If you’ve been on the internet this week, you’ve probably seen one recurring theme: Staples.

More specifically, Staples’ response to an employee now known as the “Staples Baddie.”

For the last decade, brands, and plenty of DMOs, have treated “brand voice” like the engine of the machine.

Nail the tone.
Polish the copy.
Standardize the look.

That worked.

Until it didn’t.

A retailer most people had mentally archived in the “Amazon age” suddenly felt electric — not because a strategist found a sharper tagline, but because an employee with personality spoke like a human from inside the building.

Not “We’re excited to announce…”

More like, “Y’all don’t understand what we can do in here.”

In the influencer era, people don’t follow brands for voice. They follow vantage point. They follow someone who is there. Someone willing to say the quiet part out loud. Someone who can turn the ordinary into a tiny narrative and make it feel like insider access instead of marketing.

That’s why the Staples Baddie hit so hard.

THE DIFFERENCE WASN’T TONE.
IT WAS REALITY.

“Brand voice” often becomes a proxy for control. We call it consistency. What we’re really guarding is risk.

But destinations are messy. That’s the entire appeal.

And that’s where destination content friction actually lives.

We keep trying to make the brand sound like a brand, while the internet is rewarding brands that sound like people.

A place isn’t a product. It’s a living set of contradictions — locals and visitors, seasons and weather, cheap thrills and once-in-a-lifetime splurges, hidden gems and obvious attractions, crowded weekends and empty Tuesday mornings.

When you blend that into one approved voice, you don’t get clarity.

You get a brochure smoothie.

INFLUENCE BEATS VOICE

Influencers thrive because they’re allowed to be specific. Their authority isn’t polish; it’s proximity.

“I was there.”
“I tried it.”
“Here’s what happened.”
“Here’s what I’d do differently.”

That structure is catnip in an AI-shaped search world where answers win and adjectives lose.

And here’s the real lesson from Staples.

Staples didn’t hire an influencer.

An employee empowered herself.

All of the viral content lives on her account. Staples didn’t post it. They didn’t script it. And yet other brands are publicly engaging with her because she made office supplies feel like culture.

THAT’S NOT BRAND VOICE.
THAT’S BRAND PERMISSION.

Now translate that to a DMO.

You sit on a galaxy of niches: birders, skiers, food nerds, history geeks, festival regulars, brewery hunters, architecture obsessives, beach walkers, antique lovers, trail runners, bookstore lurkers.

Influencers build entire careers on one of those lanes.

You have all of them.

So the real question isn’t “How do we refine our voice?”

It’s this:

Who inside your organization already loves this place loud enough to make it contagious?

And have you built a culture where they’re allowed to show it?

Because people don’t fall in love with a voice guide.

They fall in love with a place when someone who genuinely loves it is allowed to make it feel alive.