Behind Unilever’s creator and social strategy for next year’s World Cup

The company’s execs are currently planning how best to do that via paid media and sponsorships spanning four of its flagship personal care brands (Dove, Dove Men+Care, Rexona, and Axe) while simultaneously executing a major course change within its own marketing organization — a grand turn away from traditional one-to-many channels like television, toward a “many to many” approach prioritizing paid social and influencer marketing. 

Turning the tanker

In March, you’ll recall, the firm pledged to devote half its media spending to social and creator marketing, and increase the number of influencers it works with by 20 times. Though just over six months into that mission, the philosophy now runs through the CPG giant like a stick of rock. “I want Unilever in North America to be the most outcome-oriented player,” Ryu Yokoi, chief media and marketing capability officer, Unilever Personal Care and North America, told Digiday. 

Primarily, the shift is being fueled by budget taken from TV and display channels, he noted, without providing exact figures. “We always believe that moving picture, sight and sound, gives us the best opportunity for storytelling,” he added. But TV now shares its old monopoly on those dimensions with Instagram, TikTok and YouTube.

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Em Heath, Unilever’s London-based global brand director for Rexona and Sure, said the company’s personal care brands are already hitting its paid media target and are en route to scaling up its creator schemes. “Before, TV was everything. You’d probably invest like 80-90% of your media spend into TV… now it’s not about that. It’s really about very targeted investment into TV at the right moments, at the right time, to the right people, as opposed to an always-on approach,” she said; both Yokoi and Heath declined to provide financial specifics.

Squad selection

At next year’s World Cup, Unilever will dispatch an army of creators across North America. “We need to be working with more. When Coca Cola went to the Paris 2024 Olympics they sent 10,000 creators. That’s what we’ve sort of got in our head… that’s the minimum of what we should be aiming [for]. We’ve got a long way to go to get to those sorts of numbers… in order to cut through the noise,” said Heath.

The company is using a mixed approach when it comes to picking the creators it’s working with, from ambassadors to advocates. At the high-profile end of the wedge, its brands already have alliances with top names like runner Katerina Johnson-Thompson and England soccer player Lucy Bronze, who have partnerships with Radox and Sure respectively. So-called micro and nano influencers will fill out the other end once they’re vetted. It’ll be briefing creators to both make creative assets for Unilever’s paid activity and to create work for their own channels, she noted.

“They could be semi-professional football players moving into the creator world. They could have a coaching background. They could just be someone that is like your alpha fan that has managed to curate a really large following. We need to ensure we’ve got the spectrum,” said Heath, who added the roster would span age groups and follower counts in an effort to contain every potential fan persona. The focus is “communities and cohorts, over the influencers themselves,” added Yokoi.

As well as monitoring performance of accompanying spend through media mix modeling, Unilever works with companies like Traackr and CreatorIQ to organize and measure its influencer efforts. 

Unilever is making a bet that it doesn’t need to solely rely on big broadcasters to harness the mass audience appeal of live sports. “It’s still a blend in terms of techniques. It’s not about one thing or the other,” said Barron. “There are more ways to speak to consumers than ever before. We really want to tap the idea of many people talking to many consumers.” 

It isn’t acting in a vacuum. The sports celebrity brand endorsement of decades past is being superseded by the athlete-as-influencer, gatekeepers between brands and an audience of fans otherwise disengaged from mass-broadcast media channels. Sports rights-holders have twigged, with Germany’s Bundesliga and France’s Football Federation both granting broadcast rights for live games to creators for the first time this year. The NFL has also joined the trend.

Notably for Dove, there’s a large overlap between creators and athletes within women’s sports. Women’s basketball players enjoy, on average, 3.2 times the social following of their male counterparts, according to data from name, image, likeness (NIL) platform Opendorse. And 71% of viewers that follow a women’s sport, follow its players and personalities on social platforms, per a Dentsu and Snapchat survey published in October.

Creators and sponsorship

Unilever’s creator focus is also key to activating against the considerable investment it’s made as a primary sponsor of the World Cup (it also has commitments with Gotham FC, the Women’s Soccer League, Chelsea, Arsenal and Manchester City). Though there’s not a lot getting in the way of an advertiser spinning up some creatively worded ads referencing the “big game” next summer, the “one to many opportunity” of a partnership puts an advertiser at the front of the queue, noted Zack Sugarman, svp at sports sponsorship consultancy Two Circles.

“You can’t do that without the official partnership,” he said. Without it, he added, “you’re going to be living on the fringes.”

Though marrying the classic strategy of a big bucks sponsorship with the modern, small-bore approach of creator marketing might seem incongruous, partnerships are better thought of as force multipliers.

Sugarman cited internal Two Circles data that suggested brands saw awareness increase by 200% when they activate around an official sports IP, like a tournament or league. Advertisers’ confidence in sponsorships led to combined spending on partner deals surpassing $1.1 billion in 2025, according to Ampere Analysis.

“Under investing in activation is a surefire way to squander your sponsorship investment,” said Gartner analyst Chris Ross.

An occasion like the World Cup might tempt some marketers to return to the TV fold, attracted by the chance of owning that semi-final extra time ad pod; TV ad slots sold out during upfronts. But Unilever’s big bet is that creators, not commentators, will set the tone of next year’s tournament.

If it works, it’ll prove that brands can coordinate mass messaging using creators anywhere, at any time. “We’re all in for this,” said Unilever’s Heath.

This article has been updated to correct the Unilever brands involved in its World Cup sponsorship.