Having a brand as a front to the customer has some convoluted benefits rooted in people simply not caring in the slightest about the brand.
Regular humans are far too busy with their regular human lives to pay much attention to your brand, and they’re definitely not emotionally invested in it. They may feel a slight warmth or comfort from it, at maybe 2% of their full emotional capacity in that direction.
The great news then, is that you can make comms mistakes and nobody cares in the long run.
Turns out people care a lot about people though – so when you’ve got a face on the brand (Kanye, Elon), that’s risky. People feel a lot more in both directions, positive and negative. The potential to alienate exists with people-based campaigns, and to a much lesser degree with the brand surface as a whole.
Invest in brand, apply fame to the brand if so desired, and act swiftly on changing consumer sentiment to a brand representative.