O.J. Simpson Epitomized the Risks of a Brand Betting Everything on a Celebrity

In the flush of obituaries following the death of O.J. Simpson on Wednesday, media outlets have found themselves looking back on one man—and many careers.

There’s Simpson the Hall of Fame football star and the actor who popped up in films like The Naked Gun. There’s Simpson the sportscaster, franchisee, real estate investor and—memorably—the face of Hertz rental cars for a whole generation.

And, of course, there was the man accused in 1994 (and later acquitted) of killing ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend Ron Goldman, and who later served prison time for a 2007 kidnapping and armed robbery in Las Vegas.

Just as Simpson’s multifarious past complicates how sports fans regard him, it’s likely to do the same to the marketing community. Because while Simpson helped blaze the trail for retired athletes to become big-time brand endorsers, he was an early example of how perilous those deals can become when a star spokesperson gets into trouble.

Hertz signed Simpson in 1975. For nearly 20 years afterward, Americans watched TV spots featuring “O.J. Simpson flying through an airport to illustrate the company’s speed of service,” ADWEEK reported in a 1980 story.

Pro athletes had shilled for brands before, of course, but Simpson’s gig was the first to morph into a pop-culture phenomenon. The Washington Post would later term him “Rent-a-Star.”

Eager to keep a good thing going, Hertz extended Simpson’s contract to 1997. But not long after murder allegations against Simpson hit the news in June 1994, the car-rental giant was mashing the accelerator to get away from him.

“Obviously, Hertz has no plans to utilize Mr. Simpson in advertising,” a spokesperson told the Washington Post at the time.

Simpson arguably earned the six-figure paycheck that The New York Times reported Hertz paid him yearly. Shortly after his ads began airing, Hertz notched a 56% increase in public perception of it as the leading brand in its category, according to a 1977 Rolling Stone story. But cutting Simpson loose left a vacuum where a marketing strategy used to be—and did few favors for Hertz’s image.

It was a lesson that brands would learn over and over again.

Olympian Michael Phelps adorned boxes of Kellogg’s Corn Flakes but disappeared in 2009 after photos surfaced showing the champion swimmer toking on a hash pipe. When reports of doping clouded cycling great Lance Armstrong in 2012, eight brands he’d endorsed tore up his contract in a single day.

Self-destructing celebrity endorsers are hardly limited to athletes, either. In 2022, Adidas cut loose Ye (Kanye West) in 2022 following the rapper’s antisemitic tirade—costing it a reported $540 million.

Endorsements from celebs—star athletes among them—have since become an indispensable part of the marketer’s toolbox. But Simpson will always be a textbook case of the risks brands run when spending their marketing dollars on celebrities.