been rather dramatic. In 2020, a college student named Tony Piloseno was reportedly dismissed from Sherwin-Williams for "gross misconduct" after his TikTok videos of mixing paint went viral — this despite having pitched the company on using the platform to reach younger consumers. The paint, apparently, was not amused.

Now the C-suite has caught on. Sprout Social reports that 40 percent of consumers say they discover products through employee-generated content, a figure that rises to 61 percent among Gen Z. At Staples, a young employee named Kaeden Rowland has amassed nearly 600,000 TikTok followers making ASMR-style videos from the store floor, which the company regards not as a firing offense but as a marketing windfall.

"She truly reinvigorated Staples," said Megan Vasquez, head of brand at Ecko Digital Media, though Staples declined to say whether Ms. Rowland receives additional compensation for this reinvigoration.

Starbucks, meanwhile, has built an entire infrastructure around the phenomenon, expanding its Green Apron Creators program into a TikTok creator network that shares briefs with vetted employees and compensates select participants through platform ad revenue.

The logic is not complicated. Creators became valuable to brands by being authentic. Then the industry did what industries do, and authenticity became scarce. Employees, it turns out, were authentic all along — they just needed permission to prove it.

Original story published in Digiday: "Why brands like Gap Inc. and Staples are inviting their employees to be creators"