Celebrity ambassadors still attract millions of pounds in investment in the retail sector, and it’s a strategy that can be a shortcut to visibility and confer the right brand associations, if you get it right. Get it wrong and it can do more harm than good – just ask Adidas.
A celebrity’s relationship with customers is generally one-way: most celebs only want to speak directly to an audience, not with them. Internet-famous influencers are better placed to build relationships, but this necessitates a lot of oversight to ensure they don’t step outside brand guardrails, which can compromise their perceived authenticity or even their personal integrity.
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However, in going straight to the most Insta-recognisable faces has meant the most closely aligned (and cost-effective) ambassadors have been largely overlooked. The people who possess the richest insights and have a deep understanding of what the brand means to customers can be found on the shop floor – your employees.
From staff to storytellers
Your shop floor team are influencers too, though most aren’t the type that chase follower counts online. This isn’t a new concept. Selfridges used their frontline staff as a direct extension of their brand persona over a century ago. Its founder, Harry Gordon Selfridge, called this approach “the theatre of retail”. It encourages repeat visits, builds a sense of community, and makes every interaction memorable, turning the on-the-ground employees into natural ambassadors.
It’s not a huge leap to extend this thinking beyond bricks and mortar and into the digital sphere. Your budding influencers are well-placed to act on the valuable insights they’ve gathered through their day-to-day interactions to develop employee-generated content (EGC), which will generate further engagement through your owned channels.
Like it or not, even the most closely focus-grouped above-the-line branded content can fall flat. Consumers respond better to content that feels ‘real’, created by the people who live and breathe the brand, rather than an agency that’s one step removed.
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By GlobalDataThere’s a clear opportunity to use your teams to develop content such as styling videos in fashion or product showcases in beauty. And it shouldn’t stop there.
Add Dynamic Creative Optimisation (DCO) and location-based targeting into the mix and you turn authenticity from a buzzword into a measurable lever.
DCO allows retailers to automatically tailor creative elements – copy, imagery, or calls-to-action – based on real-time factors like user behaviour, time of day, or proximity to a store. When combined with location-based data, which uses signals such as mobile activity or postcode clusters, campaigns can dynamically reflect what’s happening locally: new collections, restocks, events, or promotions.
This means that a styling clip filmed by an associate on Oxford Street could reach shoppers within a short walk of the store. Meanwhile, a fragrance walkthrough recorded in Manchester could automatically align with regional promotions or seasonal demand. If the localised content itself features recognisable locations and authentic regional accents from people shoppers have actually seen in-store, then authenticity is baked in.
We’re already seeing retailers experiment with this at scale. Pandora has trialled store-specific TikTok accounts for locations like Tamworth and Bluewater. What might look like throwaway content at first glance, such as behind-the-scenes clips, is quietly driving measurable performance. This content can be repurposed into paid campaigns, tailored further by audience proximity, in-store availability, or regional preferences.
And the impact isn’t just external. This approach also boosts internal engagement. Empowering staff to create content themselves, within brand guidelines, gives them a voice and sense of ownership. In short, it makes your people part of your story.
In this way retailers can turn colleagues into genuine brand advocates who bring credibility, insight, and influence from within. No celebrity endorsement can buy that kind of belief.
Frontline intelligence
There is a bigger picture though – sales associates, stylists, and store managers have something external influencers, or even your marketing team does not, they interact with your audience daily. They hear why an item doesn’t fit, when a price point feels off, and understand what makes a customer light up.
These are the types of real-time signals that should be used to guide product development, store layout, merchandising, and – of course – your marketing strategy.
The face-to-face personal engagement they offer is key to building long-term relationships that are much harder to establish online (especially in the early stages), and are fraught with risk. For instance, a poorly targeted email promoting engagement rings to someone who’s already married isn’t useful or helpful. Calling on the knowledge of front-line staff can ensure this doesn’t happen.
This is particularly relevant in luxury retail, where frontline staff often act as relationship managers – tracking clients’ anniversaries, remembering wish lists, and contacting them directly when a new line drops. Every piece of feedback, customer preference or purchase decision presents an opportunity to strengthen the relationship between store experience and digital marketing. Closing the loop means capturing the conversations and feeding them back into the CRM to inform follow-up messaging.
Personalisation is a strategy that shouldn’t start and stop at a single category, though, and it doesn’t always have to be as sophisticated as the methods employed to reach ultra-high net worth individuals. Simple factors such as age, purchasing habits and – most importantly – location can be used to fuel communications that feel more personal, more timely, and far more reflective of how an individual actually shops.
The fact is, consumers increasingly expect connected experiences, and as AI-driven segmentation lowers activation costs to personalisation costs, a one-size-fits-all messaging strategy will harm brand equity over time.
In a retail environment defined by volatility, where demand fluctuates and consumer values shift almost daily, celebrities can bring a short-term buzz. This has a part to play, depending on your business objectives; however, what’s changing is customer expectations. Rather than simply being an amorphous ‘audience’ to be talked at, they want an opportunity to be informed at a local level and have the opportunity to engage, whether that’s across digital channels or at their nearest store.
If we want the show to go on, we need to recognise the value in joining up the performances across every channel. The connective tissue is your own people, but at the moment, they stand as the theatre of retail’s most underused players.
About the Author: Mike Fantis is VP and managing partner at international media agency DAC.
