Personalized Video Platform Cameo Offers Employees $10K Raise to Return to Office
The company will offer staffers a $10,000 raise for coming back to the office
By Isabelle Durso February 18, 2025 4:30 pm
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In a world full of strict return-to-office mandates, Cameo is taking a more laidback, cash-oriented approach (much like its pool of celebrities shooting videos from their couch).
The personalized video platform is launching new incentives for its 26 Chicago employees to return to its Fulton Market office four days per week — starting with a $10,000 raise for every new and existing employee that comes back.
It’s a bold move for Cameo, an app where users can request birthday wishes and graduation messages alike from celebrities of their choosing, including personalities like David Hasselhoff, Kristen Bell, Snoop Dogg and Jimmy Fallon.
Cameo’s incentives will begin this week and include the $10,000 raise, a daily free lunch, gratis parking at the company’s 20,000-square-foot Chicago office and access to an on-site gym, according to Cameo.
“At Cameo, we believe the best work happens when people are together, and we’re putting our money where our mouth is to make that a reality,” Cameo CEO Steven Galanis said in a statement to Commercial Observer.
“Rather than mandating a return to office, we’re offering a meaningful incentive — $10,000, free lunch, parking and a gym — to make in-person work an easy and attractive choice,” Galanis added. “We hope this model encourages other companies to think differently about how they bring teams together and create workplaces employees actually want to be in.”
Cameo launched in 2017 and became popular during the COVID-19 pandemic as celebrities and musicians looked for new ways to make money — and people were bored at home.
But the company had to make slashes to its staff after profits dipped post-pandemic, bringing its current staff count to only 50 total employees spread throughout the country — a drop from 347 across 38 U.S. states during the company’s peak, the Chicago Tribune reported.
Cameo isn’t the first company to attempt to use money to lure its workers back to the office.
In 2021, real estate data provider CoStar Group offered its employees a daily cash prize of $10,000, awarded randomly to an employee every workday, the Wall Street Journal reported at the time.
In addition, CoStar gave three staff members — and a guest for each — a private plane ticket to Barbados for an all-expenses-paid vacation, as well as a new Tesla for one grand-prize winner, according to WSJ.
Elsewhere, companies have been using the stick instead of the carrot to get people back to the office — Starbucks even told some of its corporate staff they would be fired if they did not come into the office three days per week, as CO previously reported.
And then there’s Amazon, AT&T and Sweetgreen, which have all required their corporate staff to go into the office four to five days per week, with no exceptions. Same for J.P. Morgan Chase. When staff pushed back on the bank’s five-day return-to-work policy by starting a petition against it, CEO Jamie Dimon reportedly said during a staff meeting, “Don’t waste time on it. I don’t care how many people sign that fucking petition.”
Isabelle Durso can be reached at idurso@commercialobserver.com.
