Celebrity Sells. But Celebrity Puns Sell Harder

Celebrity advertising has always been an easy shortcut to brand fame. As Hamish Pringle argued in his seminal 2004 tome 'Celebrity Sells', the right famous face can lend a brand instant attention, recognition and borrowed meaning.

But in recent years, brands have found mileage in what can be often be (unfairly perhaps) as a classic 'dad joke': the name pun. Add a celebrity and you might be onto a winner.

CeraVe has given us Michael CeraVe; Hellmann’s put Jon Hamm and Brie Larson in the fridge; Müller Rice found advertising work for a footballer other than the ubiquitous Peter Crouch; and Kevin Bacon has, inevitably, been asked to sell everything from eggs to beer (we'll leave out the 'Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon' meme).

Corny dad jokes? Maybe. But there's no denying they are beautifully economical inoffensive and memorable forms of advertising: an instantly gettable joke that upsets no-one in an era when the offence police are on vigilant patrol.

Here, we take a look at the campaigns that prove a famous name can be more than a famous face - it can be the whole idea (if it comes and a client and creative team who enjoys a pun).

Legora,' Law Just Got More Attractive', NoA Åkestam Holst, 2026

Low interest category Legal AI is not the most obvious place to find celebrity glamour, which is probably why Legora drafted in Jude Law in a bid to pull it off. The campaign takes the simplest possible pun - Law selling law - and gives it an unexpectedly polished treatment, with Rhys Thomas directing and Hoyte van Hoytema shooting the actor like the face of a luxury fragrance. The gag gets you in; the work then uses Law to sell the less glamorous but more useful bits of the platform: drafting, research and collaboration. In a B2B category, it is a reminder that even mundane products can benefit from a little star dust.

Hellmann’s, 'Who’s in the Fridge?', Wunderman Thompson USA, 2023

For its Super Bowl food-waste platform, Hellmann’s put Jon Hamm and Brie Larson in Pete Davidson’s fridge and let the joke do the heavy lifting. The Hamm-and-Brie gag isn't exactly subtle (when are puns ever?), but Wunderman Thompson made it work by attaching the wordplay to a clear behaviour: using mayonnaise to turn leftovers into something worth eating.

CeraVe, 'Michael CeraVe', Ogilvy PR New York, 2024

This celebrity wordplay was simple enough to gain traction. It attached itself to the fake conspiracy/joke around the idea that Canadian actor Michael Cera had secretly developed CeraVe, before this Super Bowl spot reveal returned the brand to its real authority: dermatologists.

Compare the Market, 'Paul Hollywood', VCCP, 2024

Compare the Market casts the Bake Off judge as a would-be screen hero, turning his surname into a neat plug for the brand’s 2-for-1 cinema tickets - Hollywood stars, geddit?. It sits very much at home in the meerkats’ long-running world of knowingly camp entertainment.

Müller Rice, 'Rice, Rice Baby', VCCP with Girl&Bear, 2022 onwards

Müller Rice’s partnership with Declan Rice is one of those ideas that probably wrote itself. VCCP took the surname/product overlap and stretched it into 'Rice, Rice Baby', with later work pushing the protein message through special-build OOH and digital assets.

American Egg Board, 'Wake Up To Eggs With Bacon', Grey New York, 2015

As well as being a notable mobile phone salesman, Kevin Bacon is blessed with a surname that advertising could always find a use for. Grey’s work for the American Egg Board did exactly what you would expect: put Bacon with eggs and let the breakfast association do the lifting. Like most of these examples, it is not trying to be clever in a complicated way.

ToWorkFor, 'Risky Advertising for Safety Workwear', Stream and Tough Guy, 2022

Something slightly different - because the celebrities don't even appear in these ads. ToWorkFor, via Lisbon agency Stream and Tough Guy, turned famous names into safety questions: “Will Smith?”, “Wesley Snipes?” and “Can Tom Cruise?” It shows that you do not always need celebrity talent if the name itself can do the job.

Santander, 'Moving Starts Here', Publicis Flame/Saatchi & Saatchi, 2026

In Publicis Flame’s debut work for Santander, featuring Saatchi & Saatchi, Ant & Dec return (they were originally cast by previous agency `Engine) to make first-time buying feel less grim. The original woordplay on 'Ant & Dec' and 'Santander' is obviously contrived but no less fun for it.

Ultimately, these campaigns prove that celebrity still sells, as Pringle wrote over twenty years ago, but just not always in the way it used to.

His principles that the central promise of celebrity advertising was attention, aspiration and borrowed cultural meaning still holds. But these examples show a slightly cheekier evolution of the form - the endorsement of a celebrity face is no longer just a shortcut to fame; their name can do it too.