What do you do when you're a dying franchise and a rogue employee takes matters into their own hands?

What do you do when you're a dying franchise and a rogue employee takes matters into their own hands? If you haven't heard of the Staples Baddie, this video is probably not for you. But if you have, there are two questions. What do we do about the Staples Baddie? And what do we not do? Now, again, some quick context. Staples Baddie is a hourly Staples employee who started posting content on her personal account that is whimsy and fun, making videos about their post-its, the range of pens they have, all of the things you can get printed and bought at Staples. The result, as expressed by Staples corporate, is that a lot more people are coming into the store. There's a meaningful lift that the Baddie is having. And this is exactly where most companies are likely to screw things up. Because the corporate team or agency of record is probably thinking, hey, let's get Staples Baddie on the main social account. Let's get her in at corporate. Let's pay her a lot more and contractually obligate her to make this style of content. But doing that is exactly where this content would fall off. She would be far too restricted by the chains of corporate anti-risk taking, and all of the views that she puts up would go to zero. So instead, here's what they should do, and any company like this, how they should think. Beauty retailer Ulta has proven a great model for this. If you're an associate that works at Ulta and you've been there for a period of time, you can make content about the products and brands in store and your experience in store. A lightweight way, they will pay you extra, they will have bounties, they may feature your content. So here, rather than thinking of Staples Baddie as one-off, think that you may be have 100 or 200 creators and people who work at all of your Staples locations who would be interested in just like making fun content. Then, when that content performs well, here she is just reviewing a handful of her favorite pens at Staples, partner with them to either whitelist that content or chop it up and use it for paid. Because right now, this is the ad that Staples is running for their pens. I will put $10,000 that this ad will outperform this. So to recap the strategy: don't bring them into corporate, enable them to make more content, when that content performs well, use it in smart ways.