Hi Reader,

A few weeks ago I went on Sub Club Live with David Barnard to spend 60 minutes roasting about ten subscription app advertisers.

Granola. Cal AI. Headway. Grammarly. Ladder. The whole subscription app pantheon, lined up like ducks.

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That exact same morning, Ladder rolled out a giant Hilary Duff billboard in Times Square.

I can only describe this as the universe doing me a personal favor.

Here's the question David and I got into.

Do celebrity endorsements actually work for apps(that arent Big Brands(TM) like the Nikes and Cokes of the world)?

The polite answer is "it depends on the partnership, the activation, the long-term integration."

The honest answer is no. Mostly no. So overwhelmingly no that I'd like to confess on the record here.

I have personally worked on three big celebrity-or-celebrity-adjacent campaigns for sizable mass-market apps. Anonymized because I am not interested in starting a legal hobby.

Total combined measurable install lift: zero.

Not "below expectations." Not "soft on a TVC basis but we saw a lift in branded search and we believe the brand impact will manifest in subsequent quarters."

More like: "can't notice any sort of blip on your install chart."

Months of paperwork. Lawyers. Scheduling. And yes, $$$$.

The eventual deliverable was a single moment of attention that vaporized within 24 hours of going live.

Now look at where the math actually works.

Monopoly Go. Disney Magic Kingdoms. Harry Potter: Magic Awakened.

They make the entire celebrity endorsement category look like a rounding error on a coffee receipt that someone tried to expense.

Because IP is structurally different.

The user downloads it because they want to play Monopoly(and Monopoly has decades of brand equity), not because they were dazzled by Scopely's creative refresh.

So why might this still make sense for Ladder(who signed an endorsement with Hillary Duff, which we talk about on the episode)?

I'm going to play devil's advocate, since there is no point in being unconditionally disparaging.

1. Embedded celebrity could drop CPA at scale.

If Hilary is embedded across Ladder's creative: in the ads, in the videos, on the landing page, in the emails: that could produce a meaningful CPA drop at scale.

The platonic version of embedded is they just rename the app after her.

That level of integration is significantly more expensive. More shoots. More usage rights. More creative variants.

And wayyy more weeks of approvals for every single creative asset(been there, sigh).

If they stop at the billboard, the CPA benefit does not show up.

2. Hilary's own audience could move installs. Maybe.

Hilary Duff has a real audience. In theory, her own posts could drive meaningful installs and purchases.

In practice, celebrity endorsements on their own channels have notoriously inconsistent conversion. Look at any celeb's page. They do a couple of endorsements every month.

Honest question: how many of those actually move subscriptions or purchases?

This only works if you treat the celeb like any other influencer and measure ruthlessly.

In a world where even microinfluencers push back against any form of ‘performance measurement,’ that is a huge TBD.

3. Brand could become the unlock at scale. If Ladder can buy enough brand recall.

At Ladder’s scale, Meta, Google, TikTok all hit diminishing returns.

So they reach for the Coca-Cola or BMW playbook. You see a billboard. You see a TV ad. You see the logo on a hundred surfaces over a year.

You dont buy a BMW the moment you see a billboard. BUT the next time you’re in market for a car.

Same with Nike. You see them everywhere, then you buy Nike shoes on autopilot.

Ladder's bet is that Hilary makes every other Ladder ad work harder. You see the billboard, then you click on a Meta ad three weeks later because you vaguely remember the name.

The catch?

Coca-Cola spends around $4 billion a year on marketing. Nike spends about the same.

That kind of brand recall is bought with decades of relentless presence at a budget Ladder is nowhere near.

I dont have access to their metrics - but based on my own experience with both celeb-bets as well as with IP-based products, I think this is a very very risky bet for a product that isnt a BigBrand(TM).

And for you?

If you are spending ~$50k-$100K+ a month on Meta and your ads and funnel aren't converting, a celebrity will not fix it.

Hiring a celebrity at this stage buys you a very expensive way to feel like a real brand for one news cycle.

Anyway, If you spend $50K+/month on paid and you want a team that can tell the difference between creative that compounds performance and brand spend that just sets cash on fire in a tasteful way, hit reply with "BRAND" and we'll talk.

Or don't. I'm sure the next brand post is the one that finally fixes everything.

Cheers,

Shamanth