How Signing Influencers Who are Also Customers Can Pay Off for European Startups

In June 2014, on his way to practice before defending his Wimbledon title, tennis star Andy Murray spotted a dog running loose toward oncoming traffic. He stopped his car, blocked traffic, coaxed the dog into his back seat, and called the number on its collar until he found the owner. 

The BBC, ITV News, and Fox Sports all ran the story that same week: a defending champion going out of his way to save a stray. Murray’s rescue cost nobody a penny and still ran across three major outlets within a day, which is the kind of unpaid reach brands are trying to buy their way into. 

Eight years later, during the 2022 FIFA World Cup in Qatar, a different pair of English athletes did something similar. Manchester City teammates John Stones and Kyle Walker adopted a stray cat living outside their hotel, named him Dave, and arranged to fly him home once the team was eliminated. The story ran on CNN, CBS News, and TODAY. 

The appeal hasn’t faded since: dedicated “athletes and their pets” roundups are now their own minor genre around major tournaments, including one published this June for the 2026 World Cup and a companion piece from ESPN on pet-sized World Cup kits. 

There is a market backing that attention. Globally, the pet care market was valued at $207 billion in 2025, according to Euromonitor.

By 2026, pet brands stopped just watching that attention and started buying into it directly, signing athletes who already owned the pet they were selling to. For founders, it points to more credible ways to find an ambassador: start with the people who already buy from you. 

Four deals, one quarter

Within a single quarter, four different pet brands signed deals with reputable athletes who already owned the kind of pet the brand caters to. 

One example is Marleybones, a UK dog food startup that announced its first-ever kit sponsorship on June 30: Andy Murray’s fellow British tennis player, 18-time Grand Slam wheelchair tennis champion Andy Lapthorne. 

Lapthorne found the brand the same way roughly 12,000 of its other customers did, scrolling on Instagram between matches, looking for something better to feed his dog Bernie, a rescue from Battersea Dogs Home. He was already a customer months before anyone at Marleybones asked him about a potential partnership. 

“I stumbled across Marleybones on Instagram,” Lapthorn said in a statement. “I can see the difference, feel the difference. Bernie’s energy is much higher for longer, and you can see it.”

The other three deals that quarter followed the same shape. Wellness Pet Company made Peloton instructor Alex Toussaint its first-ever global ambassador in April, timed to Active Dog Month. “My dogs are my heart,” Toussaint said. 

Then, in May, accessories brand VETRESKA signed Formula 1 driver Ollie Bearman, built around his two dogs, Freddie and Ruby, and that same month Purina, newly named U.S. Soccer’s first pet care partner, built a campaign around U.S. men’s national team midfielder Weston McKennie, who was already feeding his dogs Lola and Sky its Pro Plan food before the partnership.

Neither company used the word “celebrity” in announcing their deals. Rather, they each used some version of authentic, natural, genuine, different vocabulary than the older model of paying a famous person to hold a product they never use. 

What is uniform across these deals is the pattern itself: a category learning to build partnerships around something it used to just watch from the outside, a real athlete’s real affection for a real animal. 

Look at your customers before you look at an agent’s roster

For a category that runs on trust, the ambassador already owning the product before any check arrives changes what the endorsement looks like. According to Nielsen’s landmark 2021 global trust research, consumers rate recommendations from people they know or admire above every paid advertising format. 

Here, an athlete who was a paying customer first is the closest a brand can get to that. 

Marleybones, for one, didn’t have to go look for Lapthorne because he found the brand himself. Purina likely had a far bigger budget and still started from the same place, with a player already feeding its food to his dogs. 

The takeaway for entrepreneurs, regardless of the industry they’re building on, is that the search can start with their own data: reviews, tagged social posts and order histories can show which customers already have an audience.

Simply put, a startup’s first ambassador does not need to be featured on red carpets or amass millions of followers on Instagram. Influence, as it turns out, is rooted in trust and genuine connection to a brand’s mission and vision. 

Building the campaign around the pet – and beyond 

In each of these deals, the animal carries the story: Lapthorne talks about Bernie’s energy, VETRESKA’s partnership is built around Freddie and Ruby, and Toussaint’s announcement rests on how his dogs help him lead an active life beyond his work. 

The pet is what the customer is actually buying for, after all. An owner describing what changed in their own animal makes the product’s case more directly than an athlete’s profile does. 

But timing did much of the work as well. Wellness launched its partnership during Active Dog Month, and Purina’s arrived as the World Cup approached. 

The strategy has precedent, though: pet brands were testing versions of this approach as early as 2024, when Nulo built its “Fuel Incredible” campaign around Olympic athletes including Simone Biles and Caleb Dressel promoting their own pets’ nutrition around the Paris Games. Whiskers also signed sponsorship agreements with Detroit teams the Lions, Tigers, and Red Wings that same year. 

The less obvious lesson is that the moment doesn’t have to come from sport at all. Wellness timed its deal to Active Dog Month, a date pet owners already follow. For a startup whose ambassador adopted their dog, as Lapthorne did from Battersea, adoption drives and shelter campaigns offer the same kind of news peg, and they reach the people who actually buy the food.

What to do now 

Genuine enthusiasm does not change the disclosure rules. In the UK, for example, the Advertising Standards Authority requires all paid partnerships with influencers to be clearly labelled as advertising, and an ambassador who was a customer first is still a paid ambassador once a contract is signed. 

Three things follow for founders: search the customer base for an ambassador before approaching agents, which keeps the costs down and the story credible; build the campaign around the pet and let the ambassadors describe it in their own words; and time the announcement to a moment the press is already covering. 

Josephine Bager, Marleybones’s co-founder, frames it around what owners want for their pets and who they trust to provide it. She borrowed Lapthorne’s own phrasing: “As Andy would say, stop feeding your dog like they’re a qualifier.”