Nespresso is banking on the cultural cachet of the three-time Grammy winner, who is known for her jet-setting lifestyle that she shares with her nearly 90 million Instagram followers. 

Nespresso’s Gen Z play

The new campaign, called “Vertuo World,” will be “by far the biggest campaign that we’ve ever done in our 40-year history” by dollars spent, Nespresso Chief Marketing Officer Leonardo Aizpuru told Fast Company.

The multimillion-dollar campaign will roll out globally across television, online video, and social media. It will spotlight drinks that already resonate with younger consumers, including iced coffee, espresso martinis, and flavored café-style beverages. George Clooney, who has been a Nespresso brand ambassador since 2006, will also briefly appear in the campaign, the company wrote in a statement. 

Lipa is a logical fit for Nespresso’s pivot. The three-time Grammy winner has built a global following that extends far beyond music and already overlaps with luxury, fashion, and lifestyle brands. She has appeared in campaigns for YSL Beauty, Chanel, Porsche, Evian, and Bulgari, building an aspirational image for herself. 

Nespresso’s new era under Lipa will mark a shift from the suave Clooney ads that always featured the actor in a gray suit, usually as the butt of the joke. 

Clooney’s unusual legacy

Lipa’s arrival also revives attention on Clooney’s unusually consequential run as a coffee salesman. Over nearly two decades, the actor used the platform not just for sleek ads, but to talk about war in Sudan and climate risks facing coffee production.

Clooney used his earnings from the commercials to fund the Satellite Sentinel Project, which used spy satellites to try to deter war in Sudan. A longtime human rights advocate, Clooney launched the project in 2010 with activist John Prendergast to draw attention to the humanitarian crisis in Sudan. 

“Most of the money I make on the [Nespresso] commercials I spend keeping a satellite over the border of North and South Sudan to keep an eye on Omar al-Bashir,” the actor said in 2013, a year after he was arrested for protesting outside the Sudanese embassy in Washington. Al-Bashir, Sudan’s former president, was charged by the International Criminal Court with war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide.. 

“These things have been happening in the dark for a long time,” Clooney told CNN’s Jake Tapper in 2010. The satellites are used to detect helicopter and tank movement and warn people on the ground to prevent atrocities.

From coffee ads to climate pressure

Clooney also used his ambassadorship to push Nespresso toward more transparency on its sustainability practices. At a 2013 event for the Nespresso Sustainability Advisory Board, he shared he would get questions about the company’s sustainability practices at press conferences and film festivals, The Guardian reported. 

“I thought if I was going to be involved on a long-term basis with this company, and I like them very much, I should find out what they’re doing and what they should and could be held responsible for,” he said. In 2010, Clooney traveled to Costa Rica to visit the company’s coffee farmers. 

More recently, in 2022, Clooney was the face of “The Empty Cup” campaign, which encouraged customers to imagine life without coffee as climate change threatens coffee production by making land unviable. 

Clooney’s long tenure means Lipa is inheriting a unique celebrity legacy: one where an ambassadorship can be the launching pad for global activism.