What Are Other Brands Doing For Their FIFA World Cup Activations?

We’re super excited for the World Cup to start this June!

As you all know, there is nothing quite like a global sporting event to bring people together. And honestly, it’s one of those events that gives us all an excuse to leave our homes, gather around screens at local watering holes, and pick a few countries to be a fan of.

And if you’re sick with the disease known as “marketing brain” like most of us writing and reading this newsletter, you see the brand value that this spectacle provides to all of us, as well. From fan fests to official trophy tours, we’re seeing a whole range of exciting FIFA-related activations meant to celebrate and connect brands with fans.

Tl;dr - For this newsletter, we're covering popular FIFA activation types and infrastructure requests, including:

• Cities and Big Brands Throwing Fan Festivals

• Sponsorships and Sampling Booths With Soccer Themes

• Campaign Tours That Lead Up To The Tournament

• Wayfinding Hubs and Infrastructure For Guests

Going Big With City-Wide Fan Festival Infrastructure

Are you playing host for this year's games? Or located in a host city? Are you a community-centric organization hosting an event in a host city?

Fan fests to support the FIFA games have been one of our most popular use cases that both brands and municipalities are activating around.

Clients putting these events on are, at their core, looking for sun & weather coverage that can be custom branded.

More specifically, they’re using: large frame tents & truss structures to accommodate their largest space needs and supplementing with heavy-duty pop-ups for their smaller supporting activities. 

So far the conversations we’ve been a part of focus on things like:

• Skills challenges & soccer-themed games

• Photo opportunities and craft-making stations

• Hospitality solutions such as check-ins, ticket purchases, & bike parking

• Tech vendor coverage around stages

• Sponsorship displays

Questions that seem to matter most for these conversations:

1. Certain municipalities want to see permitting or engineering certifications - are your event solutions certified or can you help us get them stamped?

Answer: Yes and Yes - our pop-ups are wind-certified, frame tents come with structural analysis reports, & our truss can be stamped by the appropriate engineers if required.

2. Can we conveniently mount TVs to your event structures?

Answer: Yes, we make custom mounts for any size digital screen, whether you’re thinking about mounting a TV on a pop-up tent or hosting a large jumbotron wall on a truss structure.

Sponsorships and Sampling With a ⚽ Twist

From alcoholic beverages and sports drinks to energy drinks & pop brands (yeah, we’re from Michigan and we say POP 😉), an activation around an athletic event almost requires that people be sipping on something whether it’s about hydration or indulgence.

As a result, we’re seeing drink brands and their agencies purchase a variety of 10’x10’ & 10’x20’ sampling kits to distribute across multiple locations while the games will be going on.

One of the biggest differences we’re seeing for sampling booths around FIFA activations is the need to incorporate anything soccer related.

So in addition to pop-ups with built-in counters mounted on 3-4 sides, we’re seeing teams ask for interactive infrastructure. For example, we’re building mini soccer nets with ball cutouts in soft goods as a fun target practice challenge within booths. 

Questions that seem to matter most:

1. Can we make or supply the interactive parts of an activation?

Answer: Oftentimes yes. We’re a vertically integrated manufacturing facility so with our equipment, we can make a lot more than what’s available on our website. However, sometimes it’s wildly inefficient for us to do so, but in those cases we can often reach out to partners to source parts while we still create branded materials for it.

2. Can you manage logistics for these kits all needing to be delivered to different locations on different dates if they’re all a part of the same order?

Answer: Yes, our sales reps and client services reps manage these types of requests regularly. We also offer branded portals for brands and agencies who have dispersed field teams that all need to be able to place separate orders - this allows a central shopping hub of pre-approved on-brand infrastructure for teams to access quickly.

Attaching Your Brand to Soccer & Touring Campaigns

For some experiential teams that we’re working with, the marketing activations are slightly more covert, or less centered around celebrating at any specific game. 

For example, one major brand we’re working with is actually sponsoring youth soccer camps in partnership with FIFA, inviting influential athletes to be part of a campaign tour in the lead up to the games. Their goal is to inspire the next generation of soccer stars within local communities. 

The branded assets such as pop-up tents, banners, rigid signage, and media walls are then naturally sprinkled around the soccer fields acting as registration tents, photo opportunity backdrops, and visual boundaries. 

See photos in the post below:

Detail that seems to matter most:

Agencies are telling us that they need to travel with these kits so portability is key. And at the same time they are for high-profile clients, so they can't feel or look "cheap." They're choosing media walls and pop-ups that are considered heavy-duty, custom fitted, and sleek so they present well on behalf of the client.

Branded Wayfinding For Day-Of Transportation and Parties

A few cities and brands putting on activations for the games want to help attendees with directions via wayfinding signage and larger branding opportunities.

We’re talking to county metro services offering shuttles around the games and city-wide festivities and they want highly visible hubs to let people know where to go to catch the ride-share. 

This means custom wrapping city buses/transportation & using infrastructure in strategic locations that’ll catch the eye. One host city's metro is using our event domes for exactly this purpose because those structures are large enough to be highly visible (and look like a soccer ball) as a help center and they come with a range of window solutions and internal footprint space that make servicing a lot of people an efficient process.

Additionally, oversized & mounted flags + umbrellas are being used to help people find specific brands’ viewing party activations. We’re working with several agencies that are using truss structures to effectively build their own pop-up branded sports bars for clients.

To add to these already massive outdoor structures, they’re placing flags on top for added height but also along streets as wayfinders to help people find their specific watch parties.

Questions that seem to matter most:

1. Can you customize your products to work with infrastructure from other vendors? Aka, we’ve already sourced a semi-permanent tent - can we mount your flags to them?

Answer: We often can. There will be instances where it’s not feasible for us to do it with a high degree of certainty in which we’d recommend a better alternative. But we’ll always feed it through to our engineering team to see if we can make a custom solution work.

2. Can we get design help with co-branding opportunities where multiple brands are responsible for a service being offered? 

Answer: Of Course.

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