#INTRO

Spain lifting the trophy for the first time in 16 years. Tears from Messi, the god of football. BTS set the stage on fire with an unshakable live performance. Korea’s own run may have ended in disappointment, but this summer’s World Cup in North America still served up brilliant play from national-team players around the globe and no shortage of spectacle. And as a global event the whole world watches, every World Cup brings news of inventive marketing from all kinds of brands. So which brands came out on top in the marketing battle? Let me walk you through some of the most entertaining examples.

1. Levi’s, Gillette: The More You Cover the Logo, the More It Shows?

FIFA regulations require that every logo belonging to a brand that is not an official World Cup sponsor be covered at the stadiums. Not even Levi’s, with a stadium bearing its own name, was exempt. The logos on the outer walls of Levi’s Stadium, and everywhere inside the stadium, had to be covered completely. The brand could simply have draped white cloth over all of it, but Levi’s made a different choice: it preserved the silhouette of the batwing logo that springs to mind the moment anyone thinks of Levi’s.

It’s human nature: tell people not to look, and they only want to look more. The covered logo, if anything, drew even more eyes around the stadium. Levi’s posted the cloth-draped logo on Instagram with a witty caption: “Welcoming the world to the beautiful [redacted] stadium!”

The post was a huge hit with consumers, racking up more than ten million video views not only on Instagram but on TikTok as well. Levi’s wasted no time expanding the moment in playful ways: rolling out the covered logo across its Instagram profile and even its physical stores, releasing a T-shirt called the Nobody’s Gonna Know Logo Tee, and more.

While Levi’s evoked its brand through the shape of a covered logo, another brand covered its logo with the very image everyone associates with the brand itself. That would be Gillette, the razor brand. Gillette faced the same rules for the duration of the World Cup, and it covered its logo with shaving foam, then added a caption on Instagram: “At least we got to choose how we cover it.”

Gillette didn’t stop there. After the World Cup, it released one more video that etched the brand into people’s minds all over again: an AI-made clip of workers using Gillette razors to clear away the shaving foam that had covered the logo. It was a witty example of wringing marketing value out of every last moment, even until its logo reappeared after the tournament.

2. Heinz: Be the Referee at Your Own Table

Meanwhile, another brand set out to give fans watching from home the experience of being in the stadium: Heinz, the brand synonymous with ketchup. In football, accurate refereeing decisions matter as much as the players’ dazzling play, and no image is more instantly linked to referees than the red card and the yellow card. When this World Cup made news for an unusually high number of red and yellow cards, Heinz wove the story straight into its marketing.

The insight was that those two bold colors, red and yellow, happened to be the colors of the company’s signature sauces, ketchup and mustard. Heinz was not an official sponsor, but it timed its launch to the World Cup season, releasing Heinz Penalty Packets — single-serve sauces shaped like red and yellow cards.

On the outside of the box is a message: “Call foul on no flavor.” Just as referees caution players for rough fouls and unsporting play, Heinz customers become referees at their own tables, handing out a card to any dish that lacks flavor. Add a little “red-card” ketchup or “yellow-card” mustard to a bland dish, and it’s full of flavor again.

Like the Legends of the Game, Brand Assets That Are Remembered Forever

Levi’s and Gillette came up with clever ways to cover a logo, then engaged with and amplified the reactions on social media, generating buzz at no marketing cost. Heinz tied fan culture to the packaging itself, turning the packets into social content. So what do these brands have in common? Each has distinctive brand assets that are firmly imprinted in customers’ minds.

Customers recognize the brand without its logo, picture themselves using it without any exposure, and identify it by color alone. Assets like these, you could say, are brand value and brand power that can’t be measured. To my mind, all three brands seized a global moment in the World Cup, reinterpreted it through their own distinctive brand assets, and pulled off marketing plays entirely their own.