10 lessons the World Cup taught us about great advertising

The 2026 FIFA World Cup is the biggest advertising moment of this year. We analyzed ad campaigns from some of the biggest FIFA sponsors (Budweiser, Stella Artois, Don Julio, Casamigos, Dove, Coca-Cola and more) and non-sponsors getting in on the event like Modelo, Heineken, Lala, LEGO and more — and broke down what made each one work.

We've looked across all of them to find the common threads. What actually lands with consumers when a brand shows up for a moment this big? 

Which creative strategies turn a cultural moment into lasting brand equity and real sales — and what can any brand take from them?

Here’s what we learned.

The World Cup is a crowded place. There are global soccer icons, A-list actors, anthemic soundtracks and cinematic budgets all competing for attention in 30-60 seconds. 

The single biggest risk to an ad is that the brand itself gets lost in the spectacle. The ads that worked well all had two things in common to mitigate that — they put their brand assets to work across the whole ad (colors, objects, sounds, not just the logo), and they gave the brand or product a real role in the story.

Lay’s “Epic Party” is one of the clearest examples of this. Gathering Messi, Beckham, Henry, Putellas and Steve Carell in one 30-second spot could easily have buried the brand — but here it didn’t get lost. 

The iconic yellow bag is woven through every key moment, and the proof is in how people play the ad back: they can't recount what the celebrities are up to without Lay's being part of it. The chips are what everyone's after — what unlocks the watch-party invitation, what Messi himself shows up carrying — so when viewers describe the star-studded scenes, the brand comes along automatically.

Stella Artois does something similar in “Celebration ft. David Beckham” by opening on the chalice before Beckham has done anything, then building the entire story around whether he can protect his drink. The chalice ends up the most recalled asset in the ad, named by 27% of viewers, ahead of Beckham himself. 

And in Michelob ULTRA’s star-packed “The Superior Match,” the biggest Love spikes land on the product — when the ULTRAs are brought in, and when Billy Bob Thornton says “ULTRAs on me.”

Our advice: try summing up the ad’s story in a single sentence. Does the brand or product show up in it? If not, the ad will struggle to build mental availability for the brand.

💡 At a star-packed event, your DBAs and a clear product role are what stop the brand from getting lost in the show.

Across every ad we tested, the same metric kept separating the good from the exceptional and that was emotion. 

The top performers made people feel something and more often than not, that feeling was love — the strongest emotion an ad can generate. 

How much love an ad generates is only part of the story though. The moments driving it matter just as much. The most effective ads aim for the emotional high point to coincide with a key brand moment. 

In Stella Artois' "Celebration," love peaks at the exact second "A Taste Worth More" appears on screen. In Don Julio's "Made to Be Raised," a patient 25-second build peaks precisely when the bottle and tagline land together. Lala's single biggest love spike lands on its own rallying cry, "GoLALAzo!" And Lay's ties love so tightly to the product that its warmest moments are the ones where celebrity and brand come together. 

The craft is in the narrative — structuring the whole spot so its biggest moment and the brand arrive together.

In each case the ad is built as a story whose emotional payoff is engineered to land on the brand: Stella withholds its moment until the chalice is the last drink standing, Don Julio builds patiently toward a single hero shot of the bottle, Lala scripts its own name into the chant the crowd is waiting to shout. 

💡 Where the emotion lands matters as much as how much you generate. Tie it to the brand and that's what makes you stick in people's minds.

If love is the prize, the most reliable route to it at this tournament is pairing it with laughter. Time and again, the ads that paired humor with warmth were among the strongest performers.

The trick is keeping love present throughout rather than saving it for the end, so the laughter attaches warmth to the brand instead of just earning a laugh.

Casamigos is the clearest example: Love spikes the second the celebrities and the World Cup appear together, then holds steady as laughter builds through the rivalry — so viewers are laughing with the brand, not just at the situation. 

Heineken's "Fans Have More Friends" does the same, bringing the two together as strangers embrace over a goal. Stella Artois' "Celebration" moves between humor and warmth without losing either (Love: 36%; Laughter: 12% vs. 7% norm).

💡When love and laughter work together, the comedy reinforces the warmth instead of competing with it — and that's what separates an ad that entertains from one that builds a brand.

The most persuasive brand messages at this World Cup were the ones audiences felt before they were told. 

Stella Artois never says it’s worth more than other beers — it shows us, by letting every glass in the bar spill except Beckham’s, so that by the time “A Taste Worth More” appears you’ve already arrived there yourself.

A conclusion you reach on your own lands as your own belief, strongly associated with the brand that led you to it.

Michelob ULTRA never claims the beer is delicious, it shows soccer stars willing to play a chaotic hotel-lobby match to get one, landing the implicit message that it must be worth competing for.

LEGO conveys “brings everyone together through play” with no dialogue at all — just four soccer icons and a kid building a trophy. 

And Don Julio tells its premium story entirely through the creative: the gold bottle, the cinematic lighting and the slow-motion raise. In every case the demonstration is more powerful than a voiceover could be.

💡Let the story carry the message instead of stating it outright. A claim people work out for themselves through a story is more memorable, more believed, and more likely to attach to the brand than one you simply tell them.

Celebrity casting was everywhere in this year’s tournament, and our data drew a line between casting that reached the devoted fans and casting that broadened the audience.

Athletes deliver depth and credibility with fans, while pop-culture figures deliver reach with everyone else. The skill is in matching the face to the job.

Diageo’s two tequila ads are a clear illustration of this. “Made to Be Raised” cast soccer legend Thierry Henry, whose Celebrity Appeal sits at 3.8 overall but climbs to 4.3 among soccer fans — he lands better with people who know his legacy.

This Calls for Casamigos” cast Gabrielle Union and Keegan-Michael Key, pop-culture figures you don’t need to follow soccer to recognize, with a Celebrity Appeal of 4.3 across the board. 

Lay's pushed this further still by casting Steve Carell among the soccer icons in "How Legends Watch." It's a smart read on the US audience: with a big chunk of viewers only loosely into soccer, a universally loved comedian gives the ad broad cultural pull that the players alone might not reach.

The same split shows up across AB InBev's beers: Klopp's appeal climbs from 4.1 to 4.5 among soccer fans, while Beckham's holds regardless of whether or not you follow the game. 

💡 Celebrity value is only as strong as the recognition behind it. Pick the face that reaches the audience you’re actually after.

In nearly every ad we tested as part of the World Cup, the music did far more than set a mood. It carried the emotion, cued the brand and, in several cases, became the most stand-out piece in the entire spot.

Coca-Cola built an anthem strategy around a reworked “Jump,” and Musical Appeal (4.3 vs. 3.8 norm) was the single strongest metric in “Bubbling Up.” During the ad, love peaks when the chorus hits. 

Don Julio runs with no dialogue at all, leaning on “Por Amor” to carry the emotional narrative. For viewers who didn’t catch the soccer references, the music did the heavy lifting.

Lala reworked an instantly recognizable cumbia into its campaign line. And Heineken made the boldest choice of all — in a summer of pumped-up tournament anthems, it dropped Sinatra’s “Cheek to Cheek” over a goal celebration, reframing the moment as something warmer and more intimate, and achieving one of the ad’s strongest scores (Musical Appeal: 4.4 vs. 3.8 norm). 

💡Treat music as a creative lever because the right track can be your sharpest differentiator.

Use the moment to reinforce what a brand is already known for — rather than make it mean something else just for this event. 

Showing up consistently, in a way that feels unmistakably like you, is what compounds into a meaningful, mentally available brand. A one-off tournament persona does the opposite — it leaks the equity you've built everywhere else.

Budweiser leaned on 40 years as FIFA’s official beer to position itself as the beer of the people — and the ad’s category attributes land exactly there, leading on “for people like me” and “rooted in tradition.” 

Michelob ULTRA extended its long-running “superior” idea — and the “playing for an ULTRA” device it has used in ads for years — straight into soccer, so “Superior is worth playing for” feels like a continuation rather than a pivot.

Coca-Cola did what Coca-Cola always does and made its ads about emotion, mapping the feeling of a match onto its product. 

And Dove brought its decades-old #KeepHerConfident mission to the pitch with “The Game is Ours,” carrying a purpose it has owned for twenty years into a new arena. 

These brands used the World Cup to show the brand they already are, which is why the ads felt credible rather than opportunistic.

💡 Showing up as yourself isn't just authentic, it's effective. New memories from the moment attach to the brand you've already built, so it comes to mind more powerfully and positively next time. Show up as someone else and those memories scatter instead of compounding.

The World Cup is a global event and this year it spans three host nations at once. Some of the strongest global campaigns this year paired a global platform with localized execution. 

"The Superior Match" is all about a national hero scoring against Lionel Messi — so the brand shot different versions of the same idea for different countries. In the US, it's Christian Pulisic; in Canada, it's Jonathan David, Michelob ULTRA Zero's Canadian ambassador, who beats Messi and calls "Game over." 

Pulisic's moment would mean little in Canada, and David's would mean little in the US. Michelob localized the winning moment itself, and both versions drove strong results in their own market.

The brand even adjusted its casting logic: the US version leans on Billy Bob Thornton for broad comic appeal, while the Canadian version drops him, knowing Messi alone is famous enough to carry broad appeal (and he is, with Messi better recognized in Canada than Thornton is in the US).

AB InBev built the same thinking into its whole portfolio — Budweiser carrying the global message everywhere, Corona pointed squarely at Mexico and Michelob ULTRA at the US and Canada. 

Corona’s “El Extra de México es Mundial” is built entirely around Mexican pride, in Spanish, with national-team legends — earning a remarkable 91% unaided brand recall, with 71% of viewers agreeing it showed Corona is “proudly Mexican.” 

💡 A global idea resonates most when the execution is truly local, even when it comes to who scores the winning goal.

The World Cup’s audience splits in two: a devoted core who live the game and a far larger casual crowd there for the occasion. The brands that performed best built complementary spots — each with a single, well-defined job.

Dove Men+Care is the textbook case. “Balls on Fire” is a product ad: a sharp, funny demo of an alcohol-free formula that anyone can enjoy regardless of how much they care about soccer. 

“The Chant” is a brand ad: a cinematic portrait of fan devotion that scores average across all viewers but transforms among soccer fans (Love jumps from 32% to 54% and Relevance from 3.7 to 4.4).

You don’t need to love soccer to laugh at flaming balls, but you do need to love the game to love “The Chant”. 

We saw similar logic in Coca-Cola’s pairing of a broad pre-tournament anthem with a match-day sensory spot. The more jobs you hand one ad, the less likely it is to do any of them well.

💡 Be single-minded about the goal of each execution. One ad, one job — then build a portfolio where each piece reaches a different part of the audience.

Some of the strongest advertising of the tournament came from brands that aren’t official FIFA sponsors at all. The “World Cup effect” means anything that feels connected to the moment earns attention — and consumers rarely notice, or care, whether there’s an official badge attached.

Heineken, not an official sponsor, built its platform on commissioned research showing 75% of fans say their fandom helped them meet new people — a real human insight that earned it a Brand Impact score of 75 and a clear “great for socializing” association. 

Modelo, also unofficial, manufactured its credibility by sponsoring every Telemundo pre-game broadcast and showing up across all 104 Spanish-language matches, then made “Hometown Seats” land its argument in the first four seconds. 

Lala leaned on a national-team partnership and decades of cultural equity rather than a FIFA badge.

Each of them earned the right to show up, but most importantly, they show us that there’s no single right way to get involved in a moment this size. 

Sponsoring the event, a team or a player are all options — but they’re not the only ones, and plenty of brands without any sponsorship capitalized on the tournament just as effectively. 

💡Think about what works for your brand (and budget) and do your research to uncover what matters to consumers. 

There’s so much to learn from a single tournament — it was fun to look across the whole of it and pull out what makes sports advertising work, and how much of it applies far beyond soccer. Did any of these surprise you?

Let us know over on LinkedIn, and don’t forget to subscribe to the newsletter while you’re there so you can stay on top of our weekly insights.