The connection can sit in the product, the performance or the public image the person brings with them. An actor can make a film concept feel natural. A sports professional can bring a precise relationship to movement. A distinctive dresser can help an unfamiliar silhouette make sense. In each case, the casting gives the creative team something specific to work with.

Reformation’s Good Sport campaign starring Olivia Jade offers a more pointed version. Its collegiate framing draws part of its meaning from the public associations around the person cast in it. You do not need a long explanatory caption to recognise that the choice is doing more work than simply introducing the clothes.

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The College Crew also carries a defined commitment: 100 per cent of net proceeds go to YES Scholars. That gives the collegiate idea a practical component alongside its humour. The distinction between net proceeds and the total selling price matters; they should not be casually treated as the same thing.

The interesting question is whether the association gives people a reason to keep thinking about the clothes after they have registered the joke. A campaign can be culturally legible and still need a convincing product offer. Recognition gets someone into the conversation. It does not complete the transaction for them.

On’s second co-created collection with Zendaya, made with Law Roach, approaches the relationship through continuing creative involvement. The October launch places the collection inside an action-film-inspired campaign. Clothing designed to move has an obvious relationship to a performance setting, while the actor’s involvement makes the format feel connected to her work.

Co-creation adds an important layer, although the label alone cannot tell us how decisions were shared. For a customer, the evidence sits in the resulting pieces and in whether the collaboration develops a recognisable point of view over time. Repetition can help if each release deepens the association. It can become wallpaper if the relationship stops producing anything distinctive.

There are several ways a person can matter to a campaign. They may bring a practice the product serves. Their style may explain an unexpected design choice. Their humour can make a brand’s tone easier to understand. The connection should be specific enough that replacing them changes the idea, rather than merely changing the potential audience size.

That specificity also places limits on the brand. A creator with a recognisable voice has preferences, habits and boundaries. Flattening those out to make the partnership easier to approve removes part of what made the person valuable. The resulting content can look professionally produced while feeling strangely less like them.

Audiences do not need every partnership to feel spontaneous. Most people understand that an advertisement is an advertisement. What they are often evaluating is whether the person’s involvement makes sense and whether the creative work gives them something worth watching. Pretending a commercial arrangement does not exist can be less persuasive than making a good one visible.

For brands, the replacement test belongs near the beginning of the brief. What does this person allow us to say, show or make that we could not do in the same way without them? If the answer is simply that they have followers, the team can be honest about that. If the ambition is deeper, the concept needs to give their particularity room to matter.

The collaborations I want to spend time with tend to reveal something about both sides. You understand why the brand chose the person, and why the person might have wanted to make this specific thing. Their face brings you in. The connection gives you a reason to stay.