Brands have finally admitted what we all knew: the product doesn’t matter anymore. Kim Kardashian, Timothée Chalamet, and Susan Boyle are now competing in what amounts to a parallel World Cup where the only thing being kicked is the concept of restraint.
These aren’t commercials anymore. They’re prestige television masquerading as a ninety-second window to sell you something you don’t need. A car company just spent seven figures on a thirty-second shot of a celebrity looking pensively at the horizon—the car appears for two frames, shot from an angle that obscures the actual vehicle. The brief was apparently “make them feel something,” not “show them the product.”
Why are brands doing this? Because a genuinely entertaining commercial now counts as culture. A well-crafted ad gets discussed on social media the way people used to discuss actual films. Brands have weaponized celebrity and narrative to the point where the ad itself is the product—the thing being sold is not a car or a drink, but the idea that watching this commercial makes you interesting.
Susan Boyle didn’t need to be in a World Cup ad. Neither did Chalamet. But here we are, watching A-list talent perform in what is essentially a vanity project with a budget line item. The brands aren’t selling products anymore. They’re selling the notion that their commercial is worth your time in a way the actual match might not be.
The real joke: it’s working.