Your Most Influential Creator Might Already Work for You

When brands think about creator marketing, the search usually starts outside the business. Who already has the audience we want to reach? Which creators are talking about our category? Who has the right content style, community and credibility?

But one of the more interesting shifts heading into 2027 is happening much closer to home.

Employee-generated content is moving beyond employer branding and the occasional behind-the-scenes TikTok to become a recognisable creator channel in its own right. 40% of consumers now discover a product or service through employee-generated content at least monthly, rising to 61% among Gen Z, while more than half encounter employee-generated content at least once a week.

For brands investing heavily in finding the right external voices, there's an obvious question: could some of your most influential creators already be on the payroll?

People want to hear from the people closest to the product

Employee content isn't interesting simply because it gives brands another source of social content. Its value comes from employees being able to offer something that a traditional brand account, and sometimes even an external creator, can't easily replicate: first-hand experience.

When asked which employees they'd rather hear from, 46% of consumers chose frontline employees, compared with 23% who wanted to hear from marketing teams and just 10% who preferred the C-suite.

That turns some traditional assumptions about brand communications upside down. The most senior person in the organisation isn't necessarily the person audiences find most useful or interesting on social. Often, it's the person closest to the product, service or customer experience who has the better story to tell.

Think about a beauty adviser answering the questions customers actually ask about a product, a barista showing how a drink is made, an engineer explaining a feature without the jargon or a retail colleague demonstrating something in the context in which customers really use it. These people have knowledge and access that would be difficult to manufacture through a conventional campaign.

The opportunity isn't to make every employee an influencer. It's to recognise that credibility may sit in different parts of the organisation than the marketing department traditionally looks.

Employee content can do more than humanise the brand

We've talked for years about employees helping brands feel more human on social, but the latest research suggests their influence can extend much further into product discovery and consideration.

If 40% of consumers discover products and services through employee-generated content at least monthly, employee creators are already participating in the same discovery journey as external influencers. Among Gen Z, where that figure rises to 61%, the behaviour is even more established.

The journey might begin with an employee story, lead to a product discovery or demonstration and ultimately give someone the confidence to research, enquire or buy. It means employee content can potentially perform a commercial role without needing to look or feel like conventional advertising.

That distinction is important. The opportunity isn't for employees to suddenly start reading product claims into camera. It's their proximity to the reality of the brand that makes the content interesting in the first place.

Authenticity is becoming more valuable as content becomes easier to manufacture

There's another reason employee creators could become increasingly important in 2027: audiences are becoming more selective about what they give their attention to.

Forty percent of consumers consider employee influencers more authentic than content published through a brand's main social account. At the same time, 66% say the rise of AI-generated content has made them more selective about the content they engage with, while 40% have unfollowed, muted or blocked a brand or creator they suspected of posting low-quality AI-generated content.

As producing content becomes easier, evidence of real experience could become more valuable.

An employee can physically show the workplace, demonstrate how something is made, explain why a decision was taken or answer a question using knowledge gained from actually doing the job. That gives audiences a visible connection between what a brand says and what happens behind the scenes.

It also fits with what we're seeing in influencer marketing more broadly. More than 80% of consumers expect influencers to have used products they promote, with 44% believing they should be long-term users before endorsing them.

For the right employee, that first-hand relationship is already built in.

But employee creators aren't free influencer marketing

This is where brands need to be careful.

Seeing employees as potential creators should not become an excuse to add "make TikToks" to someone's existing workload and call it advocacy.

Sixty-one percent of consumers believe employees who create promotional content should receive additional compensation, and that's an important principle for any brand considering a formal employee creator programme.

There is a significant difference between someone choosing to share a workplace moment on their personal account and a brand commissioning them to create content for commercial purposes. The same applies when an employee appears regularly on brand channels, produces content outside their existing responsibilities or allows their image, footage or content to be used in paid advertising.

As the commercial value to the brand increases, the structures around participation need to become more considered too. Compensation, time, consent, usage rights and the ability to opt out shouldn't be afterthoughts.

Employee-generated content works because there's a real person behind it. Treating that person like a free content-production resource risks undermining exactly what made the idea valuable.

Build an employee creator programme, not a compulsory content calendar

The strongest employee creator programmes won't begin by telling everyone in the company that they need to start posting. They'll begin by identifying the people who are interested in creating content and giving them the support to do it well.

Participation should be voluntary, with employees able to say no without pressure from managers and able to leave a programme if their circumstances change. Where content is commissioned, brands should be clear about compensation, working time and how that content can be used, particularly if it will appear in paid media.

Training matters too, but that doesn't mean giving employees a 40-page brand guideline and removing everything interesting about their content. Practical support around filming, accessibility, disclosure, privacy and platform rules can give people confidence while still leaving room for their own personality and expertise.

The goal should be to create the conditions for employees to become good creators, rather than turning them into presenters for marketing scripts.

Your brand could become a creator network

The bigger opportunity goes beyond employee-generated content.

By 2027, some of the most sophisticated social strategies may look less like a brand account surrounded by occasional influencer campaigns and more like a network of different influential voices, each selected according to the job they can do best.

External creators can bring cultural reach and established communities. Customers can provide social proof. Specialists can bring technical credibility. Local employees can create relevance within particular communities, while frontline colleagues can demonstrate products and answer the practical questions customers actually have.

Senior leaders still have a role too, but they don't automatically need to be the face of everything. The fact that 46% of consumers would rather hear from frontline employees, compared with just 10% who prefer the C-suite, should encourage brands to think much more broadly about where authority and influence actually sit within their organisation.

The result isn't an either/or choice between influencers and employees. It's a wider influence ecosystem in which brands match the right person to the right story.

Start with the people, not the content requirement

There is plenty for brands to be excited about here. Employee-generated content can offer first-hand expertise, access, credibility and a consistent stream of perspectives that external creator partnerships cannot always replicate.

But the strongest employee creator strategies won't start with a target for how many videos the business needs each month. They'll start by understanding who within the organisation has something interesting to say, who actually wants to say it and what support they need to do that comfortably.

From there, brands can test different voices and formats, understand what audiences respond to and identify where employee content adds something genuinely different to the wider creator strategy.

Because your next creator programme might not begin with a casting call or a database search. It might begin by looking at the people already inside your business - provided you're prepared to give them the choice, support, recognition and compensation that creators deserve.

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