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\t\tMatt Hardy asks Unilever how they activate 35 brands at the World Cup.\t<\/p>\n\t\t\tTuesday 30 June 2026 5:55 am
\n\t\t\t\t\t\u00a0|\u00a0\u00a0Updated:\u00a0<\/p>\n
\t\t\tMonday 29 June 2026 11:03 am\n\t<\/p>\n
\t\tMatt Hardy asks Unilever how they activate 35 brands at the World Cup.\t<\/p>\n
With the World Cup a sponsor\u2019s heaven, Matt Hardy asks Unilever how the FMCG behemoth activates 35 brands amid a need to be noticed.<\/p>\n
A number of the brand campaigns at this Fifa World Cup have been sublime, others have fallen a little flat. Activating at a tournament watched by billions across nearly 200 countries must be the stuff of nightmares for hundreds of specialists whose job it is to take an organisation \u2013 often recognised either in a limited number of territories, or globally \u2013 and enhance its perceptions.<\/p>\n
Levi\u2019s have come out of this World Cup looking great<\/a>, using their logo being barred from a stadium in San Francisco for two months of guerrilla marketing, while the brands sponsoring the hydration breaks in the United States are cashing in on Americanised adaptations to the tournament<\/a>.<\/p>\n Take a look at the fourth officials, whose job it is to hold up the substitutions board, meanwhile, and you\u2019ll see a little tick where their armpit sits.\u00a0<\/p>\n For some it\u2019ll be recognisable as deoderant brand Rexona, for others it\u2019s Sure. Yet these are the same product, tailored for various markets, and each owned by Hellmann\u2019s, Vaseline and Comfort parent firm Unilever.<\/p>\n \t\tUnilever everywhere\u2026 literally<\/p>\n \u201cWe are everywhere,\u201d Javier Tena, CFO of Unilever\u2019s personal care arm, tells City AM. \u201cThat\u2019s the beauty of the company. We are all across the world and operate in more than 120 markets.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cWe have 35 brands today sponsoring the World Cup so we have a unique opportunity to really reach out to pretty much all our consumers around the world and do something very different. You\u2019re from the UK: the passion that it ignites, it\u2019s a tournament that really brings people together. It\u2019s a tournament where all political considerations, opinions, backgrounds, they all melt, and you are there to really enjoy the tournament wherever you are.<\/p>\n \u201cFor us it\u2019s [about being] aligned to our strategy<\/a> and we have different brands playing to the different elements of the tournament.\u201d<\/p>\n There is such a thing as overexposure however, which Tena counteracts by explaining that the sheer range of brands means there\u2019s something for everyone, and concentrating more resources into a smaller number of activations could in fact be the answer.<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\tRead more<\/p>\n