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For 25 years, I’ve helped businesses build marketing that cuts through and scales revenue.

The Growth Guide is where I share the strategy, GTM frameworks, and execution tactics that actually work, from zero to scale.

Today’s topic: FIFA World Cup Marketing Campaigns
The FIFA World Cup is more than a sporting event. Alongside the Super Bowl and the Olympic Games, the FIFA World Cup has emerged as one of the most competitive events not only for the athletes, but also for marketers. 

Few other events offer brands such tremendous global reach, combined with the rapt attention of millions of fans for a span of several weeks. Literally billions of people follow the matches, players and storylines. But beyond this, the World Cup games bring together friends, family and people who’ve never met, but have a shared sense of fun, shared dreams, and an escape from the everyday. 

It’s these factors that lead to such a tremendous and unique impact across the world and it taps into one of my favorite marketing emotions: passion. The sheer scale of these matches makes the FIFA World Cup tournament enormously attractive to advertisers. It also creates a familiar problem: when every sponsor is competing to be noticed, simply appearing around the event is rarely enough. A prominent logo, celebrity endorsement or large media buy may secure visibility, but visibility alone does not guarantee that a campaign will be remembered.

Why We Like These Campaigns

The strongest World Cup advertising campaigns tend to do something more. They use the tournament as a setting for an idea that improves, extends upon, or reshapes the supporter experience, connections they make and the experience they have. Some make official merchandise more affordable. Others give fans something worth collecting, allow them to influence the event, bring products directly into supporter communities or join conversations already happening during matches.

Their creativity does not come from one particular channel or execution style. It can appear in the offer, the distribution model, the media placement, the role given to the audience, or the way a brand connects its own product to the rituals surrounding the tournament.

The campaigns in this edition take very different approaches, but each offers supporters value beyond the advertisement itself. That value might be affordability, participation, convenience, belonging, entertainment, access or a tangible reminder of the experience.

Together, they show how brands can move beyond sponsoring attention and create meaningful connections between the brands and the audiences they want to connect with. Done well, it also helps the major events feel even larger, more important, and more emotional.

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Official team merchandise gives supporters a visible way to express national pride in their team. But when an authentic shirt costs a significant share of the average person’s monthly income, that symbol of belonging can quickly become inaccessible.

Águila, the official beer of Colombia’s national team, addressed that problem with a campaign created alongside DAVID Bogotá and DAVID Madrid. Supporters could buy the official Adidas shirt at a subsidised price by allowing Águila to place its logo on the front.

The size of the logo determined the size of the discount. A small Águila logo produced a modest reduction, while supporters willing to wear a larger one paid considerably less. The largest version reportedly reduced the shirt’s price by as much as 87%.

It was a simple and unusually transparent exchange. Águila was effectively paying supporters for advertising space on clothing they already wanted to wear. Fans gained access to an expensive national symbol, while every subsidised shirt became visible media for the brand.

What made the campaign distinctive was not simply the novelty of resizing a logo. It used sponsorship to solve a genuine customer problem and converted brand visibility into direct financial value.

The idea could also be understood almost immediately: the bigger the logo, the lower the price. That clarity made the campaign easier to explain, share and remember.

Branded giveaways are common at major sporting events. Most are useful for a few hours, photographed once, and then forgotten soon afterwards.

Bank of America took a different approach with Fan Bands: free, customisable friendship bracelets that allowed supporters to build a personal record of their World Cup experience.

Fans selected a cord colour and added beads representing national teams, host cities, landmarks and tournament stages. As the competition progressed, new beads were released, giving people a reason to return and continue adding to their bracelet.

That ongoing mechanic helped turn a simple piece of merchandise into a tournament phenomenon. More than 700,000 bands had reportedly been distributed by the knockout rounds, supporters queued for hours to create them, and some later appeared on resale sites at substantial prices.

The restrained branding was important. Rather than making the bracelet feel like corporate merchandise, Bank of America allowed national identity, travel and fandom to remain the focus. The brand created the experience without overwhelming it.

Fan Bands also gave supporters several reasons to stay engaged. A bracelet could evolve as a team advanced, as its owner attended more matches or visited another host city. Each new bead added both personal meaning and another point of contact with the campaign.

The broader lesson is straightforward: branded merchandise becomes more valuable when people can shape it, extend it and attach their own memories to it. Bank of America did not simply give fans another promotional item. It created something they actively wanted to collect.

Brands often respond to major events by building new digital experiences. The challenge is that even a well-designed platform still has to persuade people to find it, understand it and return.

FIFA and Gamefam took a more efficient route by adapting an environment that already had an established audience. The existing Super League Soccer experience on Roblox became FIFA Super Soccer, bringing official tournament branding and partnerships into a game people were already playing.

That starting point mattered. The original experience reportedly attracted 9.5 million monthly active users and generated around 1.5 million gameplay sessions each day. Rather than creating a temporary branded game and attempting to build an audience from zero, FIFA entered a community with existing habits and momentum.

The launch also included a four-week Adidas Football Festival, with partner clubs appearing inside the experience. That created opportunities for repeat engagement, digital merchandise and additional brand integrations rather than limiting the campaign to a one-time visit.

The most creative part of the strategy was not the presence of football inside Roblox. It was the decision to work with an established behaviour instead of asking younger supporters to adopt an entirely new campaign platform.

For marketers, the lesson extends well beyond gaming. Sometimes the strongest route to an audience is not to build another destination. It is to identify where a relevant community already spends its time and find a credible way to add to that experience.

WSS and Adidas Took Store to the Supporters

Major tournaments create crowds across an entire city, not only inside the stadium. Supporters gather at watch parties, fan festivals, restaurants, breweries, parks and transport hubs, often far from official retail locations.

WSS and Adidas responded by putting official World Cup kits and fan merchandise into mobile retail buses that could travel directly to those gatherings. The activation moved across locations in California and Texas, appearing wherever tournament interest was concentrated.

That mobility turned a retail operation into a flexible form of media. The trucks could follow the crowds, adjust their routes as different teams advanced and reach communities that might never visit a flagship store or official tournament precinct.

It also removed the usual separation between awareness and purchase. The same activation could attract attention, create a branded experience and complete the transaction on the spot.

What made the idea effective was its responsiveness. A fixed installation depends on supporters coming to it. A mobile one can adapt to where enthusiasm is building in real time.

For marketers, the wider lesson is that distribution can be part of the creative idea. During a large, geographically dispersed event, being able to move with the audience may be more valuable than creating one impressive activation and asking everyone else to find it.

Competitions aimed at children are common around major sporting events. Most ask for a drawing, select a winner and end with a prize. But Hyundai gave the winning work a much more visible role.

Children ages five to 12 were invited to create artwork showing their support for a participating country. One design was selected for each national team and placed on that team’s official tournament bus. Winners could also receive tickets, travel and accommodation.

The strength of the idea came from what happened after the artwork was submitted. The children were not simply creating content for a campaign gallery. Their work became part of the tournament’s physical infrastructure and travelled with the teams throughout the event.

That gave the competition a stronger sense of consequence. It connected families, national pride and user-generated content with a highly visible asset that also made sense for Hyundai as a vehicle brand.

The team bus was not an arbitrary canvas. It sat directly within the company’s product category, appeared repeatedly throughout the tournament and carried emotional significance for supporters following their national side.

For marketers, the lesson is that participation becomes more powerful when the audience can shape something real. The best competitions do not stop at asking people to submit content. They give that content a meaningful place in the experience.

World Cup audiences are not made up only of lifelong football supporters. Major tournaments also attract casual viewers, social fans and people who become invested simply because everyone around them is watching.

Lay’s built its campaign around welcoming that wider audience rather than asking people to prove their credentials.

In its “Jump On, America” work, Will Ferrell drove a literal bandwagon alongside David Beckham and Marshawn Lynch. The idea turned the familiar criticism of the “bandwagon fan” into an invitation. Supporters did not need years of football knowledge or an established allegiance. They only needed to want to take part.

Ferrell was a particularly effective choice because his exaggerated enthusiasm made the campaign feel knowingly playful rather than forced. Beckham provided the connection to football, while Lynch helped broaden its appeal beyond traditional soccer audiences.

Lay’s extended that same spirit into a very different channel through a WhatsApp group involving personalities including Lionel Messi, Beckham, Thierry Henry, Alexia Putellas and Steve Carell. The group reportedly reached an audience of around four million followers and placed the brand inside a platform people already use for live reactions, jokes, predictions and debate during matches.

The two executions worked differently, but they shared the same strategic idea. The bandwagon campaign lowered the social barrier to becoming a fan, while the WhatsApp activation lowered the practical barrier to joining the conversation.

Rather than building a campaign destination and asking supporters to visit it, Lay’s inserted itself into familiar behaviours surrounding the tournament: gathering around a shared cultural moment and talking while the action unfolded.

For marketers, the broader lesson is that participation grows when brands make it feel both socially acceptable and practically effortless. The strongest invitation is not simply “watch our campaign.” It is “you belong here, and you can join in right now.”

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World Cup host venues are required to remove or conceal branding from companies that are not official tournament sponsors. That created an unusual problem for stadiums already carrying commercial names, including Levi’s Stadium in California and Gillette Stadium in Foxboro, Massachusetts.

Rather than treating the restrictions as something to hide, both brands made the attempted concealment part of their marketing.

At Levi’s Stadium, the company’s signage was covered and the venue was temporarily renamed San Francisco Bay Area Stadium. Levi’s responded by adopting the obscured logo as a visual device of its own. It changed its social profile image to resemble the covered stadium signage and posted playful references to the “redacted” venue. The idea then extended to Levi’s locations in other markets, turning a local compliance requirement into a wider brand moment.

Gillette faced a similar situation at its namesake stadium, where branding across thousands of seats had to be concealed. The brand answered with content that appeared to cover its own logo using shaving foam, connecting the restriction directly to the product category.

The executions worked because neither company attempted to pretend the restriction was not happening. They acknowledged it, exaggerated it and turned the absence of conventional branding into something more noticeable than the original signage.

There is also a broader branding lesson here. Both names were recognisable even when partially concealed. The covered shapes, familiar venues and surrounding conversation gave audiences enough information to complete the picture themselves.

For marketers, constraints do not always reduce creative opportunity. Sometimes they provide the idea. Levi’s and Gillette could not advertise inside the venues in the usual way, so they made the act of not being allowed to advertise the story instead.

Some sponsorship placements work because they reach a large audience. Others work because the placement itself completes the idea.

Rexona achieved both by branding the underarm area of the fourth officials’ shirts during the World Cup. Its logo also appeared on the electronic boards they raised to announce substitutions and added time across the tournament’s 104 matches.

The fourth official occupies one of football’s most visible pressure points. They manage substitutions, communicate added time and regularly become the focus of frustration from players and coaches. Each time an official lifted the board, the movement exposed the deodorant branding beneath their arm.

That made the placement immediately relevant to the product. Rexona did not simply attach its logo to another available surface. It found a moment in which an underarm naturally became visible, then connected that movement with a brand built around protection under pressure.

The execution also made repeated exposure feel less intrusive. The logo appeared during genuine moments in the match rather than interrupting the action with a separate advertisement. Because substitutions and added-time announcements happen throughout every game, the idea could recur without requiring supporters to learn or seek out a campaign mechanic.

What made the campaign distinctive was the precision of the match between product, placement and context. The fourth official was not merely carrying the advertising. Their movement activated it.

For marketers, the lesson is that media placement can be part of the creative concept rather than simply the space where the concept appears. The most valuable location is not always the largest one. Sometimes it is the one that makes the brand’s relevance instantly obvious.

The World Cup gives brands extraordinary reach, but reach alone does not make an idea distinctive. With so many sponsors, advertisers and media partners competing for attention, the campaigns that stand out are rarely those that simply place the largest logo in front of the largest audience.

They find a more meaningful role.

The executions were very different, but each gave supporters something beyond advertising. That value came through affordability, participation, convenience, collectability, entertainment, belonging or access.

That is the broader opportunity surrounding any major cultural event. The audience is already paying attention. The challenge is deciding what the brand can contribute once it has that attention.

The most memorable campaigns do not merely borrow the excitement of the occasion. They add something to it.

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See you in the next edition,
Geoff