Dec 4, 2025
The Star Power Strategy: Celebrity Marketing
Celebrity endorsements of consumer products have evolved far beyond traditional advertising. Brands are now forging more authentic, multi-year partnerships with cultural icons to create genuine connections with customers.
Glenmorangie’s collaboration with Harrison Ford demonstrates this shift. Their “Once Upon a Time in Scotland” campaign features the Hollywood legend in a 12-part series that moves away from traditional whisky advertising with humour and authenticity. Shot across the Scottish Highlands with real distillery staff, the campaign deliberately adopts an “off-script” style that feels genuine.
Meanwhile, Johnnie Walker’s multi-year partnership with Grammy-winning artist Sabrina Carpenter represents a bold move to connect with younger consumers. The campaign offers fans Carpenter’s take on classic whisky cocktails.
In April 2025, Pepsi reunited with David Beckham for a fresh chapter of their “Thirsty For More” campaign, continuing a partnership that spans over 20 years. Skechers partnered with former Liverpool and England footballer Jamie Redknapp to support its growing European business, making him the first lifestyle collection endorsee signed specifically for Europe. Horlicks built upon its successful sponsorship of Fearne Cotton’s festivals by unveiling an on-pack promotion offering shoppers a free three-month subscription to Cotton’s Happy Place app.
These partnerships work because they go deeper than simple endorsements and are clever alignments that lean on authenticity.
The multi-media landscape is key to these changes. It is about creating content streams that go beyond the ad itself or a limited range of variations to building an integrated trans-media campaign. All this is linked to a fundamental change of ambition – as brands move from simple endorsement to influence.
At its heart this is about building an engaging and credible narrative. We overuse the word in 21st century marketing, but this must be authentic – why is the celebrity here, what is the angle – the fit with brand. At its best this creates content in long and short forms with quality and engagement. The chosen narrative must contain a creative idea. In the old world just throwing a carefully selected celeb, or this year’s ‘15-minuter’ into a TVC could create a moment of endorsement to lift a brand. Now, the narrative must fit seamlessly into the reality of the consumers’ broader content consumption to cut through. If not, savvy consumers will quickly see it as marketing b/s. And that means no influence. It is a partnership of shared benefit – celebrity, brand and consumer.
**This is tough to deliver and even our examples do it with various levels of success along the endorsement to potential influence scale. The evolving use of celebrity is another example of #whatbranddo, how they use big creative thinking to drive themselves forward in the relentless quest for impact and distinctiveness. **
#WhatBrandsDo
