Performance Sponsorship Marketing for the FIFA World Cup 2022

A warm Sunday evening, Dec 18th, in the Lusail Stadium of Qatar. Lionel Messi, arguably the world’s greatest footballer of all time, enters the locker room holding the World Cup Trophy in one hand. In the other? His fifth consecutive trophy for Budweiser Player of the Match. This moment didn’t only complete Messi’s journey to the biggest title of his life but also our very own pursuit of success for FIFA’s Sponsors and their digital activations.

Summary

Successful, customized sponsor campaign delivery

Efficient use of FIFA’s countless digital fan touchpoints

Full control over progress at all times

Successful, customized sponsor campaign delivery

Efficient use of FIFA’s countless digital fan touchpoints

Full control over progress at all times

Challenge

In the run up to the FIFA World Cup 2022 many sponsors set extremely ambitious objectives for their own projects, knowing that this would be the world’s biggest communication event of all times. For the second time in a row, FIFA tasked RAWR with the development of a dedicated performance marketing approach.

Results

Over 30 campaigns for 16 sponsors.

30

Over 2.5 Billion sponsor campaign impressions, 800M branded content video views and 300M branded content interactions for sponsorship campaigns.

2.5B

The full NFL Super Bowl week in 2022 reached 1.8B impressions and 618M video views across all NFL social media, sponsored and non-sponsored content combined. We delivered a full Super Bowl Week’s organic value for FIFA’s Sponsors alone.

Solution 1

Starting from finalized or co-developed sponsor strategies, we translated and tailored their objectives. The outcome we strove for every time was a branded campaign concept with a customized mix of KPIs, serving each of the KPIs with different sub campaigns and holistic, overarching storytelling.

Solution 2

With a mix of current data and 2018 reports we took performance statistics and broke them down to the unit. In close conversations with the sponsors, we then prioritised & customized campaign KPIs. This allowed us not only to tailor assets for the targeted outcome on FIFA channels but more so, to plan publishing-scenarios across all channels. The highly targeted app download/conversion campaign was joined by a brand value focussed long form storytelling piece on FIFA+ and a fun, gamified quiz experience for FIFA World Cup experts, just to be completed by a branded series of match footage highlights on social media only minutes after they happened.

Solution 3

Our actions were based on near-live measurement systems flowing into performance dashboards. They gave us a clear direction of metrics per asset, and actions to take. After the first days of the group stage, we were able to see which campaigns would need targeted support, which were over performing and which platforms would help us most to reach the KPIs.