Hollywood Is Entering Software Marketing
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The short answer
Software companies are increasingly casting Hollywood actors to build B2B brand awareness — Deel with Snoop Dogg, Harvey with Gabriel Macht, Salesforce with Matthew McConaughey, Legora with Jude Law, Squarespace with Barry Keoghan. The logic: as software becomes faster to replicate, memory becomes the moat. Celebrity buys memorability at scale — but smaller B2B brands can build the same brand awareness through founder-led content at a fraction of the cost.
Something shifted in B2B marketing. The companies selling payroll, legal AI, and CRM — categories that used to advertise with stock photography and feature lists — are now casting movie stars. Not as a gimmick. As a strategy.
Five B2B brand awareness campaigns that define the trend
| Software company | Celebrity | The campaign |
|---|---|---|
| Deel | Snoop Dogg | Running the hiring process for a $10,000-a-month "International Ice Cream Taster" for Snoop's Dr. Bombay brand — turning a product demo into entertainment |
| Legora | Jude Law | Made the actor the face of a global campaign: "Law just got more attractive" — a legal AI brand built on a name pun only a movie star could carry |
| Harvey | Gabriel Macht | Partnered with the actor who played Harvey Specter in Suits — the fictional lawyer the company is named after — to support global brand growth |
| Salesforce | Matthew McConaughey | Cast him as the sheriff in a "Wild West" narrative about trust, safety, and AI |
| Squarespace | Barry Keoghan | Built a cinematic Super Bowl campaign around Keoghan bringing websites to businesses in rural Ireland |
Why are software brands suddenly investing in brand awareness?
Because software is becoming a commodity faster than brands are. AI has collapsed the cost of building features — any funded team can clone your product's roadmap in a quarter. What they cannot clone is the feeling a buyer has when they hear your name. As software becomes faster to replicate, memory becomes more valuable and much harder to copy.
A celebrity face is a memory machine. Snoop Dogg does not explain Deel's payroll API. He makes Deel the payroll company you remember. Gabriel Macht does not demo Harvey's legal reasoning. He makes "Harvey" mean something before a single feature is shown. That is the purchase: pre-installed familiarity in a category where every competitor's homepage says the same things.
Notice what none of these campaigns do: compare features, quote benchmarks, or mention pricing. When the product is replicable, differentiation moves upstream — from what the software does to what the brand means.
What are these campaigns actually buying?
- Memory: a familiar face compresses years of brand-building into one ad.
- Trust transfer: the audience's feelings about the actor become feelings about the product.
- Reach into culture: a B2B payroll company becomes something people discuss at dinner, not just in procurement.
- Defensibility: competitors can copy features in weeks, but they cannot copy a multi-year association with Snoop Dogg.
The Harvey deal is the purest version. The company is literally named after the character. Gabriel Macht playing along collapses fiction and product into one story — a joke the entire legal industry is in on. You cannot out-spend that with feature comparisons.
How do you build B2B brand awareness without a Super Bowl budget?
Here is the part the headline misses: the mechanism behind these campaigns — a familiar human face attached to a company — is not exclusive to Hollywood. It is exactly what founder-led content does, on a longer timeline and a radically smaller budget.
When a founder publishes consistently, they become the recognizable face of the company. Buyers start to feel they know the person behind the product before the first call. That is the same trust transfer Salesforce pays McConaughey for — earned instead of rented. We have watched this happen with our own clients: one technical founder's product launch generated 238K impressions and became Product of the Day, driven entirely by founder and team voices rather than paid celebrity distribution. Case study: 238K impressions from one product launch
The difference is compounding. A celebrity campaign ends when the contract ends. A founder's audience is an asset the company owns — every post adds to it, and it works in sales conversations, hiring, and fundraising, not just ads.
How to build a memorable software brand without a celebrity
- Attach your company to a named human with a point of view — usually the founder — and publish in their voice, not the brand's.
- Pick one signature format and repeat it until people associate it with you (a weekly teardown, a data drop, a build-in-public thread).
- Take positions competitors won't. Memorability comes from judgment, not volume.
- Say the same small set of ideas for 18 months. Brands are built by repetition, and most companies quit at month three.
- Convert attention into assets: every strong post should feed sales follow-ups, recruiting, and investor updates.
If you want the operating model for doing this with 30 minutes of founder time a week, that is literally what we build. How we work · Is founder content for you? 30-second quiz
Frequently asked questions
Why are B2B software companies investing in brand awareness?
Because features are no longer a durable moat. AI has made software fast to replicate, so differentiation moves to brand memory. Celebrity faces buy familiarity, trust transfer, and cultural reach that feature marketing cannot — Deel with Snoop Dogg and Salesforce with Matthew McConaughey are the clearest examples.
Did Harvey AI really partner with Gabriel Macht from Suits?
Yes. Harvey, the legal AI company named after the fictional lawyer Harvey Specter, partnered with Gabriel Macht — the actor who played him — to support its global brand growth. It works because the association already existed in buyers' minds; the campaign simply claimed it.
What is the Deel and Snoop Dogg campaign?
Deel ran the hiring process for a $10,000-a-month "International Ice Cream Taster" role for Snoop Dogg's Dr. Bombay ice cream brand — effectively turning Deel's global hiring product into a piece of entertainment that traveled far beyond B2B audiences.
Does celebrity marketing work in B2B?
It works for memory and trust, not for demos. B2B buyers still evaluate on product and proof, but the shortlist is emotional before it is rational — and a familiar face wins the shortlist moment. The risk is cost: these campaigns run into the millions.
How do you increase brand awareness in B2B without a celebrity?
Build a recognizable founder or executive voice through consistent publishing. The mechanism is identical — a familiar human attached to the company — but earned through content instead of rented through talent contracts, and the audience compounds as an owned asset rather than expiring with a campaign.
Which software company is building the most memorable brand right now?
Harvey is the strongest case: naming the company after a fictional lawyer and then casting the actor who played him is a self-reinforcing story competitors cannot imitate. But among companies without celebrity budgets, the most memorable brands are the ones with a visible founder — memory follows humans, not logos.
Sources
Harvey — official announcement of the Gabriel Macht partnership (company newsroom). harvey.ai/blog
Legora — official newsroom post announcing Jude Law as the face of its global campaign, plus the campaign page itself. legora.com/newsroom · ABA Journal coverage
Deel — the official Dr. Bombay × Deel campaign page for the $10,000-a-month International Ice Cream Taster role. deel.com/snoop · Billboard coverage
Salesforce × Matthew McConaughey — trade coverage of the "Wild West of AI" campaign and the Super Bowl spots. Adweek · Ad Age
Squarespace — official press release for the Barry Keoghan Super Bowl campaign filmed in Ireland. squarespace.com/press-releases · Adweek