Are celebrity founders good for your brand?

As The Ellen DeGeneres Show returned to Amer­i­can day­time TV screens in Sep­tem­ber, after a sum­mer mired in accu­sa­tions of a tox­ic work­place cul­ture includ­ing racism and bul­ly­ing, her apol­o­gy made mar­keters sit up and take notice.

“This is The Ellen DeGeneres Show. I am Ellen DeGeneres. My name is there,” De Generes said in a record­ed state­ment.

While the dam­age to De Generes’ rep­u­ta­tion and brand remains to be seen, it may raise alarm bells for mar­keters work­ing with a celebri­ty founder. And not just celebri­ties who have found­ed busi­ness­es, but those impact­ed by the cul­ture of celebri­ty around icon­ic brand founders, such as in the tech start­up world, where the likes of Mark Zucker­berg, Steve Jobs and Bill Gates are both idolised and immor­talised.

It high­lights how cru­cial it is for mar­keters to unrav­el a brand nar­ra­tive from that of its founder. But what do they need to do when it comes to build­ing a brand rep­u­ta­tion that hon­ours a founder, yet can stand on its own?

First-hand lessons from a founder and CEO

Char­ly Lester, an entre­pre­neur and mar­keter who co-found­ed then sold the over-50s dat­ing app Lumen, knows first-hand the ups and downs of bal­anc­ing a founder brand with that of the busi­ness. She has worked with start­up founders whose inflat­ed egos have got in the way of devel­op­ing a clear brand mis­sion, lead­ing to the fail­ure of their busi­ness, and learnt in her own ven­tures what that jour­ney looks like.

“I devel­oped The Dat­ing Awards, based on my impar­tial views as a suc­cess­ful blog­ger. As the awards grew, my rep­u­ta­tion grew and I end­ed up in a sit­u­a­tion where I was unable to sep­a­rate the brand,” Lester recalls. “It made it impos­si­ble for me to sell the com­pa­ny and no longer be a large part of it, because buy­ers recog­nised it would lose cred­i­bil­i­ty if I stepped away.”

And when she co-found­ed Lumen in 2018, she was care­ful to use her per­son­al brand to ampli­fy its mis­sion, while ensur­ing it would have a life of its own. “Lumen had a strong iden­ti­ty and mis­sion from ear­ly on – anti-ageism – which helped ensure my own per­son­al brand did­n’t eclipse the brand itself,” she affirms.

“As a founder you need to share the same val­ues as your busi­ness, but you need to be able to neat­ly sep­a­rate your­self from the brand when the time comes, with­out the foun­da­tions crum­bling around you.”

Cur­rent­ly chief mar­ket­ing offi­cer (CMO) of Clemen­tine, a women’s men­tal health app whose founder is now step­ping aside for a new chief exec­u­tive, Lester must forge a clear strat­e­gy and brand rep­u­ta­tion that is sup­port­ed by the founder’s per­son­al brand, but is not reliant on it.

The bottom line sits with marketers

Ulti­mate­ly, this is a marketer’s respon­si­bil­i­ty, says Michelle Weil, a San Fran­cis­co-based mar­ket­ing and growth strate­gist. She has worked with a num­ber of star­tups, includ­ing com­e­dy pro­duc­tion busi­ness Fun­ny or Die, with celebri­ty founder Will Fer­rell at the helm.

She acknowl­edges that in the ear­ly days, a founder’s sto­ry can add to the marketer’s tool­box and can be dialled up if a busi­ness tra­jec­to­ry needs it, as was the case at Fun­ny or Die.

But for a num­ber of busi­ness­es she has worked with, there have been clear tip­ping points to sug­gest it’s time for a brand to forge its own path. She gives the exam­ple of an ortho­don­tics start­up whose founder was its face, which was an approach that was no longer sus­tain­able once it expand­ed across the Unit­ed States.

“I inter­viewed exist­ing patients to under­stand what brought them to the brand. We came up with four main rea­sons and none had to do with the founder. So that was a clear indi­ca­tion it was time to devel­op oth­er key attrib­ut­es and mes­sages for the brand,” says Weil.

She also cites her work with breast pump start­up Wil­low Pump as an instance where the brand sto­ry need­ed sep­a­ra­tion from its founders from an ear­ly stage. “Our pri­ma­ry founders were both men, but as a com­pa­ny that cre­ates a prod­uct for women, it didn’t make sense to play up the founder angle,” she says. “In that case, we actu­al­ly brought on a chief exec­u­tive that was a woman and she became more the face of the com­pa­ny.”

Using a legacy name to build consumer trust

It’s not just in the start­up world where the cul­ture of a celebri­ty founder is present. Numer­ous icon­ic brands bear their founder’s name, with the likes of Dyson and Estée Laud­er still demon­strat­ing clear links.

For the Mar­riott Inter­na­tion­al hotel group, found­ed as a root beer stand by hus­band and wife J.W. and Alice Mar­riott in 1927, a com­bi­na­tion of con­sis­ten­cy and evo­lu­tion has dri­ven its growth.

“When it comes to brand and mar­ket­ing, the lead­ers of our 30 brands are empow­ered to evolve the brands to ensure they stay rel­e­vant and meet the chang­ing demand of the mar­ket,” says Neal Jones, Europe, Mid­dle East and Africa chief sales and mar­ket­ing offi­cer for Mar­riott Inter­na­tion­al.

“Yet each of the 30 brands in the Mar­riott Inter­na­tion­al port­fo­lio has a dis­tinct set of brand stan­dards that any prop­er­ty fly­ing that brand’s flag is required to fol­low. These brand stan­dards ensure con­sis­tent lev­els of qual­i­ty and ser­vice world­wide and are audit­ed reg­u­lar­ly to ensure our hotels deliv­er on their brand promise.”

If mar­keters learn any­thing from the Ellen DeGeneres sto­ry, it’s com­ing up with strate­gies for devo­lu­tion, such as well­ness plat­form Goop lever­ag­ing its chief con­tent offi­cers as co-hosts along­side celebri­ty founder Gwyneth Pal­trow in its Net­flix incar­na­tion. “It’s impor­tant as your brand is grow­ing to be super con­scious of how the founder sto­ry plays into the brand sto­ry. You nev­er want to make it all about the founder,” Weil con­cludes.

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