Can an influencer be a “The Marketing Gateway” baddie?
Sometimes a marketing campaign can be entirely organic, and sometimes those work better than planned ones!
This month I am plugging the St. Louis chapter of the AMA. To become a member, you can visit https://amasaintlouis.org/.
SOURCES
Example video: https://www.tiktok.com/@blivxx/video/7604214257508617486
https://www.reddit.com/r/Staples/comments/1rck7kf/staples_baddie_on_tiktok_low_key_makes_me_mad/
https://www.fastcompany.com/91495470/staples-baddie-gen-z-employee-what-the-retailer-is-doing-about-internet-fame
https://edition.cnn.com/2026/03/02/business/staples-baddie-tiktok-sales-nyc-cec
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technology/has-influencer-marketing-peaked/ar-AA1UTiwF
https://sproutsocial.com/insights/future-influencer-marketing/
https://martechseries.com/social/influencer-marketing/influencer-marketing-in-2025-new-data-reveals-what-works-what-costs-and-whats-next/
https://www.creator-hero.com/blog/who-are-influencers-and-why-do-brands-collaborate-with-them
The Marketing Gateway is a weekly podcast hosted by Sean in St. Louis (Sean J. Jordan, President of https://www.researchplan.com/) and featuring guests from the St. Louis area and beyond.
Every week, Sean shares insights about the world of marketing and speaks to people who are working in various marketing roles – creative agencies, brand managers, MarCom professionals, PR pros, business owners, academics, entrepreneurs, researchers and more!
The goal of The Marketing Gateway is simple – we want to build a connection between all of our marketing mentors in the Midwest and learn from one another! And the best way to learn is to listen.
And the next best way is to share!
For more episodes: https://www.youtube.com/@TheMarketingGateway
Copyright 2025, The Research & Planning Group, Inc.
TRANSCRIPT:
I have good news for you, folks – the world of marketing is still an exciting place! At least, if you’re Staples, the oh-so-not-sexy office supply store giant that’s a wonderful choice if you need to head in for some toner or highlighters or a box of paper, but which also offers custom printing services to anyone who needs to get something professionally printed and bound.
Recently, however, a lot of discussion has been appearing online about the “Staples Baddie,” which is the unofficial name of a 22-year old TikTok creator named Oblivion, in real life known as Kaedan Rowland. And Oblivion has made a big imprint on the world by representing the Staples where she works in Upstate New York by starting a video series on January 13th of this year talking about printing and office supplies and other services.
I’m not going to play any clips of Oblivion’s work because they’re really not going to sound that interesting if you’re not able to see her as she appears in the videos – a slender face, long hair, lots of makeup a bunch of jewelry, a septum piercing in her nose and some tattoos, but also a Staples uniform and name badge.
She doesn’t look like the sort of corporate-approved model mascot, and she also doesn’t talk like one, either. She throws in slang and raps her long fingernails on plastic protective covers and makes ASMR videos of printer sounds, all while delivering content that explains how direct mail marketing campaigns can work or which type of coil binding you might want to use.
I think what Oblivion has managed to do is really cool, and it’s also neat to hear that she has become a minor celebrity who’s now being invited to events in New York City to represent other brands like MAC and Sephora.
Being a proud trans woman, she’s also become an icon among New York’s LGBTQ+ scene.
It’s nice to see her getting a chance to build a following as a grassroots influencer, and even nicer to see Staples let her do it.
But not everyone’s happy, and no, this isn’t about people hating on her for any of the things I just mentioned. It’s more the fact that Staples employees are bracing themselves for what comes next.
About a week and a half ago, a Reddit thread called “Staples ‘baddie’ on tiktok low key makes me mad’ and a user named Dear_Ad63 who also works at Staples complained about the impact of Oblivion’s videos, explaining that filming while on shift goes against company policy, most printing departments are too busy to have time to film, don’t have time to do highly specialized craft projects and don’t get paid well enough to deal with a sudden surge in demand.
Many other Staples employees also chime in on the thread and list all sorts of grievances against the company, including a fear that Staples is going to expect them to try to capture the same sort of success that Oblivion has found. And they know, as I think we all do, that this isn’t going to work out.
The “Staples Baddie” is a lightning in a bottle phenomenon that won’t be replicated by anyone else anytime soon.
So, let’s talk about what Staples ought to do, and why this sort of influencer campaign only really works when it comes out of nowhere.
I’m Sean in St. Louis, and this is the Marketing Gateway.
So it’s 2026, and online influencers have gone from being a very popular new trend in product marketing to something a lot of folks are feeling have peaked by this point.
I actually don’t think influencers are anywhere near done yet, and based on the data, it looks like the real problem is that the mega-popular influencers who have become successful and distant from their audiences are the ones who have peaked; according to a 2025 piece from MarTech Series, 73% of brands prefer to work with micro to mid-tier creators, and most of those folks are doing influencer videos and blogs as a side hustle, not as their primary source of income.
That same piece says that 80% of brands maintained or increased their influencer budget in 2025 and about half increased their budgets by 11% or more.
Most of the play is on Instagram, which is best for lifestyle, wellness and fashion, with the next-best influencer platform being TikTok, which is best for food, entertainment or product demos as well as discovery.
As for the others, Youtube is best for education, technology and deep dives, Facebook for local, parenting and community content and Pinterest for home, décor and wellness, and also is a place for content to last longer due to longer shelf life and higher long-term engagement.
You’ll notice that none of those are best for marketing, because nobody is going on those platforms to be marketed to. That’s something we really need to keep in mind as we dig a little deeper into what Staples has going on with its homegrown influencer. But let’s first understand how influencer campaigns even work, because they’re usually done with people who already have audiences, not with influencers who are employees of the organization but not part of the marketing department.
The way influencer campaigns tend to work is that brands either offer gifts, small amounts of money or affiliate incentives for general promotions available to influencers with large enough audiences, but then create more personal brand ambassador partnerships with influencers who have the right audiences they want to target. Micro influencers tend to have at least 10,000 to 100,000 followers and are often the sweet spot for high trust and niche audiences; Macro or mid-sized influencers tend to have somewhere in the 100,000-500,000 range and are better for scale, but also have higher expectations.
These numbers vary, of course, depending on the platform and topic, so don’t hold me to them. But finding the right influencer partnership can help a brand build a more authentic relationship with an audience that’s tuned to the distinct qualities the brand has in place.
Some brands do have internal influencers that they develop, often with heavy input from the marketing team. These influencers tend to be less popular and are not usually viewed as being authentic; they’re instead seen as “corporate,” paid shills whose job it is to get you hyped up about products. They can build big followings, especially if they’re funny or interesting, but they are generally not as effective as influencers who built the audience without the brand being involved.
Retail brands also tend to dislike employees making influencer videos on the clock because the video content is hard to control and may even show things that are unflattering or which draw the attention of outside parties like media or regulators. Also, employees may use profanity, tell sordid stories or even diss competitors, customers or former employers to engage their audience, which is problematic. Generally, employees are not permitted to film what happens at work and can even lose their job for posting videos or social media posts from the workplace.
So Oblivion, our “Staples Baddie,” is rather unusual in that she has been allowed to post videos while she’s working at Staples and in her Staples uniform, and what seems to be happening is that she built enough of a following that by the time anyone was aware of it, it was already benefitting Staples during a time of year when they need foot traffic, and her videos are so innocuous that they’re not problematic in any way. She has a knack for promoting the company in ways that feel authentic and genuine, and she in no way looks or sounds like a polished, professional corporate spokesperson.
Staples could have shut her down – in fact, they still could! But it sounds like they’re instead trying to ride the lightning and reap the windfall from it while giving her some direction and coaching on how she can help the brand. That’s all good, and actually very savvy. Staples doesn’t get the chance to be the brand in the limelight very often with positive earned media, and everything about this situation is positive and helpful from a corporate point of view.
But here’s where the problem sets in. Staples will probably get a bit of a bump from this moment, but then people will get tired of hearing about Staples. And if Staples responds to the situation by encouraging or requiring employees to try to replicate Oblivion’s success, they’re going to potentially see a backlash both in the audience and in their own employee pool because what was very special won’t feel so special anymore.
Let me use a metaphor to explain this. Imagine you walk into a grassy field and you see a handful of wildflowers growing. Every one of those flowers will be special and meaningful because it stands out. You’ll be careful not to walk on them, and you might even stop to look at them or take a picture.
But imagine that you decide to fill that field up with more flowers you plant yourself. Suddenly, nothing stands out anymore and only the really unique or unusual flowers will catch your eye.
That’s how influencer content works. If someone comes up with a really distinctive and novel idea, it can be that flower in a grassy field. But the moment you start trying to chase someone else’s success, the entire idea becomes less interesting.
And that’s what’s likely to happen to Staples if they try to ride the lightning bolt for too long.
The smart thing to do would be to pivot and to support Oblivion as a brand and to help her build up a bigger, more diversified audience so Staples can continue to be her main sponsor.
But what is more likely to happen, and I hope Staples doesn’t do this, is that a whole bunch of employees will try the same thing and Staples will try to own and control it. That would be a disaster.
And yet Staples probably feels like it has a right to own and control some of this. After all, the “Staples Baddie” is interesting in the first place because a lot of people worked really hard to make Staples and interesting and valuable brand over the years. An unsexy one, sure, but still well-known and well-regarded. Oblivion didn’t create that brand; they did.
But let’s give Staples the benefit of the doubt here. They’ve shown plenty of savvy so far, and I’m hopeful they’ll take the win, enjoy the ride, and use their newfound recognition to build a new customer base of people who are apparently surprised this established brand can help make their lives better with printing services. Maybe the problem all along was that Staples really reaching out to that audience, and now they have a foothold to keep a good thing going.
I’m Sean in St. Louis, and this has been The Marketing Gateway. See ya next time!
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