Let me describe a meeting I have sat in more times than I can count. The marketing team has a new product to launch. The brief is on the table. Someone — usually the most senior person in the room — says: ‘Who could we get as the face of this?’ The conversation then proceeds to spend forty-five minutes discussing which celebrity has the right ‘vibe,’ after which a significant portion of the campaign budget is allocated to a contract with someone who has never used the product, has no particular affinity with the brand, and will post two Instagram stories and attend one press event before moving on to the next deal.
Celebrity brand ambassadorship is, in the majority of cases, a marketing decision that substitutes money for thinking. It buys reach from a borrowed audience rather than building a relationship with the brand’s own. It is the marketing equivalent of renting a crowd.
I am not saying celebrities cannot add value to brand communications. They can, in very specific circumstances: when the celebrity’s authentic personal narrative genuinely aligns with the brand’s values; when the partnership involves genuine product involvement and honest endorsement; when the ambassador relationship is long-term enough to build credibility rather than just generate a launch moment; and when the brand has already done the work of establishing its own identity, so the ambassador amplifies something real rather than substituting for something absent.
What I am saying is that the default to celebrity ambassadorship — the reflexive reach for a famous face whenever a communications challenge feels difficult — is a symptom of strategic laziness that the communications industry is partly responsible for enabling. Because celebrity ambassador deals are lucrative. They generate impressive reach numbers that look good in reports. They get approved in boardrooms because everyone recognises the face. And they very rarely get held accountable for whether they actually achieved anything for the brand.
The brands with the most durable, distinctive identities — the ones that generate genuine word-of-mouth and loyal communities — have, almost without exception, built those identities through consistent, authentic storytelling rather than borrowed fame. Their ‘ambassadors’ are their own customers, their own employees, their own founders. That kind of representation cannot be faked and cannot be bought. It can only be earned.
The next time a client or colleague suggests a celebrity ambassador as the answer to a communications brief, ask the question that almost never gets asked in that meeting: what is the brand story that exists independently of this person? If that question cannot be answered clearly and compellingly, the celebrity cannot save you. They can only delay the reckoning.
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