Global activation capitalises on record-breaking tournament

This year’s FIFA Women’s World Cup™, hosted back in July and August, was a landmark event for women’s football, breaking new records for attendance and viewership across the globe. Over 1.9 million fans attended across the tournament’s 64 matches in Australia and New Zealand, and global viewing figures for this year’s event exceeded two billion, up from 1.12 billion in 2019. As the milestones sink in, we’ve been able to reflect on our own role in supporting the delivery of the tournament, through our activation on behalf of Official Tournament Sponsor, Unilever.

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The partnership between FIFA and Unilever Personal Care brands, including Rexona (also known as Sure and Degree), Dove, Lifebuoy and LUX, as Official Sponsors was formally announced in May 2023. What our team achieved with Unilever in only 90 days from signing the sponsorship deal to the start of the tournament is incredible. The 90 days was a culmination of collective planning and delivery from our UK, US, Australia and Hong Kong teams, who supported Unilever in achieving market penetration across the 32 countries that had teams competing in the event.

Key highlights included:

  • Facilitation of all on the ground ticket allocations and money can’t buy stadium tour experiences for consumer promotion winners, guests and stakeholders.
  • Over 700 campaign assets delivered through our always on approvals team which increased to 24/7 monitoring during tournament period.
  • World Cup winner Heather O’Reilly from the US joined Rexona at the Sydney Football Stadium with football stars Lia Lewis (UK) and Raquel Freestyle (Brazil) who went head-to-head in fun football challenges that they shared on their social channels. This was part of the ‘Play on the Pitch’ event which saw 16 creators participate resulting in 64 pieces of content shared across their social channels.
  • Planning and launch of the Rexona FIFA World activation in Roblox, which has seen 20k+ daily active users.

Alongside the FIFA Women’s World Cup 2023™, we also supported Unilever in integrating the partnership internally via staff engagement events in London, Rome and Singapore, as well as delivering the AXE takeover of the FIFAe Finals at Gamers8 in Saudi Arabia.

Held in Riyadh at Gamers8, the biggest esports and gaming festival in the world, the FIFAe Finals saw Unilever promote its AXE brand with a campaign narrative helping fans to “Power up Your Game” with AXE. As part of this, we developed concepts and activations which saw AXE become the most visible brand in the whole tournament. This included the AXE Player of the Day, AXE “Power Up” statistics, match highlights, player content and more.

In addition to digital content, AXE also created its own Power Up Zone, which gave fans the chance to play  EA SPORTS FIFA 23 in between tournament matches. AXE partnered with an array of big-name gaming influencers from the region, to promote its activation space.

A huge body of work, and this is only the beginning, with Unilever’s partnership deal set to run through to 2027 and include the FIFA World Cup 2026TM, FIFA Women’s World Cup 2027TM, FIFA-U20 Women’s World Cup 2024TM and FIFA eSports.