Celebrity endorsement has become an increasingly important marketing strategy through which firms use the fame, credibility, attractiveness and public influence of celebrities to create favourable associations between endorsed products and consumers. However, despite the widespread use of celebrity endorsements in the Kenyan dairy industry, empirical evidence on the extent to which celebrity–product congruence contributes to brand performance, and whether marketing strategy changes this relationship, remains limited. This study therefore examined the effect of Celebrity–Product Match on Brand Performance in the Kenyan dairy industry, with Marketing Strategy Alignment examined as a moderating variable. The study was guided by the Match-Up Hypothesis, which posits that endorsement effectiveness is enhanced when the characteristics of the celebrity are congruent with those of the endorsed product. The study was anchored in a positivist research philosophy and adopted a descriptive research design. The target population comprised 218 dairy firms, from which data were collected from 106 respondents using structured questionnaires and stratified sampling. Descriptive findings indicated high levels of agreement regarding Celebrity–Product Match (M = 4.03), Marketing Strategy Alignment (M = 4.07) and Brand Performance (M = 4.09). Pearson correlation analysis established a positive and statistically significant relationship between Celebrity–Product Match and Brand Performance (r = .560, p < .01), while Marketing Strategy Alignment also demonstrated a strong positive association with Brand Performance (r = .722, p < .01). Regression analysis further established that Celebrity–Product Match had a positive and statistically significant effect on Brand Performance (β = .266, t = 4.477, p < .001), explaining 48.2% of the variance in Brand Performance. However, the interaction between Celebrity–Product Match and Marketing Strategy Alignment was not statistically significant (β = −.043, t = −.412, p = .681), indicating that Marketing Strategy Alignment did not significantly moderate the relationship between Celebrity–Product Match and Brand Performance. The study concludes that greater congruence between a celebrity and the endorsed dairy product is associated with improved brand performance, but Marketing Strategy Alignment does not significantly alter the strength of this relationship. The study recommends that dairy firms should give priority to celebrity–product congruence when selecting endorsers and should assess compatibility in terms of celebrity attributes, lifestyle, values, social image and relevance to the product and target consumers. Firms should also integrate celebrity endorsement into their broader marketing strategies while avoiding the assumption that such alignment automatically strengthens the effect of celebrity–product match on brand performance.