When David Beckham sold beer - but not in the way you think

Hello Creative Folks,

This week, we are talking about how the celebrity endorsement formula is completely and utterly exhausted. Faces everywhere, impact nowhere.

Stella Artois proved that the new premium doesn’t come from showing more — it comes from showing less. By hiding Beckham’s face, they made people look harder at the brand. This wasn’t just an ad. It was a reset.

Here is our deep dive into this campaign: 

The Problem

We’re drowning in celebrity endorsements. Same faces, same poses, same “I just love this brand” energy. It all blends into one big beige blur.

Stella Artois quietly broke that pattern.

They took one of the most recognisable men on the planet… and refused to show his face. That tiny act of restraint did something most big-budget campaigns fail to do: it made people lean in.

Not because of louder visuals or bigger media, but because the ad trusted you to be smart enough to connect the dots. This wasn’t just “clever celeb work.” It was a small but sharp reset in how premium brands can show up.

The Wrong Assumption

Most marketers treat celebrities like cheat codes:

But fame isn’t just about recognition. It’s about how you use that recognition. The interesting move is not: "Look, it’s Beckham." It is: "You know it’s Beckham… and we never had to say it."

That’s where the magic lives: in unexpected testimony.

• The dentist who loves toffee.

• The Michelin chef praising frozen pizza.

• The football legend reduced to a pair of hands.

When the messenger feels wrong for the category, your brain lights up. Stella leaned straight into that tension.

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What Actually Happened

To launch its “Worth More” platform, Stella Artois ran a global campaign built around one constraint: You never see David Beckham’s face.

Instead, all you get are:

• His tattooed hands

• A Stella chalice

• A line that winks at you:

These visuals ran on outdoor ads across major cities, in Times Square, in The New York Times, and on “Walls of Fame” in restaurants (everyone’s face cropped out, hands only).

No logo screaming his name. No VO announcing him. Just enough to make your brain go, "Wait… that’s Beckham, right?" And once your brain does that work, the message lands harder.

Why It Worked

1. Cognitive Dissonance Your mind has a template for “celebrity ad”: Face. Smile. Product. Tagline. Stella breaks the template. There’s fame… but no face. That mismatch creates a tiny mental itch: "I know this person. Why can’t I see him?"

You resolve the itch by paying closer attention. That effort translates directly into memorability.

2. Cultural Energy (a kinder version of parasitism) Beckham’s body is already cultural currency. His tattoos have been photographed, analysed, and obsessed over for years. Stella didn’t create that meaning. They borrowed it.

By only showing the hands, they asked culture to finish the sentence for them. You fill in the rest of the story from everything you already know. Again: when you do part of the work, the ad sticks deeper.

The Bigger Pattern

This isn’t random cleverness. It sits inside a growing pattern: anti-endorsement endorsements.

• McDonald’s Famous Orders made the meal the star, not the celebrity.

• Dove swapped supermodels for real people and turned “anti-glamour” into its edge.

• Liquid Death leans into not taking the whole endorsement game seriously at all.

The new premium tone is quiet confidence: "We don’t need to scream our assets at you. You already know." Stella didn’t downgrade Beckham. They refused to worship him. And in doing so, they upgraded the beer.

The Framework

Here’s a simple model you can actually use for endorsements: The CONTRAST ENGINE™

1. Familiarity: Anchor the work with a cue people already recognise.

2. Omission: Remove the one element they absolutely expect to see.

3. Tension: Let their brain work to resolve the gap.

4. Revelation: Land the “aha” in a way that connects back to your core brand truth.

Stella’s truth: “Worth More.” If you really are “worth more,” you don’t have to shove the celebrity in people’s faces. You can underplay the fame and still be unmistakable.

The Example

Here is how the framework applied to this campaign:

• Familiarity: Beckham’s tattooed hands are instantly recognisable.

• Omission: No face. No name. No verbal confirmation.

• Tension: "Why only the hands?" → "Is that…?" → "Yep, it is."

• Revelation: The glass — not the man — gets the hero treatment.

That’s what “worth more” looks like in practice. The audience literally completes the ad for you. And once they’ve done that, the work doesn’t feel “shown to them” — it feels discovered.

The Lesson

Premium isn’t volume. Premium is restraint.

Anyone can slap a famous face next to their logo. Very few brands have the nerve to hide the face and still assume you’ll get it.

Stella turned absence into a flex. They used what every other brand would have led with… as a quiet supporting detail.

How to Use This

Next time someone on your team says, "Let’s get a big name for this," ask two follow-up questions:

1. What’s the one thing everyone would expect us to show with this person?

2. What happens if we never show that — and still make the idea land?

If your concept survives that constraint, you’re no longer doing ad wallpaper. You’re operating in that Stella zone: subtle, self-assured, and just disruptive enough to make people actually think about you.

Figment is written by Abbhinav Kastura, a writer/producer who has spent a decade making impactful internet videos and Guru Nicketan, an advertising nerd, B2B Marketer, stand-up comedian, and a film buff.