‘A Super Bowl every two days’: Inside Unilever’s 50,000-creator World Cup play

Now, at the height of the summer soccer tournament, Digiday has seen firsthand how that plan has played out: Unilever says it has activated 50,000 creators and influencers worldwide, tapped thousands for its House of Fresh-branded pop-ups in New York City, Miami and Mexico City across 10 days and brought top influencers pitch-side to World Cup matches.

Though the company declined to give more details regarding budget and ROI targets, Sarah Potter, influencer and media director for Dove Personal Care, told Digiday Unilever is focused on owning moments before, during, and after the games. 

“The ROI isn’t just measured by impressions from creator content during the match. It’s about creating incremental attention, cultural relevance and building long-term equity, while producing content that can be re-used across paid, owned, earned and even retail,” she said.

“This is a Super Bowl every two days,” said Kathryn Fernandez, head of purpose and engagement at Dove. 

Dove and other Unilever brands have shown up at major events like the Super Bowl and Coachella before, but nothing at the scale of this World Cup push. That’s due, in part, to the World Cup’s legacy as a deeply patriotic and personal tournament centered on fandom and passion — which Fernandez said creators’ perceived authenticity is well suited to.

“When I think about FIFA, [creators were] at the core of it. Sure, you need to have your sponsorships, sure, you’ve got to run your ads on TV,” she said. “Creator is almost even more critical.”

So Dove and other Unilever brands placed creators at the epicenter of their World Cup marketing strategy, activating every tier in various ways to maximize reach and engagement. 

“We have always-on content creation. There’s tentpole moments, there’s stunts that we’re using creators for, we have them for social series, we have creators that are being used for UGC…it’s really running the gamut,” Fernandez said.

Dove is also turning everyday fans into brand ambassadors and creators through a program with Getty Images called the Joy Cam, where they capture fans’ reactions in the stands at World Cup games and share them on social media. 

It’s all part of a long-tail brand strategy to connect more of its consumers to small and major sports moments. That includes Body Confident Sport, a program Dove launched four years ago with Nike to support young girls in sports, which the brand has since tied to the Super Bowl, U.S. Open, and the National Women’s Soccer League. 

Ahead of the World Cup, Fernandez said Dove saw an opportunity to elevate the platform and began building a creator base of parents, coaches, mentors, athletes and other ambassadors, including Tori Penso, the first American female FIFA referee (on the World Cup pitch she now wears a Dove-branded whistle and cleats). That group of creators has been carried through Dove’s recent sports activations, and expanded to different fandoms and creator types, including beauty and lifestyle influencers so the brand can carry its “girls in sports” message into spaces that have historically centered on men’s sports. 

“How cool is it that we can come and disrupt a men’s sporting event by bringing the joy of young girls?” Fernandez asked. 

Unilever’s massive World Cup activation 

Digiday saw inside the royal blue walls of Unilever’s House of Fresh pop-up in New York City’s Flatiron district, where creators made custom charm bracelets, spraypainted branded soccer jerseys, participated in a relay race and a select few enjoyed an intimate chat with Trinity Rodman and NFL legend Marshawn Lynch. There were cocktails themed around anti-perspirant and chances to make collectible sports cards based on your likeness; all available only to invited guests – though curious New York passersby regularly tried to duck in.

The space, which was flipped to reflect different brand identities on different days (Dove Men, Degree, Dove, etc.) hosted roughly 1,200 creators across sports, gaming, beauty and more thus far, per Unilever. The activation will run until July 19. Attendees ranged from micro creators with earned media value to mid and mega creators who were paid to attend. Jake Hirsh, head of Dove Men + Care, told Digiday the activation was more than a year in the making.

Lisa Turke, group account director at Billion Dollar Boy who works with Dove Men + Care, told that the scale of the activation was “significant.”

This wasn’t simply an event, it was an integrated creator marketing program built around one of the world’s biggest sporting moments,” Turke said. “We led the creator strategy across the House of Fresh activations in New York and Miami, working closely with Unilever’s experiential and production partners. Each city had its own personality and creative strategy.”

Turke said that BDB’s role involved casting creators across multiple communities, developing briefs, planning content capture opportunities and celebrity appearances, and coordinating creator ambassador schedules around matches to ensure “every activation could natural generate compelling social content.”

“The goal wasn’t to create an event people attended. It was to create an experience people couldn’t help but share. When creators leave with stories instead of scripts, that’s when you start seeing real cultural impact,” said Turke.”

For even more impact, Unilever brought creators to World Cup matches, giving them VIP experiences across several host cities with access to lounges and box seats. The company wouldn’t provide details on how many creators attended games, or what was expected of them in terms of UGC or branded content.

Fernandez said that Unilever’s event-focused creator push has become a given ahead of major events like this. 

“It’s not a question of ‘do we have a creator budget?’ It’s now such a fundamental part of the marketing machine,” she said. 

Over the last several years, Dove’s creator strategy has contributed to approximately 10 percent brand growth across all categories, said Fernandez. For brands like Dove, which she says is already in 50% of households in the U.S., creators let the company dip into a diverse consumer base and establish more personal connections and touchpoints.

“We serve so many people, so many different ages, cohorts, communities…The right creators, the right tiers, the right KPIs and the right investment in it are massive…It allows us to really go deep with key audiences that you can’t do with traditional reach media,” Fernandez said. “It’s the epicenter of modern marketing.”

A Dove rep told Digiday that its recent “Our Game Day” experience in NYC brought together more than 80 young women sports creators from 11 countries. As of publication, those creators generated more than 180 pieces of content with a combined reach of 54 million. 

Selina Sykes, global vp of digital, social and AI transformation of beauty and wellbeing at Unilever, spoke on the Digiday podcast at Cannes about “buzz” being a good indicator of creator marketing efforts’ success. 

Fernandez echoed that, saying Dove considers several elements when putting on such massive creator events, from volume of content to sentiment, velocity and engagement – but there’s one element she considers of premium importance during such a massive global event like the World Cup. 

“Personally, vitality is a critical measure of how much social conversation we were able to generate around something that’s already so hyped — you walk out the door and it’s everywhere you see,” Fernandez said. “How much social conversation, how much brand love you created in this period of time, that’s a currency, and that’s something that really lasts. It sticks with young people, it helps build memory structure, which of course leads to greater purchase intent and brand love.”