Four weeks before a global pandemic would send the UK into lockdown, Paul Schaafsma sat waiting nervously in the Fulham offices of Kylie Minogue.<\/p>\n
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The former Accolade Wines<\/a> CEO, then two years into his own venture with Benchmark Drinks, had been told the Australian singer was interested in creating her own ros\u00e9.<\/p>\n \u201cShe came around the corner of the office with a platter of cheese and biscuits<\/a>,\u201d he recalls with a smile. \u201cIt completely broke the ice.\u201d<\/p>\n The pair talked for three hours, moving from \u201cembryonic idea\u201d to the Tesco<\/a> launch of Kylie\u2019s Signature Ros\u00e9 in just three months \u2013 a timeline made all the more extraordinary by the fact that Covid<\/a> meant samples had to be left on Kylie\u2019s doorstep or sipped over the garden gate.<\/p>\n Throughout, Minogue was involved at every stage, from sketching out the label design and attending meetings with major supermarket<\/a> buyers to travelling to meet winemakers and cellar hands in Provence<\/p>\n \u201cOne of the things she said was that it\u2019s so important to her that she\u2019s involved and that it\u2019s authentic,\u201d says Schaafsma.<\/p>\n It proved a winning formula. The wine has now sold more than 20 million bottles, with year upon year of double-digit growth. More than that, though, it has become emblematic of a new type of celebrity<\/a> deal sweeping the shelves in food and drink.<\/p>\n Where once musicians, actors and sports stars were paid a (huge) fee to endorse products they knew next to nothing about before walking away, they\u2019re now looking for skin in the game. They\u2019re taking equity stakes in ambitious startups, signing on as creative directors and co-founders, and stumping up millions of pounds of their own cash in investment rounds.<\/p>\n But if that means the potential upside is bigger for both the celebrity and the brand, so too is the risk. So, how have things changed? And what are the real stakes when it comes to striking a celebrity deal in 2026?<\/p>\n By the time Gary Lineker signed up as an ambassador for Walkers<\/a> Crisps in 1994 \u2013 featuring in its \u2018Welcome Home\u2019 ad \u2013 celebrity endorsements were already booming on the back of explosive growth in both TV and sports marketing<\/a>. Multimillion-pound deals had been struck between Pepsi and Michael Jackson, Kellogg\u2019s and The Monkees, and McDonald\u2019s and Michael Jordan.<\/p>\n But for Raf McDonnell, founder and MD of Talent & Brands, Lineker\u2019s collaboration with Walkers marked something more significant: the start of a move away from celebrities<\/a> delivering a one-liner and walking off to cash their cheque, toward something more genuinely reciprocal.<\/p>\n As a marketing manager for Walkers in the 1990s, McDonnell watched the former England strike get deeply involved behind the scenes in a far more \u201cmultifaceted\u201d arrangement than anything that had come before. Lineker would show up to sales conferences, take calls with major national account holders, join the team on corporate away days and travel the UK on store visits.<\/p>\n \u201c[Lineker] was a believer in the brand, developed great relationships with all of the team and was fully integrated, even in some of the brand development,\u201d says McDonnell.<\/p>\n It set the tone for what brands could expect with the right celebrity partnership. And it wasn\u2019t long before celebrities had their own realisation. The boom in social media had suddenly given them a captive audience of millions. They became influencers as well as actors, musicians and sports stars.<\/p>\n Their role \u201cin humanising products, helping explain and story-tell made them far more appealing\u201d, says Tom Ainscough, VP of commercial partnerships at representation and marketing agency The Team. This gave celebrities new power not just to endorse, but to materially help grow a product. And in return, many wanted a stake, not a fixed fee.<\/p>\n One of the first to grasp this was rapper 50 Cent, who turned a 2004 trial endorsement deal with Vitaminwater into a reported $100m payout when the brand was sold to Coca-Cola<\/a> three years later. The musician had acquired equity in the brand while helping to power its sales from $100m to $700m in just three years.<\/p>\n The deal created a new blueprint for many of the celeb deals that followed. In 2018, actor Ryan Reynolds took an undisclosed stake in Aviation American Gin, an Oregon-based craft spirits brand that had first launched in 2006. Reynolds spearheaded creative direction and used his profile to catapult its growth. In 2022, Beyonc\u00e9 headlined a $31m Series A funding round for lemon water brand Lemon Perfect.<\/p>\nThe origins of the co-ownership model<\/h2>\n
Partnerships that shaped celebrity brand deals<\/h2>\n
1983 |\u00a0Michael Jackson and Pepsi<\/h3>\n