Celebrity endorsements across decades and their impact on brands

Well-known entertainers and athletes have long been enlisted to sell products, and a string of unexpected celebrity endorsements from the 1970s through the 2000s shows how star power has been used to promote everything from aftershave to prescription medicine. Performers such as Muhammad Ali, Jackie Chan and Pele, musicians including Iggy Pop and Ozzy Osbourne, and screen stars like Burt Reynolds and Joan Collins all appeared in prominent commercials that drew attention for their incongruity and, in some cases, controversy.

Some of the most memorable pairings included Muhammad Ali in a 1980 commercial for a Birds Eye beefburger, filmed the same year as his comeback fight; in the ad Ali declaimed, in his trademark style, "I’m still the greatest, I shall always be," before sitting down to eat. In the 1970s motorcycle champion Barry Sheene and boxer Henry Cooper featured in an advert for Brut aftershave, while Joan Collins appeared in a late 1970s to early 1980s series of commercials for Cinzano alongside actor Leonard Rossiter. Burt Reynolds played a self-parodying celebrity in late-1990s spots for opticians Dollond & Aitchison, and Dudley Moore fronted supermarket adverts for...