Have a product or service that isn't easily liked? There's a celebrity or creator for that.It doesn't feel like a coincidence that while thousands of marketers at Cannes discussed attention, community and advertising at the most creator-forward version Cannes in its history, two campaigns said the quiet part out loud. Meta released a smart glasses campaign fronted by Kylie Jenner and Polymarket dropped a World Cup ad with Rick Rubin. Surveillance tech needed a fashion moment. A betting platform needed to look like it belonged in a room with people who think seriously about culture and creativity.I wish I could say I was surprised. We've largely accepted that celebrities and creators are how brands crack new markets, pull audiences brands couldn't previously reach and borrow some of that person’s cultural equity in the process. What’s far less talked about is the actual mechanism behind why it works, when it works and why it fails so expensively when it doesn’t. That mechanism is parasocial trust transfer, which changes how brands should be approaching creator partnerships entirely.What is parasocial trust transfer?Parasocial relationships are one-sided bonds fans form with public figures, built through content, persona and consistency over time. The emotional investment and accumulated trust are hard-earned. When a brand partners with creators and celebrities, the brand is attempting to borrow that trust and for its promoted products and services to be met with the same sentiment fans extend to its partnered public figure.That’s parasocial trust transfer. Jenner's audience trusts her taste, eye and sense of what's worth wanting, and Meta is betting that trust extends to a pair of smart glasses. Rubin's audience trusts his judgment about what's authentic and creatively serious. By working with Rubin, Polymarket is aiming to reposition itself as a platform that thoughtful audiences can engage with.The brands aren’t simply buying reach or demographic overlap, they’re attempting to purchase a relationship that creators built with their audiences that the brands couldn’t build themselves.When the transfer breaksParasocial transfers succeed when audiences buy it and when the partnerships make sense. That requires alignment between the creator’s identity and what the brand is promoting, and it requires the partnership to feel like a discovery rather than a translation. Consistency is also vital, because parasocial trust is built slowly through repeated exposure and signals. A one-off campaign contradicts that everything a creator has stood for will read as exactly what it is: a creator or celeb selling out.When alignment and consistency are strong, the audience’s existing goodwill moves the brand forward. A brand that might have taken years to earn credibility in a new space can move faster, because it’s operating within a pre-existing trust.When the transfer worksThe Meta and Polymarket campaigns both came apart within days of launch.Meta's Ray-Ban smart glasses have accumulated a documented pattern of misuse over two years. Men have used the glasses’ built-in camera to film women without their consent in airports and on beaches. Modders have disabled the glasses’ privacy light designed to signal recording, and the footage regularly surfaces online.More than 70 civil liberties organizations signed an open letter to Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg stating the glasses represent a threat to privacy and civil liberties, particularly for vulnerable groups.Meta's response didn’t change Ray-Ban glasses to improve the product’s threat to privacy. Instead, the brand hired Jenner, released a product with a more feminine silhouette and programmed the glasses to speak in Jenner’s voice.That strategy worked for some people.meta just released new AI glasses!one of the frames was made in collaboration with Kylie, and it looks very stylish - reminds me of a Saint Laurent shapeI already ordered them, can’t wait ����️ pic.twitter.com/xW3WgTSm1z— Kate Deyneka (@katedeyneka) June 23, 2026Other audiences hated Meta’s approach. The backlash was swift. Critics called it surveillance masked as lifestyle, reiterating that the product poses a danger to women. Instead of a product fix, Meta attempted a trust cosmetic, using a female celebrity’s image and parasocial credibility to reframe a product with a documented harm pattern. Meta’s parasocial transfer attempt broke because Jenner’s audience trusts her taste in fashion, but not her judgment on surveillance technology policy. The brand was trusting that Jenner’s overarching audience trust would amend an issue that Jenner’s own audience — which is 62% female on social media — has reason to fear.Polymarket's situation is more straightforward and more damning. The Wall Street Journalreported that the platform paid creators to post staged bet wins across social media. Two U.S. senators have called for a federal Commodity Futures Trading Commission investigation of the company.Polymarket tapped Rubin — someone associated with artistic integrity and creative judgement — to up the platform’s credibility. However, no amount of trust survives after consumers’ revelations that Polymarket was manufacturing fake social proof at scale. When consumers lose trust in a brand like Polymarket, the parasocial transfer doesn’t just fail, it casts a shadow over everyone attached to it, including Rubin. The partnership raises questions about whether Rubin’s fans’ trust was being used as a deliberate instrument of deception.The absolute aura loss of Rick Rubin needs to be studied— Bryce Roberts (@bryce) June 25, 2026“It's not lost on me that a company accused of deceptive marketing tactics would engage a producer whose contributions to the musicians he works with could easily be compared to a placebo effect,”Carlo Johnson, director of brand strategy for Neuemotion, explained. What brands need to changeThe question brands should ask before any creator partnership isn't who has the right audience demographics or the highest engagement rate — it’s whether trust transfer is possible given the specific person and product.Does this creator's audience trust them in this specific category? Has the partnering celeb ever signaled an authentic relationship to this space? Is there enough alignment between the creator’s established identity and what the audience needs to believe, so the partnership feels earned rather than purchased?These questions don't have easy answers. They can’t be resolved by simply analyzing follower counts and past campaign performance. To find answers, brands must understand what type of trust a creator has built and with whom. It’s also crucial to understand what topics audiences trust specific creators with.This research approach differs from what most influencer marketing programs do, and the brands falling short on this research are the same brands landing headlines for the wrong reasons. Brands need to exemplify cultural intelligence in order to move at the speed of culture.Most conversation around creator partnerships still centers on attention – who can generate the most attention and how to convert it. However, attention without trust is just noise. The brands learning this lesson the hard way are treating parasocial trust transfer as an automatic byproduct of working with a big name, rather than as a mechanism that is earned. The celebrity or creator you choose to partner with isn't just a distribution channel. Brands want to believe they can buy attention and trust, but that it’s somehow different and more relational when done through celebrities and creators versus a traditional, paid ad. It’s the same lever in a different costume.Getting attention is easy, especially with a big budget. Getting that attention to turn into brand affinity and trust is harder, even when you have the most popular creators in the world on your roster. As more and more brands understand that trust is necessary for customer-brand relationships, there needs to be an understanding of what that trust looks like and how easy it is to destroy, whether you enlist celebrities and creators or not. Christina Garnett is a marketing strategist and author of ‘Transforming Customer-Brand Relationships.’