Is hate appeal the new sex appeal?
In an era when anyone with a mobile phone can share anonymous opinions publicly, celebrities are lightning rods for judgment and vitriol. Nevertheless, marketers and brand builders are taking campaigns starring controversial figures all the way to the bank.
Sydney Sweeney is a prime example of the polarizing effect a celebrity can have while finding commercial success. Sweeney, who broke through on HBO’s edgy hit Euphoria, is steadily building a movie career as the star of sleeper hits like Anyone But You and The Housemaid that have legs at the box office, which is a feat given the current state of the movie industry.
Sweeney has racked up an impressive list of endorsements and launched her own lingerie brand but had a rough patch in the press when her campaign for American Eagle in 2025, which featured the tagline “Sydney Sweeney has great jeans,” seemingly as a play on the word genes, was deemed to have racist undertones by liberal swaths of the internet. The controversy mushroomed to the point that Sweeney’s political leanings were dragged into the debate and President Trump weighed in to defend her on social media. American Eagle’s CEO stood firmly by the campaign, claiming that it attracted new customers and grew sales with two jean styles named after Sweeney quickly selling out.
Not only did American Eagle stay the course with the Sydney campaign but they engaged her again for a current campaign promoting their denim shorts styles.
The Glare of Social Media
Demi Moore enjoyed a career resurgence when she earned a well-deserved Oscar nomination in 2024 for her performance in The Substance as a fading actress struggling to maintain her relevance in ageist Hollywood.
Moore, 63, received as much attention for how she has maintained her signature beauty as she did for her performance in the film and was held up in the media as a spokesperson for anti-ageism as she advocated in interviews for being authentic to oneself. Simultaneously, she was dogged by online rumors of cosmetic procedures and heated debates on social media about her increasingly thin appearance while attending highly publicized red-carpet events.
The online chatter hasn’t slowed Moore down. Her role in Taylor Sheridan’s hit series Landman on Paramount Plus was expanded in its second season, and she has a showy role in Boots Riley’s upcoming film I Love Boosters. As a brand ambassador, she recently snagged top-tier endorsement deals with Kérastase Paris and Lancôme.
Notably, Moore is representing Lancôme’s Absolue Longevity MD, a premium collection of skincare products that claim to reverse visible biological signs of aging at three stages of life. Absolue Longevity MD, which is also represented by Oscar winner Zoe Saldaña, is a major product launch for Lancôme so tapping Moore as one of its faces is a high-stakes strategic move for the cosmetics giant as it competes for the growing global skincare market, which is projected by multiple sources to exceed $200 billion by 2030.
Reality TV Creates Real Influence
The best example of celebrities finding commercial success in spite of, or thanks to, fragmented public opinion is the Kardashian family. Emerging at the dawn of reality TV, the Kardashians, masterfully guided by matriarch Kris Jenner and powered by the notoriety of Kim Kardashian, satiated the public’s thirst for people behaving badly on camera to create an empire on Keeping Up with the Kardashians, which ran on the E! network from 2007 to 2021, turning the family into the original influencers.
More recently, the Kardashians returned to television in the Hulu series The Kardashians. Hulu bet twice on Kim’s star power by also airing All’s Fair, a scripted series produced by TV hit maker Ryan Murphy in which she stars. Murphy is definitely a Kardashian fan, having hired Kim to play an evil publicist in the Delicate installment of FX’s American Horror Story in 2023. Full disclosure: I think she did a surprisingly good job in the role.
While Kim’s half-sisters Kylie and Kendall Jenner have notably carved standout careers, Kylie as the founder of Kylie Cosmetics and Kendall as a spokesmodel for Estee Lauder and L’Oreal, Kim is setting new standards of business success as a celebrity thanks to the success of her Skims shapewear brand, which she co-founded with Emma Grede and Jens Grede in 2019. The brand leveraged its marketing power, establishing a signature minimalism in its promotional visuals, collaborating with megabrands like The North Face and Nike, and taking over window displays of some of the world’s top department stores. Today, the brand is poised for world domination, opening free-standing stores and expanding to include apparel, swimwear, and menswear to become a lifestyle brand that was valued at $5 billion following a $225 million funding round led by Goldman Sachs in late 2025.
This show of faith in Skims from Wall Street reinforces the theory that knowing your audience and staying true to your brand is the surest road to success, even if you’re not for everyone.
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