When every brand wants the same face, who stands out?

What do DKNY, Skylrk, Rhode, Saint Laurent, Mango, Skims, Gap and Adanola have in common? In 2026, they all worked with Hailey Bieber.

Launchmetrics’ latest Yearbook brings those partnerships together, offering a starting point for a question facing fashion marketers: when brands share the same famous face, how does each make the partnership its own?

The report names Bieber its “Influencer Voice of 2026,” highlighting nine campaigns and two Coachella pop-ups, from denim, activewear, luxury fashion and beauty — a portfolio that illustrates the breadth of her commercial appeal.

A 2013 study in Psychology & Marketing, by Arthur Cheng-Hsui Chen, Rita Ya-Hui Chang, Ali Besherat and Daniel W. Baack, found that strong consistency between the concepts of brands endorsed by the same celebrity could positively influence consumer attitudes towards those brands. Sharing an endorser could therefore produce benefits when the brand associations were compatible, which seems to be the case with Bieber.

Launchmetrics measured activations using Media Impact Value, its proprietary monetary valuation of media coverage rather than a measure of sales or return on investment. Across different reporting windows, it attributed 7.2 million dollars in Media Impact Value to the Adanola collection launch between October 13 and 20, compared with 6.4 million dollars for the Skims campaign between June 22 and 29. Gap’s “The Hailey Jean” generated 4 million dollars between July 14 and 16, while Mango’s summer campaign generated 3.8 million dollars between May 10 and 19.

“What stands out in partnerships today is a shift from simply casting talent to involving them in the greater story itself. Audiences are increasingly receptive to deeper relationships and more layers to an activation and when an ambassador has a real role in shaping the narrative, that authenticity carries through in how it’s amplified and received. For brands, that means thinking about talent less as a campaign asset and more as a long-term storytelling partner, because that’s where lasting brand value is built," Launchmetrics' chief marketing officer Alison Bringé told FashionUnited.

Bieber is not alone in moving between brands. In 2026, Zendaya appeared in Louis Vuitton’s Monogram anniversary campaign and launched a co-created clothing and footwear collection with On, taking on roles that ranged from luxury ambassador to sportswear collaborator. Kendall Jenner, meanwhile, fronted Emporio Armani’s Power of You fragrance campaign and joined the cast of Burberry’s 170th-anniversary trench campaign.

These partnerships put the same personalities in different brand settings, while the role itself can help distinguish each collaboration. Zendaya’s work with Louis Vuitton placed her within an established luxury campaign, while her On collection gave her a product-development role.

“With talent working across several brands at once, the real question isn’t simply about how much impact a partnership generates, but where that impact comes from and what it says about the brand. The most effective collaborations get media, other influencers and the brand’s own channels talking about the themes and narratives the brand wants to be known for, so the coverage builds the brand’s story rather than just the celebrity’s. That’s the difference between a partnership that shapes perception and one that only borrows attention, and increasingly, the test is whether that association carries through to AI-driven discovery once the campaign moment has passed," Bringé said.

Besides all the buzz and recognition, celebrities also bring the ideas and values people associate with them to a campaign, which has been known by marketers for a long time. In a 1989 paper in the Journal of Consumer Research, Grant McCracken argued that these associations can pass from a celebrity to the products they endorse. By buying and using those products, consumers can then make those associations part of their own identity. So, perhaps instead of asking how many brands one person can represent, marketers should ask a more practical question: if the logo disappeared, would the campaign still feel recognisably theirs?