Unilever chief on how to activate 35 brands at the Fifa World Cup
With the World Cup a sponsor’s heaven, Matt Hardy asks Unilever how the FMCG behemoth activates 35 brands amid a need to be noticed.
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 – often recognised either in a limited number of territories, or globally – and enhance its perceptions.
Levi’s have come out of this World Cup looking great, 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.
Take a look at the fourth officials, whose job it is to hold up the substitutions board, meanwhile, and you’ll see a little tick where their armpit sits.
For some it’ll be recognisable as deoderant brand Rexona, for others it’s Sure. Yet these are the same product, tailored for various markets, and each owned by Hellmann’s, Vaseline and Comfort parent firm Unilever.
Unilever everywhere… literally
“We are everywhere,” Javier Tena, CFO of Unilever’s personal care arm, tells City PM. “That’s the beauty of the company. We are all across the world and operate in more than 120 markets.
“We 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’re from the UK: the passion that it ignites, it’s a tournament that really brings people together. It’s a tournament where all political considerations, opinions, backgrounds, they all melt, and you are there to really enjoy the tournament wherever you are.
“For us it’s [about being] aligned to our strategy and we have different brands playing to the different elements of the tournament.”
There is such a thing as overexposure however, which Tena counteracts by explaining that the sheer range of brands means there’s something for everyone, and concentrating more resources into a smaller number of activations could in fact be the answer.
How much is too much?
Football finance expert Professor Rob Wilson tells City PM that “the scale of the portfolio raises the importance of disciplined brand architecture”.
“With so many activations surrounding a single event,” he adds, “success depends on maintaining clear differentiation so that each brand retains a distinctive presence and consumers can easily understand its role in a wider sponsorship ecosystem.”
On the same sponsor level as Unilever sits the likes of McDonald’s, Bank of America and AB InBev – the latter of which got a huge volume of albeit unwanted coverage at the previous men’s World Cup in 2022 after the hosts in Qatar banned alcoholic drinks from the tournament just weeks before kick-off.
The next World Cup?
The wider sponsorship portfolio of the London-headquartered multinational consumer firm sees Unilever in deals with both Manchester City and Chelsea, as well as across rugby, cricket and NFL’s Super Bowl.
Sport still has cultural relevance, 25-year servant of Unilever Tena says, amid a shift by some brands towards festivals. Gaming is growing, with Lynx a big player in the music space across the United Kingdom. “Marketing is pretty much the essence and the DNA of this company.”
Tena states that the firm evaluates each deal as it comes to a close or renewal, with their agreements with Fifa and Manchester City due to expire next year.
“Literally as we finish the tournament this year,” he says, “we will do a proper evaluation to determine in terms of the global strategy on sports. But it is so far, so good.”
If there was a leaderboard for activations at the Fifa World Cup, Unilever would be at – or close to – the top of it. They are, as Tena says, everywhere. Whether that’s the optimum use of time – and millions of pounds – won’t be known until the spreadsheets are completed after the final.