Brooklyn Beckham’s DoorDash Ad Shows Why Brands Still Bet on Controversial Celebrities

So for DoorDash, the family drama was not a background detail.

It was the hook.

And that is exactly why controversial celebrity partnerships keep happening. Brands are not always buying approval. Sometimes they are buying attention, search interest, media pickup, and the kind of cultural relevance that makes people stop scrolling.

Meghan Markle’s Netflix cycle shows the same pattern from another angle.

Her lifestyle series, With Love, Meghan, was originally set for a January 15, 2025 release, then moved to March 4, 2025 because of the Los Angeles wildfires.

Image source. 

After launch, the show reached Netflix’s global Top 10 with 2.6 million views and 12.6 million hours watched in its first week. Source.

The attention was real. The durability was not.

By July 2025, Deadline reported that With Love, Meghan had reached 5.3 million views in the first half of the year and ranked #383 across Netflix titles. Season 2 arrived on August 26, 2025 and failed to make Netflix’s weekly Top 10.

By January 2026, The Guardian reported that Season 2 and the holiday special both missed Netflix’s top 1,000 most-watched programs. The same report said Season 2 drew about 2 million views, while the holiday special reached about 2.4 million. 

That is the tension brands keep walking into.

A controversial celebrity can generate a powerful launch spike. But visibility at launch is not the same as trust, engagement, or purchase intent.

Controversial does not mean commercially useless

The safe advice says brands should avoid controversy.

Simple. Clean. Easy to put in a playbook.

But the real world is messier.

Brooklyn Beckham has been criticized for years, and brands still kept testing the association. In 2016, Burberry hired him, then 16, to photograph a Brit fragrance campaign. 

The Guardian reported backlash from professional photographers, including criticism that the decision was “sheer nepotism” and devalued trained creative work. 

That same year, Honor, Huawei’s youth-focused smartphone brand at the time, used Brooklyn Beckham in its Honor 8 global launch campaign. 

Image source.

Years later, Superdry signed him as an ambassador, then ended the relationship in 2022 after less than a year. The Standard reported that the original deal was said to be worth £1 million and that Superdry moved on to “a different range of talent” for its next campaign. 

His cooking career drew the same kind of attention. The Independent reported claims that Cookin’ With Brooklyn used a team of 62 professionals and cost around $100,000 per episode. Source.

None of that made him invisible. It made him more discussable.

For brands, that is the uncomfortable part. Controversy can damage trust, but it can also create awareness faster than a clean, polished, low-risk partnership ever could.

What brands are really buying

Most controversial celebrity deals look confusing only when we assume the brand is buying endorsement.

Often, it is buying something else.

That is why a controversial creator can be useful for one campaign and dangerous for another.

• If the goal is pure awareness, a polarizing celebrity may work. The campaign gets talked about. The ad gets covered. People search the brand. The creator becomes a distribution engine.

• If the goal is trust, the math changes. Now the brand needs the audience to believe the recommendation. That is harder when the comment section is full of arguments, mockery, or fatigue.

The mistake is not choosing a controversial celebrity. The mistake is choosing one without deciding what the campaign is supposed to buy.

Not all negative attention is the same

This is where a lot of influencer vetting gets too shallow. “Controversial” is not one risk category.

• There is curiosity controversy. People argue, joke, and click, but the creator still holds attention.

• There is credibility controversy. People no longer believe the creator knows what they are talking about.

• There is values controversy. The creator’s behavior clashes with the brand’s audience or category.

• There is fatigue controversy. People are not angry anymore. They are simply tired.

• These signals should lead to different decisions.

Brooklyn Beckham’s Burberry backlash was mostly about nepotism and creative credibility. That mattered to photographers, but Burberry may still have seen value in youth reach, cultural relevance, and media attention. (source)

His DoorDash campaign is different. It leaned into a live family feud during a World Cup moment, turning personal drama into campaign fuel. (source)

Meghan’s Netflix cycle is different again. The issue was not only controversy. It was the gap between massive public curiosity and weaker long-term viewing performance. (source) (source) (source)

Same broad label: polarizing. Very different marketing risk.

Why brands still do it

Because attention is expensive.

A safe creator may deliver clean sentiment but limited reach. A beloved celebrity may be liked but ignored. A polarizing figure can trigger instant discussion, especially when the campaign connects to a story people are already following.

That is why these deals keep happening.

DoorDash did not need to explain why Brooklyn Beckham was relevant. The public already knew the family rift.

Netflix did not need to introduce Meghan Markle. The public already had strong opinions about her, and the launch curiosity was built in. The first week’s 2.6 million views and 12.6 million hours watched prove that curiosity had measurable reach.

Burberry did not need to explain why a Beckham surname would attract attention. The backlash itself became part of the media cycle. 

For awareness campaigns, that can be rational.

For conversion campaigns, it can be expensive noise.

The real filter: does the audience match the product?

A polarizing celebrity can be the right partner when their audience overlaps with the brand’s buyers and the campaign is built for awareness. A universally liked celebrity can still fail if the audience is wrong, passive, or only following for gossip.

Before signing a high-risk creator, marketers should check:

1. Audience quality: Are these real, reachable people or inflated visibility?

2. Engagement trend: Is the creator still gaining real attention, or living off old fame?

3. Comment quality: Are people discussing the content, the drama, or the product?

4. Audience overlap: Does this creator reach the same people as your target market, or only people watching the controversy?

5. Sentiment type: Is the negativity about personality, credibility, values, or fatigue?

6. Brand transfer risk: Could the criticism attach itself to your product?

7. Campaign objective: Are you buying reach, trust, sales, or cultural relevance?

This is where influencer discovery needs more than follower count. A big name can give you a loud launch and still deliver the wrong audience. A smaller creator with stronger audience fit can drive more useful action with less reputational drag.