Mention Me Q&A: How Brands Can Improve World Cup Marketing

Building a brand strategy for huge cultural moments like the FIFA World Cup 2026 can be tricky. 

With the potential for massive engagement on the table, marketing leaders are under immense pressure to deliver campaigns that can capitalise on the excitement without losing brand authenticity and customer trust. 

According to Wojtek Kokoszka, CEO of Mention Me, companies should focus less on visibility and instead prioritise the development of deeper, more meaningful relationships with their audiences in order to thrive during this period. 

In conversation with Marketing Chief, Wojtek shared how he believes brands should develop these strategies, with a focus on advocacy-led growth to build and sustain trust. 

Why can massive, star-studded campaigns often miss the mark when it comes to long-term ROI?

The honest answer? Most brands are spending in the wrong place entirely. If I had £100k to allocate, I'd put it into advocacy before I'd put it into ads. Every time. Celebrity campaigns generate attention, but attention doesn't grow. Trustworthy campaigns with real fans will.

What's changed is that AI has made human recommendations more important, not less. As AI-generated content floods every channel, people are becoming sharper at filtering it out. They're turning to people they actually trust – friends, communities, advocates – to make purchasing decisions. The brands that understand this are building networks of real influence. The ones that don't are paying more and more to be ignored.

Ultimately, perfected marketing campaigns struggle to generate the same level of trust as real people. As customers continue to reject AI-driven and inauthentic content, brands need to focus on building communities that promote influence and advocacy at scale.

What lessons can non-sporting brands learn from this approach of companies such as Nike, which has successfully built community-led campaigns?

While some focus on broadcast-led messaging, Nike ensures community drives its storytelling, where people participate and identify with the brand matters the most. Nike is leading the way in this regard, by creating a space where customers do not just consume content, they actively share and create it through engagement and collaboration.

The key lesson for non-sporting brands is that community needs to be purpose-led. Nike further highlights the benefits of creating campaigns that focus on shared emotion as they bring together vast groups of people, who identify with the brand and what it stands for. This phenomenon naturally promotes advocacy, as customers express their connection through content, conversations and referrals. In this way, marketing is designed to encourage people to express brand affiliation within their social circles.

Through Nike’s own success, brands may feel inspired to replicate their strategies exactly. However, they can drive their own success by building communities which reward participation, where customers are contributors and shared emotion can organically grow. Creating communities of advocates which voluntarily generate content reinforces belonging and drives continual referrals and trust over time.

What are some practical ways brands can turn their customers into active participants during a moment like the FIFA World Cup 2026?

During a major cultural moment like the FIFA World Cup, brands can turn their customers into active participants by focusing on expression, not consumption. The lead up to these moments can create pressure to build a standout campaign. However, those at the forefront of this cultural event will have simple and engaging campaigns which allow their customers to share their opinions and relate to one another emotionally in real time. Ultimately, when customers feel they can meaningfully participate in the moment, they will create content that not only resonates with the occasion but also upholds their connection to the brand.

The FIFA World Cup presents an exciting opportunity to amplify customer voices. When brands elevate and share customer-generated content, they can transform their customers into advocates. The World Cup brings a lot of attention, so it is important to drive visibility through advocates and organically reinforce belonging and participation within communities where possible.

When customers feel seen and valued, they are more likely to recommend a brand to friends through their personal networks, and this is especially true when they are tied to significant cultural moments. Over time, participation will drive content creation, which can generate public recognition and advocacy. Because of this, cultural moments like the World Cup are invaluable for driving long-term community growth.

How can brands trigger a customer's desire to publicly align themselves with a brand on social media during an event like the World Cup?

Brands can trigger a customer’s desire to publicly align with them on social media during events like the World Cup by creating a group identity and tapping into shared emotional momentum. The World Cup heightens national identity and team loyalty, so brands need to position themselves within that shift, rather than being an outsider advertising and marketing the event. Strong visual cues and hashtags make it easier for customers to attach their identity to the brand and the cultural moment on social media.

Brands need to ensure they are making their customers feel like they are participating in the moment. For example, resharing and rewarding advocate and customer posts encourages others to do the same because visibility and recognition from a brand gives them social status. 

By linking advocacy to cultural events like the World Cup, customers will feel more inclined to publicly express their love for and align themselves with a brand on social media.

Brands can embed referrals and recommendations into communal World Cup behaviours by creating challenges linked directly to the event and require customers to tag their friends, sparking conversation. Authentic recommendations are optimal for visibility, so resharing and celebrating natural moments between friends can encourage others to align themselves to the brand itself.

How can CMOs shift their KPIs to measure the success of a community- and advocacy-led strategy?

Your best customers are hiding in plain sight. The ones who refer others, who advocate without being asked – they're generating growing returns that never show up in your campaign dashboard. That's what we see across our clients. 

To begin with, it is essential to move towards KPIs grounded in behaviour such as referrals, advocacy, and customer-generated content. Referrals signal trust, advocacy captures long-term brand support and customer-generated content reflects cultural relevance. When employed and measured together, they can determine whether a campaign is creating momentum or just driving visibility.

The brands with the best advocacy-led strategies understand that success is not defined by how many people viewed the post, but by how many people acted on it, by sharing, participating and recommending the brand to others. To measure the success of an advocacy-led strategy, campaigns need to be judged on whether they made an impact on customers, not whether they have simply consumed them.

What shifts can a brand make to drive authentic, customer-led growth during the FIFA World Cup 2026?

Stop trying to reach everyone. Find the customers who are already talking about you and give them a reason to be louder. That's where the ROI is. The most important pivot to make right now is to move from audience-building to advocacy building. 

As customers continue to reject brand-led content and look for authentic and trusted voices, brands need to evolve the way they are connecting with their audience. Instead of talking to their customers, those leading the way are identifying their loyal advocates and creating opportunities for people who align with their brand to share their opinion and actively participate in cultural moments.

Human connection and recommendation hold significant influence, so empowering advocates is a must for sustaining authentic growth. The brands that can do this well will be recommended and referred in group chats and private channels where real influence is obtained. When customers move from watching to participating in marketing, growth can compound organically through sharing and advocacy at scale.