We’re in a strange moment in marketing.

On one side, it seems like everyone is racing to automate, accelerate, and scale everything with AI. On the other, some of the world’s biggest brands are doing something that feels completely opposite or like a counter balance: they’re hiring full-time creators to be the human faces of their brands.

Their goal? To bring the authenticity, relatability, and voice of a personal brand into the corporate brand. Enter: the in-house creator.

What are in-house creators?

Brands are investing in people. More specifically, creators.

Not solely as freelancers or brand partners. But as employees who create content, tell stories, and represent the brand through their own personality, taste, and storytelling.

The move toward in-house creators is an acknowledgment of two key truths:

1. Audiences want faces, not logos. Even the best AI tools can’t replace the connection people feel with other humans.
2. The best content is emotional. It feels like someone you trust is talking to you. Brands know that creators bring this energy.

It’s also a sign of the growing recognition that building trust and engagement now requires personality — something AI marketing workflows or pure brand communications can’t always deliver.

That’s where having creators working in-house comes in, giving brands long-term access to authentic storytellers to represent their company on social media.

In a recent high-profile example of this trend, Starbucks posted a job advertisement for a “Global Coffee Creator in Residence,” essentially an in-house brand storyteller who is paid to be relatable, informative, and interesting on social media on the company’s behalf.

The in-house creator job description

The Starbucks in-house creator role closely mirrors what brands typically hire influencers to do on a short-term contract, but with key differences that offer more consistency and stability for both the creator and the company.

Here are some highlights from the Starbucks job posting:

• Create and publish authentic, story-driven video content that showcases Starbucks locations, products, and experiences around the world.
• Travel to 10–15 global Starbucks stores, capturing local culture, regional menu items, and community stories from baristas and customers.
• Collaborate with the global marketing team to ensure content aligns with brand voice, strategy, and social media goals.

In taking a look at that job description, it’s a combination of social media marketing and creator-style content creation brought in-house.

Examples of in-house creators

While Starbucks is a recent example of a brand exploring a new type of influencer engagement, this is a trend that’s been happening for some time.

Here are some other brands that invested in consistent ways to source influencer-style content:

• Morning Brew comes to mind as a company running this playbook with success. Creators like Toby Howell serve as the talent and brand voice for some of Morning Brew’s key social channels and content series. Their humor, commentary, and tone are what make the media brand feel human and relatable.
• The Ultra Beauty “Ulta Beauties” ambassador program incentivizes current employees to create social content promoting the brand and its partners. It’s presented as an opportunity for their employee base to earn additional compensation and to build their own personal brands via promotion through Ultra Beauty’s channels.

These brands are leveraging modern social media audiences’ affinity for creator-driven content by making new creators part of the team or sourcing creator content from their existing employees.

The personal brand value for in-house creators

One important detail to observe with in-house creators is which channels the content they create will live on and what level of recognition or “tagging” they receive.

• In the Morning Brew example, Toby creates content for the Morning Brew accounts, creates content with his own personal account for the brand, and receives tags for his personal account in Morning Brew’s channels.
• This adds up to great exposure for Toby and the opportunity to build his own significant audience—an audience that he can take with him should he ever part ways with the brand.
• In the Starbucks example, the dynamic is less clear. If a Global Coffee Creator in Residence gets to incorporate their own Instagram and TikTok accounts into the mix, the ROI is huge for them e.g. getting tagged in content published on Starbucks’ significant social channels.
• Another scenario could see the creators host content on the brand channel or star in it, but not receive any form of tagging for their personal accounts. That’s not to say they won’t still receive huge recognition and can’t vlog the whole experience on their personal channels, but it’s a different format for the exposure.

As a creator, having your name and likeness all over a big brand's channels as a spokesperson and storyteller is valuable no matter which way you slice it.

However, those nuances above can have a big impact on how much personal audience growth a creator sees. In some setups, it’s easier to build an audience as a long-term asset they can take with them when the in-house creator engagement ends.

The numbers behind the in-house creator trend

When you step back and look at the economics of influencer marketing and the creator economy, the emergence of this trend makes sense.

• Brand spend on influencer marketing in the U.S. is expected to reach approximately $8.1 billion by 2028, up from $5.6 billion in 2024. Driven by an annual growth rate around 10%.
• Globally, the influencer marketing market is on pace to hit $50.4 billion by 2032, with a compound annual growth rate of over 30% in the years ahead.
• The broader creator economy is expected to nearly double to $480 billion by 2027, according to Goldman Sachs.

This surge in investment isn’t just good news for creators building their own audiences. It’s also opening new doors inside companies, too, as brands look for more ways to leverage creator-driven content in their marketing strategies.

What’s this mean for creators and brands?

This new form of creator and influencer engagement has interesting implications for individuals and brands going forward.

What this means for creators (and people who want to become one)

For creators and employees, it’s a new lane to participate in the booming creator economy. One that comes with stable pay and a platform to grow from.

This evolution of influencer marketing introduces a form of engagement that more creators and companies are starting to explore.

In this new model, the skills typically associated with personal branding are becoming a marketable skillset that companies are hiring for directly.

That means the ability to:

• Build a following or drive engagement through your own storytelling style.
• Translate a company’s mission into human-first content.
• Show up consistently, authentically, and creatively in public.

These skills are something companies are willing to pay for. In some cases, with a full-time salary.

For well-known external creators, compensation is a key consideration. While in-house roles offer stability and the opportunity to work with major brands, it’s not clear whether the total earnings will match what a creator could make from several short-term brand deals in the same time frame.

For employees who want to become creators, this model opens up new opportunities.  Employees who already speak at events, create content, or serve as informal brand ambassadors can now step into formalized creator roles and get compensated for representing the brand they already know best.

What this means for brands

Brands are realizing there’s now a new option in terms of how they accommodate their influencer marketing strategies (and spend that budget line item): hiring creators in-house to tell stories consistently, authentically, and strategically from within the brand.

For brands, it’s a way to:

• Make influencer-style content creation predictable and on-message.
• Build stronger brand affinity through a human face.
• Get long-term ROI from a creator who knows the company inside and out.

Instead of one-off or short-term influencer deals, brands can now invest in creators who evolve with the business, understand its values, and act as a trusted public voice.

In-house creators give marketing teams a new layer of storytelling capability. And they give the company a face people can actually connect with — something AI and faceless logos simply can’t replicate.

How in-house creator engagements are structured

Currently, these engagements are taking on the structure of extended contract gigs, like in the case of Starbucks, or full-time roles within a brand’s marketing team.

You can also see some other interesting avenues lining up in terms of how brands may source influencers — presenting future opportunities for both employees and external creators:

1. Companies offering bonuses, equity, or additional compensation to existing employees who participate in internal influencer programs — essentially rewarding team members who are already building visibility and credibility for the brand.
2. Companies crowd-sourcing influencer content with perk-up points or compensation. e.g. they offer payments for employee-created content promoting a product launch or an event.
3. Companies structuring longer-term, higher-commitment partnerships with external creators, offering not just cash but equity or performance-based incentives to align goals and deepen brand integration.

The B2B in-house creator opportunity

The examples we discussed here were all B2C examples, with consumer brands that already leverage influencer marketing adding this additional in-house creator element to their strategies.

Another area I see this trend taking off in is B2B marketing:

• B2B influencer marketing is starting to take off on channels like LinkedIn, with creators like Corporate Natalie showing what business-themed entertainment can look like in the B2B world. I got to see this first-hand when she was a featured speaker at an event the B2B company I work for hosted.
• Gary Vaynerchuk sees a B2B creator and influencer movement coming to LinkedIn, which is in its early stages in comparison to the B2C creator and influencer trends on channels like TikTok and Instagram.
• B2B companies represent some of the largest and most profitable companies in the world and have huge employee bases. Think NVIDIA, Microsoft, Saleforce, etc. As these brands increase influencer marketing spends, the opportunity for external and in-house creators could be massive.

If you are an employee working for a B2B company, I see being a part-time creator or influencer as an opportunity you will have in the near future as these brands look to crowd-source influencer content from their employee bases.

Final thoughts

Whether or not you want to be an in-house creator, the point is clear:
Your ability to communicate like a person — not just a professional or a brand — is becoming one of the most valuable assets in business.

AI can write posts. It can generate ideas. But it still can’t replace a trusted voice. And brands are betting on that voice as a key part of their marketing strategies, now in an even more structured fashion via in-house creator engagements.

If you’re a creator or want to become one, this might be your next opportunity. And if you’re a marketer, this might be your next strategic hire.