The 50 Best Celebrity Tech Endorsements

Besides their main occupation—sports, acting, singing, etc—all true celebrities posses the talent to sell. And not just themselves, either, but products, too. Tons of 'em. Whether it's to push cereal, sneakers, cars, clothes, or house insurance, companies tap celebrities to be the face that customers associate with its products. More often than not, the pairing between corporation and celebrity usually leaves highbrows higher than Curren$y after a hot box session with Wiz Khalifa. But then there's the rare occasion that two actually work and makes you either laugh or want to go purchase whatever is being peddled.

The tech industry is no different. Since the '80s, tech companies have gotten celebs to hock their goods to the masses. At first it was to put a friendly, known face on something—computer—that most people thought were complicated, superfluous, and expensive. Now-a-days it's all about the cachet of cool. You're more likely to pay attention to an ad with Gisele in it than one that has some unknown model, right? Right. We looked through hours of commercials and put together a list of what we thought were good examples of celebrities and companies working together to sell you something. These are the 50 Best Celebrity Tech Endorsements.

Year: 2008

Microsoft may have scrapped the ad campaign that saw co-founder Bill Gates and Jerry Seinfeld set out on a quest to learn how to be "real people", but we didn't think they were as bad people made them out to be. Yeah, Bill Gates was awkward, and paying Seinfeld $10 million for the commercials made Microsoft seem even more out of date, but it got people really talking about Microsoft again. Seemed like money well-spent to us.

Year: 1995

As Microsoft was setting up to release its all-new Windows 95 operating system, it saw fit to release a promotional instructional video to teach people how to use it. To do so they hired everyone's favorite on-air friends to tackle the teaching duties—a skinny Matthew Perry and Jennifer Aniston before her love life publicly imploded.

Year: 2004

Someone at Apple—we're guessing Steve Jobs—must really like U2. Not only did the company tap the band to promote its iPod line through a series of commercials, it went as far as giving them their own limited-edition iPod to help promote their "How To Dismantle an Atomic Bomb" album. It opened the door for a number of partnerships with various artists in the future, and also help set the tone of what Apple's iPod commercials would be.

Year: 2008

To promote its $2,000 luxury handset which featured a switchblade design backed by a 130 ball bearings meant to rock for 100,000 times before failing, Motorola got David Beckham to be the face of its new Aura phone. Like his MLS stint, we're guessing he got a fat check and did little to no work.

Year: 2001

Before the world discovered that her hips really don't lie, Nokia had the curvaceous entertainer rep its brand. Good move. Men are liable to watch almost anything starring Shakira moving her body.

Year: 2009

Hate him or love him—we're sure you're sticking with the former—Ashton Kutcher knows how to hustle. Case in point: With sales of its CoolPix camera line sagging behind its competitors, Nikon tapped Kutcher to help revive the brand. The result? Better brand awareness and an uptick in sales. Gotta love that.

Year: 1984

Yes, Atari used to build computers. They weren't too bad, either. The XL line, meant for the masses, saw former M*A*S*H star Alan Alda as its spokesperson, detailing just how easy and helpful the computer could be.

Year: 2000

Who better to helm IBM's commercials speaking about the future of computing than Avery Brooks! Not familiar? Dude was Captain Benjamin Sisko, and the only black guy, on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. Some ads were a little creepy, but this one focusing on the lack of flying cars and other promised futuristic goodies was pretty awesome.

Year: 2007

Everyone's favorite Holla Back Girl, whatever that is, used her eclectic lifestyle to help push HP's suite of lifestyle tools. This HP ad probably did nothing for you, but we're it worked on your little sister.

Year: 1982

For those wondering who the hell Dick Cavett is, he was a comedian who wrote the Tonight Show before getting his own Emmy-award-winning talk show The Dick Cavett show in 1968. Apple tapped Cavett to bring his famous conversational tone to interview a woman who uses her Apple computer to do more than household budgeting. Look at Apple, breaking down stereotypes.

Year: 1983

This may be the most tonally serious Apple commercial, ever. If we didn't know better, we'd take this spot which has Kevin Coster coming home to check his affairs on his Apple computer, as a Folgers coffee ad.

Year: 2010

Not feeling your AT&T broadband or HDTV service? Switch to Comcast. Go ahead, don't be afraid, Shaq's got your back. At least that what he says in this commercial. His NBA career may be dwindling down, but it's good to see him moving into the Michael Strahan phase of his career.

Year: 1985

Before William Shatner became a parody of himself and became the face of Priceline.com, he was helping to sling Commodores. It must have been a better look back in '85 as people still thought Big Willy was still cool.

Year: 1991

This ad may now seem silly, what with Xbox 360 and Playstation 3 pushing out more power than small super computers, but when Super Nintendo came out it was amazing. We're not sure why Paul Rudd was dressed like a character from Matrix, but the commercial's sentiment—that now we're "playing with power"—was exactly how we felt when we first loaded up Mortal Kombat and F-Zero.

Year: 1985

Besides Tommy Lasorda and the Pointer Sisters, Commodore enlisted Buzz Aldrin, Mike Collins, and Tip O'Neil to push the idea that its Amiga personal computer could do just about anything. Not only that, it was simple enough for a kid to use. As you can see, computer commercials haven't really changed all that much

Year: 2010

Peyton Manning can do no wrong. As part of its HDTV ad campaign the Colts quarterback steps in for a series of commercials, some with Justin Timberlake. Almost makes you forget about the botched playoff births.

Year: 2009

If you could live the life Kate Moss lived and still pick up product endorsements, you're winning. Sleek and sexy is how Nikon described its CoolPix S9 camera in the commercial, but honestly, we didn't even realize there was a camera in the commercial.

Year: 2007

Before T-Mobile started airing those horrible rip-offs of Apple's "I am a Mac" commercials, they had the beautiful, Academy Award-winning Catherine Zeta Jones as the company's spokesperson. It may have been costing the company $9 million a year to keep her on board, but she was leaps and bounds better than the two shills doing it now.

Year: 2006

It's funny. Even though we always see Pharrell using an Apple computer, HP thought it'd be cool to get him to promote PCs. Luckily the ads came out great. So great in fact, that it launched a wave of parody videos.

Year: 2002

For its "Switch" campaign Apple enlisted a wide-range of celebrities to talk about how much they love working on their Macs. Still, we were surprised to see De La Soul in an episode talking about recording music on the computer. For a company that usually gets dudes like John Mayer and Bono to rep its brand, it was nice to see a true switch-up.

Year: 1986

If you only know John Cleese as the voice of King Harold in Shrek, we feel really sorry for you. We feel even worse if you have no idea who John Cleese is. The hilarious star of a many Monty Python films made what was, at the time, the funniest series of computer commercials for Compaq's all-new DeskPro. Going through all of them it really seems as if Compaq left Cleese to do whatever the hell he wanted to do. Companies, take note.

Year: 2009

Does Justin Timberlake still make music? Judging from the past couple of years, we'd say homie's been using his SAG card way more than his vocal chords. When he wasn't popping up on SNL every other week, he was co-staring in a series of Sony commercials with Peyton Manning. Timberlake brings his usual awkward, but cool comedic presence to this spot involving a serious ping pong set. Match, point.

Year: 1982

His career may have fallen off steep cliff, but back in the '80s Henry Thomas was on top of the world. ET was killing the box office and he was tapped to promote Mattel's Intellivision. We could make some sort of joke about the precipitous fall off of both Thomas' career and Mattel's gaming machine, but we're better than that.

Year: 2006

Not an official endorsement, but great nonetheless. Fresh off an Asian tour, everyone's favorite chubby jafakin' talks up his newest gadget: the BlackBerry Bold. Before telling us that it was tough because Asian countries don't have Internet, he proceeds to brag that his new phone is exclusive because, "no one on the corner got a BlackBerry Bold!" We're sure RIM wouldn't approve, but it was Awesome.

Year: 2010

Lady Gaga's Polaroid ads are cool, but we feel like this one for Toshiba's line of Android-powered phones really captured what Gaga is all about: funky outfits, crazy backgrounds, and her music. We're not sure what "Born This Way" has to do with the phone, though.

Year: 2010

It's a little sad that the Czech Republic is more into Chuck Norris than we are. Czech T-Mobile is one of the only companies we've seen capitalize on the awesome persona that's been built Chuck Norris over the past few years. In this ad we see that Chuck Norris doesn't sleep, he just hides his eyes until prey comes close enough.

Year: 2007

Hot girls and cameras seem to go together better than Birdman and Lil Wayne's profits. Canon knows that better than anyone else. Russian tennis star Mari Sharapova acted as the face of its PowerShot camera line in 2007. Our favorite spot has a number of (tennis) balls following Sharapova through the streets. Art imitating life?

Year: 2011

After one of the biggest hits of her career—"Empire State of Mind"—tapping A. Keys to sell anything was a great move. HP thought so, too, and got her to promote its line up of PCs and services.

Year: 2003

Remember when Fabolous was a trendsetter? Back when he had the best throwback jersey and sneaker collection in the game, anything Fab touched became popular—like Hypnotiq. It made sense, then, that he was one of the first celebs we saw using the T-Mobile Sidekick. Once we saw the screen swivel, it was over.

Year: 2010

Every time they film LeBron walking into an arena he's wearing a pair of Beats by Dr. Dre headphones. Makes sense, then, to recruit King James to promote the line's newest sport-minded headset. Thankfully, the company tossed in a comedian to break up the Dre and 'Bron bromance.

Year: 2010

Drake, Pitbull, Trey Songz, and Rihanna were all culled to rep Kodak's new line of cameras featuring all-new social networking capabilities. For obvious reasons, the only one we really paid attention to was the one featuring Rihanna.

Year: 2007

And the WTF Award goes to Hitachi and its commercial for its Data System Virtualization services. Staring Mr. T as a hero here to save mindless IT drones from the status quo, the commercial looks as if it was shot for public access TV. Even so, in a "it's so bad it's good" way, it's one of the greatest commercials we've ever seen.

Year: 2009

Beyoncé is so gorgeous we would be content watching her play Connect Four. Nintendo must have agreed because not only did it get Hov's wife for the ad campaign, but also Liv Tyler, and Carrie Underwood. Hot Girls sell products, people. Deal with it.

Year: 2010

As much as we enjoyed the banter between Sir Charles and D-Wade, we liked the Spike Lee-directed commercial where D3 went solo. In this spot, shot in the midst of the NBA trade shake-up that once again made his Heat a powerhouse, Wade finds himself locked in a bathroom asking to let "out of here." With the way the new Miami triumvirate is playing, we can't see anyone on that team asking to be let go anytime soon.

Year: 2011

What better way to represent Best Buy's Buy Back Program, which offers to purchase your old gadgets so you can go buy the latest and greatest, than by hiring the future king of pop, Justin Beiber, and the old rock patriarch Ozzy Osbourne? We can't think of anything better.

Year: 2002

Young Will Ferrell + Young(er) scrappy Apple = Commercial gold.

Year: 2009

You've read the stories and the reports: BlackBerry is getting squashed by the iPhone and phones running Google's Android operating system. That said, RIM's smartphone brand still has one very big cheerleader, President Barack Obama. All throughout President Obama's campaign, Barry made sure to keep his trust BlackBerry in hand. When they told him that he would have to give up the BlackBerry once he officially became president, he fought back and won the right to use gadget of choice. We know it's illegal, but RIM needs to find a way to leverage that endorsement.

Year: 1982

How do you drive home the point that your computer is so easy a caveman can use it? You hire the wrestler with the prehistoric persona as your spokesman and say "Action!" Simple.

Year: 1982

We thought a commercial for TDK's line of videotapes starring Andy Warhol would have been way crazier, but no. Simplicity is the name of the game was Warhol reads off the colors of the rainbow in Japanese.

Year: 2005

If you're thinking, "Damn, these guys only put this commercial this high-up because of Gisele," you are correct. Sorry we're not sorry.

Year: 1987

1987 was a good year for Mike Tyson. At 21 years old, he became the first heavyweight boxer to own all three major belts (WBA, IBF, WBC). Even cooler than that, he got his own video game! Nintendo took its popular Punch-Out!! arcade game and partnered with Iron Mike to bring it to America for the Nintendo Entertainment System. It doesn't—and didn't—get much better than that.

Year: 2010

We stopped paying attention to Kevin Bacon after Hollow Man, so when we almost immediately changed the channel when we saw him dressed as an old man in this commercial. Good thing we gave it a shot. The ad for Logitech's Google TV set-top box turned out to be one of the best tech commercials we've seen, and one of the best acting gigs Bacon's got in years. Win/win.

Year: 2011

When they were still a full group, it was said that the Beatles were notorious technology haters. They resisted having their music released on CD. And their estate did the same when it came to releasing the band's music through online MP3 stores. But, somehow, someway, Apple struck a deal to get Paul McCartney, John Lennon, Ringo Starr, and George Harrison in the iTunes Store. After the deal was done, the public was treated to a full-on media blitz featuring huge billboards, commercial spots, and online ads. Our favorites were the short, tasteful TV spots that showed the band working together while in their prime.

Year: 2004

In 2003, Microsoft hired Ricky Gervais and his writing partner to create a series of fake training videos for its employees that would show them how not to work at the company. After they were made the video series was supposedly never meant to be seen by the public. But that changed in 2004 when the videos popped up online. We're not sure why Microsoft didn't want these commercials, which had Gervais reprising his role as David Brent from The Office, to see the light of day. We're sure if these had be run on TV, they would have gotten a much better response than the Seinfeld commercials.

Year: 2006

The star-studded HP commercials with the hand movements were cool, but we really didn't start paying attention until we saw the version of Jay-Z. Although he's another professed Mac user, seeing him talk about his future business plans—Brooklyn Barclays Center, anyone?—it furthered the image of rap's top player-owner becoming that business he was always talking about.

Year: 1982

Bill Cosby broke down barriers for black actors not only in sitcoms but in advertising, as well. One of his most memorable commercials was as the Computer Man, selling Texas Instruments TI-99 personal computer.

Year: 2011

At first we were upset that this glorious commercial with Serena Williams would never air on television. That was until we realized that us watching it on repeat on YouTube was just as good, if not better. We're inclined to believe this was all one big 2K Sports marketing plan. If so, we're not mad.

Year: 2006

They say too much of a good thing is bad. What about too much of a great thing? Yep, still bad. However, before Apple went mad and created over 25 variations of its "Get A Mac" ad campaign starting Justin Long as a Mac personified and John Hodgemen as a Windows PC personified, they were awesome. Funny, on-point, and effective. Like every ad should be.

Year: 2010

Every month a new musician announces a partnership with a headphone company. We can thank Dr. Dre and Jimmy Iovine for that. Not only did Dre take over the consumer headphone game with his line of hi-def, high-style headphones, he struck a deal with HP to sell a line of specially branded laptops that would feature the same technology found in his headphones. Turns out Dr. Dre is a business, man.

Year: 1994—

These days, celebrities attach their names to anything that will yield them a paycheck, no matter how bad or crappy the product or service may be. You can thank George Foreman for that. When he returned to boxing at 45 years old and somehow became the heavyweight title, he attributed his success to his rigorous training regiment and his healthy diet. Upon hearing that Russell Hobbs Inc. tapped the boxer to be the face of its electric fat-reducing grill.

The George Foreman Lean Mean Fat-Reducing Grilling Machine, or the George Foreman Grill for short, became a worldwide success selling well over 100 million units since its introduction. Foreman was caking off the healthy grill, too, making 40% of all sales before being paid $137 million by Russell Hobbs Inc. to use his name. Respect the architect.