"We need another celebrity tequila brand!" —Said no one ever
A warning to investors and celebrities chasing yesterday's opportunity
“Th-th-that's all, folks!” — Porky Pig, Looney Tunes 1937
The celebrity brand boom has become a formulaic game, and everyone's using the same template. [Celebrity name] is thrilled to announce [product category] that reflects their personal journey with [vague lifestyle concept]. The music stopped months ago. Most people just haven't noticed yet.
Here's the problem: consumers aren't stupid. They can smell manufactured authenticity from a mile away, and they're not buying it (literally).
The numbers prove it.
The Market Reality in Numbers
The data tells a brutal story:
68% of celebrity beauty launches since 2020 are no longer available at retail
Customer acquisition costs for celebrity-founded DTC brands rose 42% year-over-year in 2024
Fewer than 4 celebrity brands have exited for >$250M post-2022 (Rhode, Skims still private)
Celebrity brand media mentions dropped 31% in 2024 despite 60% more launches
(Source: NPD, Earnest Analytics, and BoF 2025 data cuts.)
Here's what's really happening: we're witnessing the financialization of fame. What used to be cultural influence is now being strip-mined for quarterly returns. The novelty premium is gone. What remains is basic business arithmetic.
When Lightning Actually Struck
The early winners didn't follow a playbook because no playbook existed. When Rihanna launched Fenty Beauty, she was solving a problem she lived with: finding foundation that matched her skin tone. Forty shades at launch when most brands offered twenty. One hundred million in sales in forty days.
Selena Gomez's Rare Beauty succeeded because it aligned with her years of public mental health advocacy. George Clooney's Casamigos wasn't a brand built on celebrity: it was a friendship turned into tequila. Hailey Bieber's Rhode skincare wasn't a business plan disguised as passion. It was passion that happened to become a business plan.
These weren't celebrity brands. They were authentic brands that happened to be founded by celebrities. The difference is about a billion dollars in enterprise value.
The Formulaic Playbook
I've seen pitch decks that are literally Mad Libs in action: "[Celebrity name] has always been passionate about [product category] and is excited to bring [adjective] [products] to [demographic]." The only things that change are the names and nouns.
The results are predictably hollow. Addison Rae's Item Beauty launched with fanfare, landed in Sephora, and quietly disappeared within two years. Logan Paul's Prime Hydration hit $1 billion in sales, then watched revenues drop by 70% in the UK and 40% in the U.S. as the initial hype faded. Millie Bobby Brown's Florence by Mills fizzled fast, hurt by obvious inauthenticity, including a viral video of her pretending to use the products.
These aren't businesses. They're brand licensing deals in founder's clothing.
The Great Misalignment Crisis
The most dangerous trend is misalignment between celebrity, product, and audience. A pop star who's never discussed skincare launches a $300 anti-aging serum. A rapper known for street credibility launches organic baby food.
But here's the deeper problem: celebrities are optimizing for personal brand extension when they should be optimizing for customer lifetime value. They're building licensing deals, not customer relationships. The result is a portfolio of products that feel like merch with higher margins.
Meanwhile, the most successful celebrity brands succeed not because they leverage fame, but because they transcend it. Rihanna's Fenty Beauty customers aren't buying foundation because they love Rihanna: they're buying it because it's the best foundation for their skin tone. The celebrity becomes secondary to the product truth.
Back Fluency, Not Fame
What does fluency mean? It's not just knowing your product: it's living in the same world as your customer. It's founder-market fit, expressed through deep product understanding and genuine alignment with consumer needs. Fluency isn't a pitch. It's a posture.
And it's rare in the celebrity brand space.
The Creator Exception
While traditional celebrity brands stumble, creators like MrBeast and Emma Chamberlain are rewriting the rules. They blend fame and founder DNA more effectively because they built their audiences by being authentic from day one.
MrBeast didn't rise by critiquing food. He became the biggest YouTuber by turning absurd generosity into content. His videos are social experiments wrapped in spectacle: last to leave the circle wins $500,000, spend 24 hours in a haunted house, buy every item in a store and give it away. Over time, his challenges became increasingly theatrical, with cash prizes hidden inside candy bars and golden tickets sending fans to a real-life chocolate factory he built.
That factory wasn't a metaphor. It was a video. And Feastables was the punchline.
So when MrBeast launched a chocolate brand, it wasn't a branding exercise. It was worldbuilding. It felt native to the universe he had already spent years constructing: one part YouTube chaos, one part myth-making, one part Willy Wonka. His viewers didn't just buy Feastables because it was MrBeast's, they bought it because they already felt like they were part of the story.
Emma Chamberlain's coffee success shows the creator advantage clearly. Her followers didn't just watch her drink coffee; they watched her obsess over quality, experiment with brewing methods, and build an aesthetic around coffee culture.
Not every creator brand succeeds. Rob Kardashian quietly shut down both Grandeza Hot Sauce and the streetwear line Halfway Dead after trademark issues, customer complaints, and lack of traction. Despite name recognition and family brand power, neither business resonated or built sustained customer demand.
But when creator brands work, they work for a reason: the brand feels like a natural extension of the creator, not a bolt-on revenue stream.
The Coming Reckoning
The celebrity brand gold rush created enormous wealth for a small number of founder-entrepreneurs. But like all gold rushes, it attracted far more prospectors than there is gold to find.
The easy money is gone. The bandwagon is full. And it's heading off a cliff.
Why now? We're experiencing what I call "authenticity inflation." Just as monetary inflation devalues currency, the flood of manufactured celebrity brands has devalued the authenticity signal itself. Consumers now require exponentially more proof of genuine involvement to overcome their skepticism.
Economic anxiety has made consumers more discerning about discretionary spending: they're not throwing $50 at celebrity skincare on impulse anymore. TikTok-native brands have raised the bar for what feels authentic. Platform algorithm changes have made organic reach harder, forcing celebrity brands to compete on paid media where their advantages disappear.
Perhaps most importantly, Gen Z has developed sophisticated authenticity detectors honed by years of influencer marketing. They can spot manufactured passion instantly, and they're vocal about calling it out.
The Investor Wake-Up Call
Too many investors still see celebrity as a shortcut to consumer trust. But fame isn't a moat. It's a line item that depreciates fast. And when the hype wears off, what's left is often a commodity product with inflated CAC and thin margins.
The celebrities who understand this will build lasting companies. The ones who don't will become expensive case studies in the difference between influence and entrepreneurship.
The next billion-dollar brand won't start with a celebrity's press release. It'll start with a real problem, solved better than anyone else, backed by someone who lives it every day.
The best celebrity brand isn't a brand at all. It's a product-first company, built by someone whose fame is a bonus, not the pitch.
This is the inflection point. The moment when the market separates signal from noise. When consumers stop buying names and start buying solutions. When investors stop chasing followers and start chasing fundamentals.
The celebrity brand era is over. The founder era is just beginning.
The brands that understand this will thrive. The ones that don't will become expensive reminders that hype is not a business strategy. That fame without substance is just noise. That in the end, consumers vote with their wallets.
Don't back fame. Back fluency.
Disclosure: Sugar Capital holds positions in some companies mentioned.
Outstanding points and beautifully articulated.
Great piece.