Ambassador slop: Why good advertising still needs good creative
Just like AI, celebrity ambassadors are everywhere these days. And just as there is “AI slop,” there is “ambassador slop.”
And right now, the market is producing more of it than ever.
Over 25% of brands currently participating in the endorsement landscape entered it for the first time in the last 12 months. CMOs, navigating an increasingly fragmented media landscape, are placing increasingly large bets on the one thing that still cuts through: A face everyone already knows. But what gets lost is the audience. Modern viewers are more media-literate than ever. And they are very good at recognizing when they’re being pandered to.
The question facing every brand considering a celebrity deal isn’t whether to use an ambassador. It’s about whether they’re building something that actually resonates or just buying a face that audiences know.
Fame is a shortcut. That doesn’t mean it works.
It’s a proven fact that celebrity endorsements can move product. Research led by Harvard Business School found that a celebrity partnership increases a company’s sales by an average of 4% compared with its competitors.
But the mechanism behind that lift is more interesting (and more conditional) than it seems. One study tracking eye movement and pupil dilation found that people fixate more on the famous face than the product being advertised. Nevertheless, audiences will still purchase these products faster and with greater confidence.
That’s a powerful cognitive shortcut. It’s also, if you’re not careful, a trap.
As ambassadorships have become more common, audiences have become more media-literate and more aware of the cognitive shortcut celebrity creates.
In a survey of 3,000 consumers, 81.8 % of respondents reported that they perceive celebrity endorsements as lacking credibility. And another survey, which cited the same issue, noted this response in particular:
“Paid product endorsements are meaningless. I want to learn about the product from experts who are advocating for it, not just some random person who happens to have a job that makes them well-known.”
This is ambassador slop in its clearest form: Fame for the sake of fame. And while the result may move product in the short term, the approach can inflict long-term damage.
What good ambassador partnerships actually look like
How can you create an ambassador partnership that actually works? Below, we’ve identified three key qualities that the best celebrity partnerships share, followed by examples of real-life partnerships that illustrate what to do (and what not to do) to put those qualities into action.
Meaningful fit
Not superficial category alignment, but genuine coherence between who the celebrity is and what the brand stands for, specific enough that the pairing feels inevitable in retrospect.
Real fit isn’t a box to check in due diligence. It’s the foundation the entire creative case is built on. Without it, no amount of production value or media spend rescues the partnership from feeling like exactly what it is: a transaction.
DON’T: Kendall Jenner X Pepsi
Most of us probably remember the infamous public response to the 2017 Pepsi ad in which Kendall Jenner breaks the tension between a protest march and a group of police by handing one of the officers a can of Pepsi. The problem with the ad, which audiences caught on to right away, was a lack of fit.
For the ad to work, Pepsi could have considered partnering with a real-life activist or charity. Jenner, by contrast, was a reality TV star and among the highest-paid celebrity influencers at the time. It’s no wonder that the pairing of this reputation with the ad’s theme led audiences to perceive the whole thing as transactional.
DO: Serena Williams X Ro
Through her partnership with Ro, Serena Williams publicly announced she was using GLP-1 injections to lose weight following the birth of her children. This was not only an incredibly vulnerable and brave decision, but it also spoke to the importance of Ro’s product.
Even for an athlete of Williams’s caliber, diet and exercise simply weren’t enough to regain control of her body. She needed the assistance of a GLP-1 like Ro’s. And this simple fact served as the foundation for a partnership with meaning that went far beyond product sales.
Creative integration
If you remove the celebrity from the campaign, does the concept still work? If the creative still has tension, narrative, and a reason to exist without the famous face, then the celebrity was decoration.
However, if the idea collapses without that specific person, if the whole thing only works because of who they are and what they specifically bring to it, then the celebrity is structural. That’s the only version of the deal worth making.
DON’T: Jennifer Garner X Capital One
Jennifer Garner has been featured as a celebrity ambassador in several Capital One ads. However, this one stands out for its attempt at a more creative integration by having Gardner parody Tom Hanks’s character in a famous scene from “A League of Their Own.”
The problem in this example isn’t lack of creativity, it’s weak integration. Critics pointed out that the connection between Capital One and the iconic baseball movie is unclear, made even more so by the fact that Garner wasn’t in that film in the first place. As a result, the final ad just feels, well, sloppy. Like anyone (let alone a famous actress with her own roster of iconic roles) could have taken on the brief.
DO: Michael Cera X CeraVe
Apart from sharing (almost) the same name, Cera wasn’t exactly an obvious ambassador choice for a product category like skincare. While most skincare commercials focus on using natural beauty to stand out, Cera’s reputation was built on understated, awkward roles.
That’s where the true creativity of Cera’s integration came about. By leaning into Cera’s unique reputation as the awkward, deadpan “everyman” character, CeraVe’s advert doubles down on this contrast in a way that’s both hilarious and completely unique to Cera’s identity.
Clear narrative role
A successful ambassador is not hired because they are famous. They are hired because they perform a specific strategic function. They make something possible that the brand could not have made possible alone.
A clear narrative role gives the celebrity something real to do (a character to inhabit, a tension to carry, a purpose in an actual story) rather than simply a product to hold and a line to deliver. It’s the difference between a celebrity as costume and a celebrity as character.
DON’T: Zoë Saldana X T-Mobile
Academy Award-winning actor Zoë Saldana’s talent is undeniable. Yet, in this ad, she’s given no narrative role. Without it, the ad becomes an example of the “hold the product and deliver a line” type of celebrity partnership. Except, with no product to hold, the ad appears to overcompensate with sheer enthusiasm from a famous face. The final result was criticised by audiences for lack of substance, with one describing it as “encapsulating almost everything I hate about commercials these days.”
DO: Bradley Cooper & Matthew McConaughey X Uber Eats
Just like T-Mobile, Uber Eats also hired Academy Award-winning actors for their Super Bowl campaign: Bradley Cooper and Matthew McConaughey. Unlike T-Mobile, however, Uber Eats embedded them in a serialized narrative arc that gave Cooper and McConaughey genuine dramatic function across multiple spots. They weren’t just decorating the brand. They were fulfilling established narrative roles that came together as a compelling (and comedic) feud.
Fame is a raw material, not a finished product
Celebrity ambassadorships come with a price tag in the tens or even hundreds of millions of dollars. When that much of the budget is committed to a name before a single frame is shot, oftentimes the creative brief arrives already constrained. The idea has to work around the talent, not the other way around. In this way, slop isn’t always a choice. Sometimes it’s the only choice.
Of course, if the creative is good, celebrity ambassadorships can become something that makes sense, feels genuine, and offers a clever approach to traditional advertising. Something powerful enough to earn its place in culture… and earn back the cost of producing it.
Ultimately, the difference between success and slop is proof that both fame and creativity can be hugely valuable to brands. One just has a bigger price.
