UP565 The Buy Side: Unilever on FIFA, creator budgets and the new World Cup playbook

Ben Curtis is Global Brand Vice President of Sure/Rexona at Unilever, and is just back the US where he ran the brand's first-ever Men's World Cup as a FIFA official partner. He came on Unofficial Partner before the tournament to talk about what he was walking into; this is the debrief — what worked, what didn't, and what a global personal-care brand actually gets for the money, from the armpit branding on the fourth official's board (a Rexona first at a World Cup) to the New York activation built around creators rather than TV spots.Joining him is Mayowa Quadri, head of brand at the football-and-culture publisher Versus, a creator and consultant who worked on Rexona's campaign from the other side of the table. What does a global brand actually get for a World Cup sponsorship? Ben breaks down how Rexona measured return in near-real time — from brand mentions, to creator content earning 10x that, to cultural moments running into the millions of engagements — and where the brand ranked against Adidas and Coca-Cola.Was the fourth-official armpit branding a gimmick or a strategy? The Rexona sign held up at every substitution was a World Cup first. Ben argues it's a durable strategic position rather than a one-off joke; Richard presses on whether the idea has legs beyond its novelty.How much of the marketing budget now goes to creators rather than TV? Ben's answer is the headline number: a decisive swing away from traditional advertising in the space of a single World Cup cycle.Has the way we consume a World Cup fundamentally changed? Mayowa on clip culture, the Americanisation of the tournament, and a younger audience watching through creators and streamers rather than buying broadcast packages — and why broadcasters are now behaving like creators themselves.What makes a brand-creator relationship work, and when does it fail? Both sides on the shift from prescriptive deliverables to briefing intent, the trust a brand has to extend, and the fast route to losing an audience by looking like you've sold out.Is football still a sport, or is it now a culture? Mayowa's case that the footballer is a human being with interests beyond the 90 minutes — and how brands are buying into fashion, music and identity rather than match results.What is the media agency actually for now? How Unilever identifies communities and maps creators against them, the rise of nano-creators as word-of-mouth amplifiers, and why the direct brand-to-creator connection still matters.Can the controversies around FIFA stay 'priced in'? With Infantino in the headlines, whether the noise around the governing body touches the sponsors who fund it — and Mayowa's argument that player power, not sponsor pressure, is the variable that could actually move things.Unofficial Partner is the leading podcast for the business of sport. A mix of entertaining and thought provoking conversations with a who's who of the global industry. To join our community of listeners, sign up to the weekly UP Newsletter and follow us on Twitter and TikTok at @UnofficialPartnerWe publish two podcasts each week, on Tuesday and Friday. These are deep conversations with smart people from inside and outside sport. Our entire back catalogue of 500 sports business conversations are available free of charge here. Each pod is available by searching for ‘Unofficial Partner’ on Apple, Spotify and every podcast app. If you’re interested in collaborating with Unofficial Partner to create one-off podcasts or series and live events, you can reach us via the website.