Para-authenticity, ontological flexibility, and ontological detachment: how creatives construct and manage virtual endorsers

Research on virtual endorsers has largely focused on consumers, leaving the creative strategies behind their development underexplored. This study examines how creatives construct and manage the authenticity of virtual influencers and brand ambassadors while navigating an evolving ethical landscape. Based on in-depth interviews with eleven practitioners, our findings suggest they deliberately construct virtual personas plausibly situated in recognizable social and material worlds despite their artificiality. To manage the tension between brand control and perceived relatability, practitioners integrate imperfections and contextual cues to evoke para-authenticity – a strategic illusion of plausibility. We also explore the business case for virtual endorsers and how practitioners navigate ethical complexities through strategic disclosure, ontological flexibility (the capacity to vary an endorser’s form), and ontological detachment (the ethically ambivalent use of such flexibility to move beyond human embodiment and its associated demographic categories). Overall, this study reframes authenticity as a strategic construction in a synthetic advertising landscape.