Scroll Stoppers: World Cup Special

0:03Henry Breckenridge:Hello and welcome along to Scroll Stoppers, a new series from the Leaders Worth Knowing team on how to make an impact with digital content. I'm Henry Breckenridge, I lead digital content here at Leaders and I'll be co-hosting this series alongside Ben Weisfeld, the founder and CEO of Tentos. Many of you will already be familiar with Tentos. The agency focuses on helping brands, rights holders and elite athletes build meaningful connections with fans through digital content and storytelling. They develop and deliver campaigns, manage social and content strategies and activate partnerships around some of the biggest moments in sports.

0:38Henry Breckenridge:With clients including Harry Kane, Alessia Russo, Bruno Fernandes, Visa and FIFA, Tentos operate at the intersection of creativity, culture and performance to bring sport to life for modern audiences. Together with Ben, we'll be exploring how digital storytelling is evolving around some of the biggest moments in global sport and what brands, rights holders and broadcasters can do to stand out in an increasingly crowded and competitive social landscape. And we're starting with a bang. The first episode is a pre-World Cup special where we'll lift the lid on what it takes to deliver on social at the biggest tournament in world sport and arguably the most social media driven sporting event to date.

1:19Henry Breckenridge:Ben joins me to discuss how Tentos is working with and advising talents, brands and rights holders, from campaigns that are already locked and loaded to the reality of planned reactive content, where success depends on how quickly you can respond to the moments you simply can't predict. Ben Ella German, social media director at Tentos, joins to take us inside the content operation itself. From building teams, workflows and approval processes to ensuring everything is set up to perform when the tournament begins. She also shares how the best performing content often comes from unexpected, unscripted moments, whether that's a fan story, a behind the scenes interaction or something as simple as an iPhone capture that cuts through in the moment.

2:00Henry Breckenridge:First up, it's me in conversation with Tento's founder and CEO, Ben Weisfeld. Enjoy. Okay, delighted to be joined by my co-host, Ben Weisfeld. Ben, welcome to the Leaded Studios. How are we doing? Very well, thank you. How are you? Very well, indeed. Now, Ben, we have got a mini-series as trailed, and this episode is a pre-World Cup special, and you're going to be telling us all about the work you're doing with the World Cup just around the corner. But I'm conscious before we dig into that, that some of our listeners won't know an awful lot about Tento's. So this is a chance to hear from the horse's mouth.

2:37Henry Breckenridge:So how would you explain a little bit about what Tento's does to people that don't have much knowledge of the business?

2:44Ben Weisfeld:So we are a sports marketing agency and very much at our heart is all around creating connections, predominantly with fans. So we work with sort of three main areas of that sports marketing space. We work with elite global sporting talent. We work with global brands and we work with rights holders in sort of three different ways. And across each of those different pillars, when the company started, we were very much focused as a talent agency, I would say. And we would look after the likes of Trent Alexander-Arnold, the likes of Phil Foden, Harry Kane, etc. That's evolved over the years. And the introduction probably, what, five years ago or so into our business was brands.

3:26Ben Weisfeld:So brands come to us when they're saying we need to activate a sponsorship or we've signed this player or we've just sponsored the Champions League or what does that look like? So we do a lot of work on that side. And then just probably pre-Catar World Cup, I would say, we started to do a lot more work with rights holders, which obviously has been a different beast altogether to the work that we've done on the talent side of things. But with the rights holders, a lot of the time we're managing social channels. we're creating content every day we're publishing we're posting we're commenting we're doing all the things that you would imagine so it's a very broad spectrum of of work that we do um got offices in london dubai and new york um so yeah it's it's been a fun old 10 years or so very good and talking

4:13Henry Breckenridge:of different beasts all together the world cup you know three host countries 16 different host cities 48 teams 104 matches I mean how's mood and the 10 toes camp ahead of this one I think it's

4:26Ben Weisfeld:really exciting I think we're very very well and truly in prepare mode and I think the success that we've had at previous tournaments and I think what any other agency us included getting that bit right is really really important so I think there is a lot of heads down getting cracking to make sure that we deliver on the biggest stage of all i think there's been a lot of work done not only in the uk but in the us as well in sort of very different ways i think that uk is a lot more focused around our rights holders support and doing a lot of work with the likes of fifa and that type of stuff um which is good and then there's a lot of brand work that's going live and campaigns that are getting announced so it's exciting there's lots of um lots of fun moments but lots of concentrated faces at the same time and let's just delve into some of the specifics there what are you who are you specifically working with i know you mentioned fifa there

5:19Henry Breckenridge:could you tell us a little bit more about that partnership and maybe some of the other entities

5:22Ben Weisfeld:you're working with before the world cup so that sort of across each of those three different pillars i explained the sort of different clients that we're working so we've worked with harry kane since the basically the foundation of the agency so obviously harry's going to be leading the team out hopefully uh to well with success um uh from a talent side there's the likes of bruno fernandez who we've had a long-standing relationship with so there's lots of social work that gets prepared content that's getting made partnerships that are being finalized captured shot published brand commercial partnerships so that side of things um which is very exciting then we've got from a brand side has been a big push of my own i've barely been in the country for for the last few months but our us focus has been big so we've been very sort of focused on how we're activating with the likes of Ferrero so we did a big partnership with them for Tom Brady which is their big global wide campaign across multiple markets which is all yummy things such as Nutella, Kinder, Tic Tac and Butterfinger and all those sorts of fun things so that's been really really exciting and that's sort of in full flow we worked with the partners at Anomaly on Visa Global World Cup campaign so that's going live probably by the time this drops that will be live so there's some great names in that um and and we're excited the world for the world to see that and then on the right holder side of things there's fifa and we're doing a lot of work with them sort of across the board um managing channels getting stuff ready across the board from foundation stuff to sort of main stuff and everything in between um and then the fa as well we're doing a lot of work with those guys um as they head head on to the us so yeah in each different area there is different tasks all quite different but all similar if that makes it it's

7:11Henry Breckenridge:very much in the same world um so yeah it's a busy office plenty going on there as you mentioned and i know you said that you have barely been in the uk and i think i'm right in saying that you were at our business of soccer conference back in march and don garber was one of the speakers mls commissioner and he said that um you know this world cup is going to shock the world and And the 1994 edition in the United States, the MLS was born out of that. And, you know, the impact that this World Cup can have is, you know, massive and unprecedented, really. So I'm just keen to get your sense before we get into the meat of the conversation on what, I guess, the potential you think this World Cup can have and your kind of overriding feeling going into it.

7:57Ben Weisfeld:The potential is enormous. it is it is enormous it is he's completely right in loads of aspects i think and this does it's the american meets the cultural blooming epicenter of of sport is the biggest it is the best it is when everyone sort of shows up on their best thing i think the combination of factors that probably have not existed prior in america exist right now so yes the 94 world cup's great but that's 30 years ago give us hope there is a lot that's happening therefore in the mls in the sort of more sort of every weekend type soccerness in america so you've got fans that the women's game in america has exploded simultaneously and it has been doing for years and years so i think you've got that concentration as well which i think is really interesting but then you've also got fans of soccer in the u.s who love the premier league the bundesliga they're up in the morning watching it or they're ducking out of work to go and watch champions league at 3 p.m whatever it may be so i think those combination of factors means there's lots of different audiences now that they didn't have in the past when this was there and i think that creates a really interesting mix of of what fandom looks like around this particular tournament which i think is cool and i think if they can get the fusing of american culture right and and both the players that are playing there can help with that the teams the federations etc you've got something really pretty magical there if they do it right after the event that and that'll be the big thing like how they play it after everyone's gone home that's really when you know if a world cup's a success or not and i think that'll be the biggest test of all and that's what i would be thinking about if i was figuring out it's like how do you capitalize on it rather than just the however many days the world cup is 30 days during time will tell for sure um i'm interested as well to

10:03Henry Breckenridge:get your perspective up front on um i guess the social media element of this world cup arguably going to be the most social driven world cup there's ever been maybe the biggest sporting event on social ever you know huge potential and gains to be made across the board in terms of the commercials social media growth for various you know platforms entities properties growth basically across the board full stop what do you think you know taking all of that into account what do you think stakeholders involved in this tournament teams broadcasters athletes sponsors should be thinking about in their planning in terms of the content output like right now kind

10:48Ben Weisfeld:of going into it it's so hard the the competition is obviously the biggest it's ever been so the different variables are are so huge i think where when it comes to brands a lot of the work is done they're ready they're packed up it's distributed so the brand work pre is rocked and done how brands then react to things. I think we were just having a conversation before we started about what happened during the workup and talking about, well, then what happens in a future episode of what happened during that workup, whatever it may be. It's the ones that are fast, speedy. Don't let all of that sort of stuff slow them down.

11:26Ben Weisfeld:The, or we need to go and speak to this one and speak to that one to get approval on that. It's the ones that do that. So I'm excited to see like how the, the sort of reactive stuff works when we've done a lot of it is yes, it's in the planning, but there is also an element of planned reactive, which is that nice mix of having enough in the can you know if that type of thing does happen we could act in this way i mean we do that you know every day that we normally with our clients whether that's fa whether that's harry kane whether that's play whoever that may be is that element of it i think the ones that i would say do the unexpected yes obviously you're going to get the headlines that's normal it's the ones that have tapped into something whether that's a player insight whether that's and really done something smart that no one's ever seen i think that's quite interesting because what and ella and i who i know we're going to speak to in a minute we're talking about is the premier league the uk where we are right now is the biggest it is the best league in the world but they do do things differently to the nfl and the nba and all of that type of stuff when we get over there how people can embrace the the new different ways that things are happening exploring new tools new tech new ai that'll be for me where some really

12:46Henry Breckenridge:interesting stuff come soon very good and you've set us up perfectly ben because we are going to speak to your colleague in just a moment ella german who is the social media director at tentos um before we do though set the scene for us how does she deliver for clients and uh what sort of

13:02Ben Weisfeld:questions do you think we should be putting to her uh well i said ella makes sort of the complicated look simple and i think it isn't easy um what what the guys and girls do on that side of things i think as i sort of just touched on that planned reactive and making sure and i think really interesting for people to understand what the process is to get ready for a tournament like this and yes there's tournaments that have been done before but like what learnings she could take from Qatar World Cup or the Women's World Cup into something like this I think that'd be really interesting and I think understanding as I was beginning to touch on it there the types of content that works versus doesn't work figuring out sort of her point of view on that could be quite interesting um and then I think how she's excited for it like what one of the things that getting sort of her excited about seeing the World Cup unfold I'm sure we all are as a fan I think that's the thing we've got to try and remember like we are all fans of this at the end of the day it's not we don't work in a rocket science industry we're all passionate we're fans ella's

14:07Henry Breckenridge:one of the same so let's see what she's got to say let's hear what she's got to say indeed up next it's ella german social media director at tentos okay as trailed joining us in the studio now ben is your colleague it is ella german social media director at tentos ella thank you joining us. First question for you, what's on your pre-tournament to-do list right now? And I guess on a scale of one to ten, how match fit would you say you are for this World Cup?

14:39Ben Weisfeld:In all honesty, there's a lot, a lot that goes on. I think we're ready, but you can never be truly ready for everything a World Cup throws at you. And I think being prepared for that scenario is half of the battle, but there's so many plates we have to spin in the run-up to a world cup so the last couple of weeks has looked like what does the team look like who is that made up of how many content producers do we need how many social media managers do we need how many graphic designers how many video editors are we going to have are they on site are they in the us we're writing shot lists for the content we want to capture you've got to work out how's that coming back to the team who's editing it who's approving it who's publishing it so that whole mission of putting together the rotors putting together the approval processes are really really crucial because if you don't set up in the right way before the tournament that's where it all comes crumbling down so this stuff really isn't the glamorous bit but it's the bit you have to do to get you to the glamorous bit when you're in tournament mode you've got all the processes set up right to be able to do that because just little things like every social media manager will know the tens of thousands of whatsapp chats it feels like you're added to to communicate across the board but you need them to be able to react to those fast moments in the tournament with the

15:51Henry Breckenridge:right people to get what you need could you give us an idea on the number of people you mentioned multiple different i guess job functions there and titles can you give us a an idea of the sort of number you're kind of working to at this point it's hard to say because there's a lot in our

16:07Ben Weisfeld:in our core team we've probably got eight to ten people on a social media management function looking more broadly at designers and editors as well but there's a whole other host of people out there who help make things happen if that's producers on the ground who need to go and capture the content the layers and officers so it's hard to put a number to the whole entity

16:29Henry Breckenridge:of the team that will be working the cost of our cup sure ben i'm going to say that's an eight out

16:33Ben Weisfeld:of ten in terms of match fitness readiness would you agree yeah i think it is it's great that we've done it a lot of times before and i think that that i can't tell you how much that helps i remember in the early days it was not such a well-oiled machine i think it to what it is now we've made the learnings we know what's needed what's not needed where we've made mistakes before where we need to learn from those mistakes um but yeah i think there is i think that sounds like a pretty

17:04Henry Breckenridge:solid yeah i would give it a nine but i'm biased very good ella you are part of a team that are responsible for managing FIFA's social accounts, managing and owning the output. Could you take us inside that process, if you will, you know, what that looks like owning their channels and I guess the sort of overarching strategy for them?

17:26Ben Weisfeld:I think when it comes to running the FIFA channels, there are the must-have deliverables that you need to do when it comes to a World Cup. So, you know, when the matches are taking place, you know, when the group stage ends, you know, and it's going to the round of 16 and preparing for all those eventualities. And it's that work that goes on in the background again that not a lot of people will see. So the polished winner's graphic you see on social after the World Cup final, there's another version of that that never sees the light of day. While you can't make the winner's graphic now pre-tournament, there's a lot of things that you can make.

18:03Ben Weisfeld:So we know that four teams are going to be making their debut at the 2026 World Cup. what can we make for them to to get ahead so there's a lot of work that goes into it in terms of graphic templates video ideas that you can get ahead on to tell those stories in tournament but I think the most interesting part for me and having worked in Qatar is looking beyond the football as well and what are the other stories that that you can tell so for example in Qatar there was an amazing story about two Parisians cycled the whole way from Paris to Qatar and actually interviewing them on their journey why they've done it what they've experienced to get to the tournament is a really strong human interest story that you can tell alongside the World Cup.

18:42Ben Weisfeld:So for me, it's also you have to deliver the football element as that's what people want. But it's also telling the stories of what the World Cup really means to people and how differently that looks, whether it's around America, whether it's in different parts of the world. Those are the stories I think often resonate even more. And if you can be the one that finds them that no one else does, that can help to really winning on social as well. Yeah, I think, and it's really different when it comes to, there's the right holders and there's the talent side of things as well. So, you know, this is the pinnacle of any sort of player's career, how they can go from zero to a million on social.

19:20Ben Weisfeld:It can literally happen overnight. Like we've had an example of it with us, which is like, I used to, we worked for many years with Kasper Schmeichel. casper schmeichel was at that time premier league winner and i think it was the season just before the fa cup and uh 250 000 followers like it was good but i wasn't like it was fine it was a good solid and we went to the world cup he was like i'll be so good i want to try loads of cool stuff i was like all right yeah like whatever you want to do like video diaries in your hotel room after a game like we tried loads of cool stuff and uh then there was a penalty in the last minute versus croatia against luca modric and he saved it and he got a million followers in about 10 seconds i'm not even joking about like within i would say 40 minutes we hit a million followers 750 like there's stuff like that you just can't plan for and and obviously we then posted the cliff and we did the save and the picture of him and his dad and the dad going mad like that still gets shared all the time now those moments you can't plan for for that across anything but you just got to hope that those moments happen and then our job as an agency is to make the most of those moments when they do happen find those stories and milk them as as much as you can yeah absolutely

20:34Henry Breckenridge:i'm thinking as well of the uh women's euros last year and athletes blowing up my mind goes straight to chloe kelly and i think she had 70 000 followers like before the tournament at the end she's got 1.2 million and you know it's unlocking so much value and i guess sometimes you can't plan for those moments but when athletes are leaning into it then you reap the rewards yeah exactly

20:54Ben Weisfeld:and i think our relationship with rights holders brands and talent means you can sort of understand it from each of the three different angles so how you can then if we know what a rights holder is working with and we know what talent's trying to get out like working those two things together if you're running a league or a rights holders channel and then plugging them in with the right There's lots of moments that we can sort of merge a lot of parts of our client base work together. And you can make everyone sort of celebrate that moment. And the upside that comes from that is really, I think, part of our success, I think, as an agency.

21:27Henry Breckenridge:Absolutely. I do want to come back to something you said a moment or so ago about stories. Like, how do you sort of find them and, I guess, be in the right place at the right time to, I guess, maximise on them? Is there like a mindset or approach that you guys adopt at Tento's?

21:43Ben Weisfeld:a little bit I think we learn from what we know has seen success before so we know from working on the FIFA World Cup in Qatar the FIFA Women's World Cup in Australia and the FIFA Club World Cup what we do the analysis to know what really sung on our socials and sometimes in the case of the Club World Cup it was something as similar as the Boca Juniors fans really celebrating on Miami Beach are after that one and we know that those are the kind of off-pitch stories that work really well so we know where to position ourselves especially with the club world cup being in america it was a really good test run for us to know okay where do fans congregate where can we go to find those stories obviously not everyone's on site so i think there's the other element of social listening and being in tune with what's being posted online how to tap into those stories

22:32Henry Breckenridge:and to be able to find them as well i think uh ella you spoke about uh kind of resourcing from of a Tentos perspective just a few moments ago you're uniquely placed to talk about that given that Tentos are working on the tournament and that you've worked at Qatar and other major tournaments in football but in sports more broadly so I'm curious to know if there was an emergency call from a brand that came to Tentos and they asked you we need some advice about how to sort of set up for success we haven't got our ducks in a row uh for one reason or another kind of what sort of things would you be guiding them towards to ensure that they are set up for success when

23:15Ben Weisfeld:the world cup comes to uh begin i think in the case of a brand it's just making sure you'll understand before you put anything to paper before you start putting plans together why you want to show up what you stand for and what you want your message to be I think social media is so saturated nowadays with everyone wants to own a slice of the conversation and we're seeing a lot of content that goes out there that can be quite similar. And a lot of people have hacked it and know what works well as well. So if you try and go into that without knowing what makes you stand out, you end up just blending into that sea of sameness as well.

23:52Ben Weisfeld:So I think it's, and it's something we apply to every account that we, every client we work with on Tentos is almost setting out that strategic lens for a client, that North Star for a talent. Why are they showing up? What do they want to stand for? And making sure every piece of content they do lathers up to that. But I think without that starting point, you're not going to see the success that you might want to see. And I think that applies across the board from rights holders to brands to talent as well. And yeah, it definitely happens when brands sort of come to us. we've had a few i'm like oh we've got this ambassador oh what should we do now what do you mean like you've just spent all that money on getting the ambassador like surely you need to align all of that stuff before but i think it's about yeah it's there are some fundamentals but every single case is obviously very very very different and it's very different dealing with u.s based clients versus uk versus uae based clients they've got a very different need done a lot of mcdonald's out in the uae they have a very different sort of take on what success would be with a short sort of runway to go live versus ferrero's is that they're completely completely different um in the same way that harry kane is completely different to marito jay in the same way that fifa are completely different to rfu so it's just about finding that as you said sort of that north star for each of them and then staying true to it and and only deviate when there's a moment that you know you can't miss basically.

25:18Henry Breckenridge:And talking of that uniqueness and I guess element of differentiation, this World Cup obviously throws in another point of difference with it being three host countries, 16 different host cities. So what kind of immediately springs to mind for you, Ben, when you're thinking about the implications for brands navigating that because this is a unique tournament. We've never seen it done before. So that throws up more challenges and more opportunities as well.

25:44Ben Weisfeld:I think it's a really interesting one. We've been working for the last 18 months to build a product called Tenbeak, which is a sort of audience listening tool. it's enabled us to build custom personas across each of those three markets you've discussed and and understand what fans are really thinking about and how they are getting excited what their trepidations is what they can't miss but they couldn't put where they're going to watch it how they're going to watch it how they're planning on getting to the matches all of that sort of stuff i think from from our perspective it's a very different beast to a qatar which was I mean when we were there what was it 20 minutes you could get from like eight to one game to another I remember I went one day I went to two matches one day that ain't possible in America right I'm not going from Mexico City to New York you know it's it's never going to happen so I think it is a very unique one the relationship that the fans have in each of the different countries that are hosting is incredibly different well then and then break that down even further than by by state is completely different and the relationship between soccer is completely different in each of those different circumstances so i think how well prepared you are from how you're going to speak to and understand what a hispanic fan is going to want a thing versus a new yorker through to someone who lives in la and sort of everything that then sits in between is going to be really really interesting like we've done some really cool studies and reports understanding the difference and there is a stark contrast and i can sort of send that to you guys but there is there's stark differences the ones that can understand and play to that local nuance and that sort of more regional stories i think they're the ones that are really going to start to fly and they're the ones that will have success long after the world cup packs up and goes home because they actually done something that people can you swear on this gave a shit about

27:36Henry Breckenridge:i hope you can we'll let it fly of course of course you mentioned 10 beat there ben and we're going to come on to that in future episodes for sure a new kind of tool and division i think from tento's exciting times ahead for sure and we'll delve into that in a further episode um ella i'm curious to get your take on uh the balance of content volume um and i guess the argument of quality over quantity i think i'm right in saying that quality used to be the thing that was sort of unequivocally prioritized by um teams on social but i think the sort of um argument or cases shifting somewhat now and I think you know content needs to be great sure but it also needs to scale and you need to kind of have enough volume so that your audience proactively seek out your posts and you know are interested before you've even kind of hit the green light on publication so I'm just curious to know what the Tento's kind of view is on that in terms of quality

28:37Ben Weisfeld:versus quantity yeah I think it depends who you are and what the moment is and I think the main message now when it comes to social is you don't need to have something perfectly shot and polished for it to fly like one of my favorite pieces of content ever was when the Lionesses won the Euros for the first time at Wembley which was incredible and at the time their content manager just went and took pictures of their iPhone of the players' immediate reactions and put them on social with no caption. It was literally just like me walking up to you with my camera going, bam, well, you're really happy, putting it on social.