The luxury Swiss watchmaker Omega sees itself as a pioneer: it was the first company to put a watch on the moon. In 1995, to combat a slump, Omega hired Cindy Crawford, the world’s highest-paid supermodel, to be its “brand ambassador”—a new kind of marriage between celebrity and commerce. The watchmaker’s sales rose substantially, and brands worldwide have followed suit. This week, the actor Scarlett Johansson signed on as the first-ever “global ambassador” for SodaStream, which sells snazzy home-carbonating technology. The multi-year deal will formalized, and fêted, on Friday, in Manhattan.

Johansson, in a behind-the-scenes ad teaser, says that she’s been using SodaStream for five or six years, and the company’s C.E.O., Daniel Birnbaum, informed the Times that Johansson has even given the device as a gift. Now, he rejoiced, we all can get the gift: “better bubbles, made by you and Scarlett.” Johansson will appear in a commercial that’s scheduled to air during the fourth quarter of Super Bowl XLVIII; in Birnbaum’s words, the ad will “demonstrate how easy it is, how sexy it is, to make your own soda.” The engagement, Birnbaum went on, is “a love story between a brand with a purpose and a passionate user.” (Fair enough. What’s more scintillating than a lady whose voice can make a man fall for his phone?)

Johansson is not only an award-winning actor and, according to Esquire , the Sexiest Woman Alive; she is also a prolific spokesmodel. Martin Scorsese recently shot a campaign, for Dolce & Gabbana, in which Johansson sits, in black couture, in the passenger seat of Matthew McConaughey’s vintage convertible. She has also appeared in ads for Moët & Chandon, and mugged for the fashion label Mango.

It strains credibility when, in the SodaStream teaser, Johansson says, of the Super Bowl commercial, that she never thought she’d appear on “such a huge platform. Being able to do something that’s really flashy and eye-catching: it’s fun and something I don’t normally get to do.” Still, it’s true that Johansson stands for more than glamour. She has campaigned for the Democratic Presidential candidates in the last three elections. She has hosted fund-raisers for Barack Obama and spoken at the Democratic National Convention. Her twin brother worked for the President’s 2008 campaign, and she gushed to Politico about exchanging e-mails with Obama. Johansson also serves as Oxfam’s “global ambassador.” A video that she made at the Dadaab Refugee Camp, in Kenya, makes clear that she wants to use her celebrity responsibly.

In the “backstage” footage from SodaStream, Johansson explains that she feels guiltless when she drinks beverages produced by SodaStream, because making drinks with a SodaStream machine is far less wasteful than sipping from bottles. “The company’s commitment to a healthy body and healthier world is perfect for me,” Johansson said.

But notions of what constitutes a healthier world can be subjective. SodaStream, an Israeli company, has a factory in the Mishor Adumim Industrial Zone, in the occupied West Bank. Companies in the region, SodaStream included, have faced boycotts and even import bans, part of the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement, an international campaign that exerts political and economic pressure on Israel to end the occupation of Arab land and to establish a Palestinian state. Obama and both of his Secretaries of State have criticized aspects of Israel’s occupation of the West Bank. On Wednesday, some online commentators were less than pleased to see Johansson promoting a company that manufactures in the Occupied Territories. She stood before a backdrop that read, “Set the bubbles free,” after the C.E.O. had lauded the “empowerment” that his company brings.

According to the Jewish Daily Forward, the Mishor Adumim Industrial Zone is not a “radical settlement.” “It is located a 10-minute drive from Jerusalem in an industrial park next to one of the largest settlement blocs —Ma’aleh Adumim —which will likely be incorporated into Israel in any future deal. But it does exploit the commercial benefits of its location, essentially profiting from occupation, and contributes to the slow closing of the E1 corridor that is necessary for the contiguity of a future Palestinian state.”

Not every partnership has been as smooth as Cindy Crawford’s with Omega. Yardley severed ties with Helena Bonham Carter after she announced that she never wore makeup. Nivea dropped Rihanna for being incompatible with its family values, after she appeared inebriated and skimpily dressed in public. Christian Dior dropped Sharon Stone from its ads for insinuating that earthquake victims in China may have had it coming. Pepsi let go of Madonna after she danced provocatively around a burning cross in a music video. Hertz abandoned O. J. Simpson following allegations of domestic abuse; Got Milk dropped Chris Brown after he assaulted Rihanna, in 2009, and Nutella ended its relationship with Kobe Bryant after claims of sexual abuse.

But in all these cases it has been the human partner whose behavior causes friction. In the case of Johansson and SodaStream, the opposite is true. Any excoriation of Johansson will come not from the company but from the public—especially in countries less politically friendly with Israel, who may label her insensitive or irresponsible. Johansson’s mother is Jewish, and she has identified with the religion, which presumably would make the criticism feel more personal.

Johansson might have looked to another American darling for a lesson before signing on with SodaStream. Several years ago, the “Sex and the City” actress Kristin Davis—whose character, Charlotte, converts to Judaism at the series’ end—signed on as a spokeswoman for the cosmetics company Ahava Dead Sea Laboratories. Ahava makes products in the Jewish settlement of Mitzhe Shalem, and had been boycotted by people who felt that it exploited Palestinian natural resources. Davis was also a spokesperson for Oxfam, which expressed opposition “to settlement trade, in which Ahava is engaged”; some news reports suggested that the conflict of interest had caused Oxfam to drop Davis as a spokeswoman. She and Ahava soon parted ways. Oxfam reiterated its appreciation of her work on its behalf and said that Davis remained an “Oxfam ambassador.”

How accountable should a brand ambassador be for the actions of a company she represents? Johansson hasn’t been criticized much for the prison sentence handed down to Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana for considerable tax crimes; should she be? Or is it different because she’s only their model, not an “ambassador”? The Daily Beast somewhat flippantly dismissed the conversation about Johansson’s teaming with SodaStream as a “fake” controversy stirred up by Al Jazeera—among the first to draw attention to the issue—based on a handful of angry tweets. But, regardless of whether you support or oppose SodaStream’s plant location, doing business in the Occupied Territories seems, by its very nature, political.

In fact, SodaStream’s influence in the West Bank is complicated. The Jewish Telegraphic Agency reported last year that some five hundred West Bank Palestinians work at the site, along with four hundred Arabs from eastern Jerusalem and two hundred Israeli Jews and foreign workers, including African refugees. The plant has an on-site mosque and a synagogue; employees of different religious traditions share a dining hall. When the SodaStream C.E.O., Birnbaum, was invited a year ago to the residence of the Israeli president to receive the 2013 Outstanding Exporter Award, he brought along a number of Palestinian employees and insisted on going through the same rigorous security checks to which the Palestinian workers were subjected (“After all,” he said, “these are the very people who produce the products for which we were receiving that award.”). The Middle East media site Al-Monitor called his gesture an “unofficial breach of protocol.” When he accepted the prize, Birnbaum publicly rebuked his host, President Shimon Peres, for the unequal treatment his workers had received, which included strip searches “down to their underwear.”