When “better” becomes the enemy of “good”
On brand authenticity and associations. Artesana + Selly.
The spark that lit the fire.
Artesana’s endorsement partnership with Selly, a high-profile Romanian influencer, triggered a storm of reactions - some positive, but many negative. This move visibly split Artesana’s consumer base into two camps: those who “smiled and waved” at the initiative, and those who felt deeply misrepresented and vowed to stop buying the brand.
The backlash wasn’t about Selly as a person, but about what he represents. He’s the founder of 5Gang — a music band known for lyrics that don’t exactly reflect the Artesana’s positioning and lifestyle promise, and the founder of the Beach Please Trap Music Festival, a youth-centric festival previously sponsored by the gambling company Superbet. All this while positioning himself publicly as a champion of children’s safety and education. The profound dissonance didn’t go unnoticed.
Brand partnerships are not just a numbers game.
Every strong alliance begins with shared foundational values. The premise of a successful collaboration is value alignment between the brand, its consumers, and its partners. In Artesana’s case, this alignment didn’t exist.
Yes, Selly has a massive reach. Yes, he commands attention, and we’re not going here into the qualitative details of this attention, the who and the how. His facts speak about numbers and money, not meaning, values, and trust. But facts matter. Value matters. Perception matters as well, as they construct our realities. His actions and history tell a different story than Artesana’s story, which is built on premium, natural dairy products, slow life values, and a clean, purpose-driven image. Consumers felt the disconnect, and they reacted.
A quick detour into 5Gang lyrics (for context).
SOS! În cantități industriale / (Yeah) Boss! Femeia ta îmi dă târcoale (Yeah) / Tos! Aduc zahăr, clubu’ sare / Eu și echipa mea am ieșit la vânătoare.
[…] Ăștia dau cu hate, aseară am încasat un cec.
No comment. 😶
Freud, fans, and the psychology of pain.
According to Freud’s pleasure-pain principle, people instinctively seek pleasure and avoid pain. When a beloved brand aligns with something that feels off or inauthentic, pain kicks in. In this case, some blamed Selly. Others blamed Artesana. But most importantly, the reaction didn’t stem from hate. It stemmed from disappointment — a pain rooted in brand preference (aka: choice/love) and loyalty (aka: repeated purchases).
Pain leaves a much deeper mark than joy. While joy is fleeting and subtle, pain is persistent and visceral. That’s why bad news travels faster and farther. Brand managers should be aware of the danger of partnerships that ignore the emotional bond between core fans and the brand, which backfires fast.
Brand collabs: a science and an art.
A good brand alliance isn’t just a numbers game. It’s a triangle of trust between:
The brand
The consumers
The endorser
When one point of the triangle is weak, the whole structure collapses. That’s what happened here.
Foundational values — past and future — must be protected. Brands are not just logos or product lines; they’re stories of connections, built up step by step, over time. Poor partnership decisions create brand noise, not brand growth. While good decisions whisper long-term trust, bad ones scream short-term loss.
Why Artesana × Selly felt off.
Most likely, as it frequently happens, the choice to work with Selly was made based on numbers and potential for over-night brand preference through the transfer of power by association: 4 million followers + Artesana’s loyal base = instant growth, aka: success. The math is right, but people aren’t equations; they’re a lot more than that, and that cannot be learned from analytics, but it can be reflected afterwards in the analytics. All existing data provides a picture of the past. Without understanding the human psychology in social contexts and the behavioral economics, the future is just an extension of the past pattern and nothing more. But human history unveils a story that is more than linear. Daniel Kahneman was awarded a Nobel Prize in 2002 for understanding how people judge and make decisions.
Artesana’s core audience doesn’t just buy yogurt — they buy into the brand’s ethos: authenticity, slow life, quality, tradition, family values, etc. Selly, on the other hand, has built a very different brand — fast-paced, commercial, and pretty much contradictory to Artesana’s vibe and aspirations. While Selly gained credibility from the partnership with Artesana (a big step up from Superbet), Artesana lost some of its core fans and raised some serious questions about its character and friends, given the known fact that birds of a feather flock together.
PR people often say that “any PR is good PR”, but for brands pursuing a long-term sustainable vision, this is a highly misleading, myopic trap: a dangerous shortcut to failure, that shakes up the tree, which shortly loses some of its most ripe fruits, instead of growing more fruits. The partnership between Artesana and Shelly felt transactional, unnatural. The result for Artesana? Disappointment. Disconnection. Mistrust.
Labeling it as “hate” misses the point.
Some tried to brush off the negative feedback as mere hate. But that’s a surface-level take for those who want to remain blind to the facts. In truth, it’s not about hate; it’s about misalignment. The most vocal critics were likely the most loyal customers. They didn’t leave because they hated the brand. They left because they loved it and felt betrayed by its unnatural and forced choice. Love and hate are two sides of the same coin. You can’t be deeply hurt by something you don’t care about.
The anatomy of a healthy brand partnership.
A good endorsement is a three-way relationship — a smooth tango between the brand, its endorsers (associations / alliances), and its fans. When a brand disregards its existing heritage and core supporters to chase and ally with very different low-hanging fruits, it risks alienating the very people who embraced it.
Before launching any collaboration, a brand must ask:
Do we share the same values?
Do our audiences overlap in spirit, not just in statistics?
Can this partnership enhance both brand stories, instead of damage or dilute them?
If the answer is no, then short-term visibility isn’t worth long-term damage. Brand collabs stem from a well-thought-out brand strategy and positioning.
The real risk: losing core fans.
Losing customers is easier and cheaper than acquiring new ones. Once people feel disconnected, they don’t just stop buying. They start talking. Online. Loudly. To everyone. That’s how a brand’s perception can shift in a matter of hours.
Let’s be clear: There are no good or bad brands. Only satisfied and dissatisfied customers. Unaligned partnerships create churn. Loyalists become ex-loyalists. And in today’s hyper-connected world, only 2% who usually speak up their mind are enough to generate a ripple effect that shapes the narrative moving forward.
How can Artesana fix this?
It’s not too late. But damage control requires authenticity and action. Here’s a recipe for what can become a brand kintsugi intervention:
Acknowledge the feedback. Don’t deflect it.
Engage with core consumers and listen to their concerns.
Apologize for the unintended consequence, even if the intention was good.
Reflect on what went wrong and revise the partnership strategy accordingly.
Rebuild trust with meaningful, value-driven collabs and campaigns.
Vulnerability is a good start; honesty is a proper action builder. People forgive mistakes. They don’t forgive arrogance.
A final thought: real growth isn’t about reach alone.
Strong brands are built on:
Imagination
Consistency
Authenticity
Long-term vision
And the courage to say “no” to partnerships that don’t feel right.
If a brand wants loyalty, it must earn it first, then protect it. Partnerships should amplify a brand’s soul, not just its visibility and numbers. Otherwise, better might just become the enemy of good.
Buyology
“Marketing beats science”, as Prof. Daniel David PhD. well pointed out, but when marcom is rooted in science, guided by strong values and ethics, and presented as an art form, buyology happens.
This story is part of The Buyology Journal of Marcomms Wisdom, which includes diverse experiences of working internationally on brands that wrote history, while pursuing science, ethics, and wellbeing.