The brand ambassador model is evolving. The most commercially powerful brand partnerships are not the ones where a celebrity holds a product. They are the ones where the creator becomes a genuine architect of what the brand is.
The shift is structural, and the appointment by Puma of BLACKPINK's Rosé not as a face, but as a creative partner is proof. Moreover, Puma made it clear that the appointment involves a creative role when the PUMA x Rosé capsule launched in August 2025. The collection carried her aesthetic DNA, not just her name. The result remains to be seen.
NikeSKIMS launched in September 2025 at peak cultural velocity, with Kim Kardashian's identity so embedded in the SKIMS brand that the Nike partnership felt like a meeting of equals rather than a commercial transaction, generating $6.1 million in Media Impact Value (WWD, 2025).
Aaker (1997) introduced the concept of brand personality, where he associated human characteristics with a brand act as a key driver of consumer preference and loyalty. The creator-as-brand model effectively transfers an externally formed and deeply authentic personality into the organisation, enabling it to reconstitute the brand’s identity around it. The risk is dependency. The opportunity is authenticity at a scale that internal brand teams cannot manufacture.
Keller (1993) argues that the strength of brand associations depends on how favourable, strong, and unique they are. A creator who genuinely uses and believes in the product brings associations that are uniquely credible because the audience has already decided to trust them, separately from any commercial arrangement. That trust transfers. But only when the partnership is honest.
The distinction that matters, and that separates the partnerships generating real brand equity from the ones that generate a week of press and then fade. If the creator is a customer first, the brand association is credible. And if it is a commercial arrangement that was reverse-engineered, audiences tend to lose brand trust.
REFERENCES
Aaker, J.L. (1997) Dimensions of brand personality. Journal of Marketing Research, 34(3), pp.347–356.
Keller, K.L. (1993) Conceptualizing, measuring, and managing customer-based brand equity. Journal of Marketing, 57(1), pp.1–22.
