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

0:00Ben Curtis:All I know about the sort of FIFA proposals are just what I've read in the press. And for us, it's a watching brief. So it's just to kind of have a look and to understand. The beautiful game can stay the same and it can evolve and it can grow and it can reach new audiences and reach new heights. And they did all of that without changing a huge amount. So either they can kind of carry on doing that organically or they say, look, we need new investment and new ways to kind of bring this to new audiences. And that's worked well in other sports. and the question is whether that's needed and whether it will have the same impact on football.

0:31Ben Curtis:But for us as an organisation, like I say, we're very happy with how it performed and we'll wait to see what comes for the future and indeed if we go again beyond the extent of our existing deal. When is the existing deal? When does that end? We go to the end of the Women's World Cup next year, which we're really excited about, really looking forward to. Hello, Richard Gillis here. Welcome to another episode of Unofficial Partner. That was Ben Curtis, the global brand vice president of Shaw and Rexona at Unilever. He is fresh back from the States, having run the brand's first ever men's World Cup campaign as a FIFA official partner.

1:11He came on the podcast before the tournament to talk about what he thought he was walking into. And this is the debrief, what worked, what didn't and what a global personal care brand actually gets for their money now. From the armpit branding on the fourth official's time board. is that what you call it time board anyway the thing he holds up with the numbers on it the clock that's the word i was looking for to the new york activation built around creators rather than tv spots joining him is mayoa quadri who is head of brand at the football and culture publisher versus who is himself a creator and a consultant who worked on rex owner's campaign from the other side of the table so we've got both sides of the deal there and we talk about creators a lot there is a number that ben mentioned i asked him about what proportion of the unilever budget goes towards creators now and that shift and the number he quotes is quite an eye opener and it it sort of reframes your idea about what marketing is now around a major event a lot of people listening to this will be working in and around that question about that relationship between big brands and major events and we've got a lot of them coming up over the next few years as ever and with Gianni Infantino dominating the news cycle we end on the question every sponsor is weighing up can the controversies around the FIFA brand stay priced in by the commercial partners who pay for the whole thing or is that separation of FIFA and the World Cup starting to look fragile and again really interesting nuanced conversation with the people who are actually at the centre of this question really interesting very important I think and very timely hope you enjoy it.

2:59I'm going to introduce Maio. Hello, first of all. I've met Ben before and we did a podcast previously with him. So just let's talk about your day job. What do you do all day?

3:09Ben Curtis:So my day to day varies considerably. So between the hours of Lantavive, I am the head of brand at a publisher community hub called Versus, which aims to be the future of football. We look at football through a new lens of how it connects to culture beyond just the game we see on a weekend. And I'm also appreciating that the audience that football had a few years ago is completely different and ever evolving, especially as we saw at this World Cup. So you are someone on podcasts like this one, people come on and talk in abstract about you enormously so they and there's a sort of euphemisms for the fan the new fan the digital for all of these things that the global fan the legacy fan all of these words that we've attached to being a football fan this is it you represent a lot of that don't you this is it and i think what's also interesting from the perspective of both the consumer and the proponent of bringing something to life that's what made the world cup so interesting to me because I had my thoughts going into it I consumed it as a consumer I partook in it as someone bringing things to life and yeah and I tried to rest after a busy few weeks yeah I bet talking of resting up after a few busy weeks Ben let's get into the how was it for you because listeners will remember our conversation we came to Unilever house and did the whole thing in terms of the running but just give it just what was it like yeah I mean yeah well well I was all bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, wasn't I, before going into it, thinking, not knowing the poor fool, not knowing what I was getting into.

4:47Ben Curtis:But yeah, it's been a phenomenal tournament. So listen, for me personally, it's also a little bit changed the way I'm watching football matches, because I'm watching games thinking, that's what I love about the World Cup, you watch two teams playing and you've got no skin in the game, but you're normally rooting for one or other of the teams, right? And I kind of like the underdog always. And then you're thinking, oh, but I've got a bigger business in that market so i really don't want germany to go out because i've got a i've got a sizable chunk of business in the german market it's going to be difficult for me so i've started to kind of watch games with that lens now which is which is shocking but no i mean look we consistently came out among the top or certainly within the top five probably number number three number four in terms of the engagement levels we were reaching as a brand globally and then if you look into some of our top markets where we were really fully focused like brazil argentina england and Germany, and Mexico, and a few others.

5:37Ben Curtis:We were a top one or two brand in terms of engagement. So up there were the likes of Adidas and Coca-Cola. So considering it was our first Men's World Cup, it's really phenomenal, great performance, and we're really happy. We learned a lot. We learned a huge amount as well. And we tried a lot of things, which I think was quite exciting. So we experimented, and there are some things that we'd double down on and do bigger next time, and there are other things that we'd say, look, we probably wouldn't do that again. We're in the midst now of kind of understanding all of that and sort of still seeing the results coming in.

6:07So when you say top five or top one or two in terms of engagement because people who are listening are in the game they want to know how you look at what return looks like and so just give me a sense of what engagement means from Rexona from your position.

6:26Ben Curtis:Yeah so so it's I want to be clear these aren't the only things that we're looking at there's quite a few things that go beyond this that we're looking at but what I was referencing there in terms of what we were keeping an eye on a daily basis and what we were trying to understand almost like asset by asset or execution by execution was how many people are kind of talking about this so what sort of buzz is coming up around this and that's as simple as mentions so that might be like a mention of the brand a hashtag on a piece of social content that might be something that we're saying but typically what we see is say we put something out there that's really a great piece of creative work we're really excited about and it comes from the brand And let's say that will get an engagement then of around 100 ,000, right?

7:06Ben Curtis:So one mention from us, 100 ,000 engagements. Then you've got something that a creator takes with your brand and says, here's something that I've developed authentically for my audience. And I've done it in conjunction with Rexona. And it's kind of well branded, but it's kind of coming from that creator. And that will get 10x, if you like, what the brand is saying. and then you go to the next level which is something that's kind of really hitting into a kind of cultural moment something that people just say look that's amazing that's really insightful so for us for example it might be like the subsports with the with the Rexona branding in the in the armpits which was a first really for us as a brand and it's first for the world club on that sort of scale and that will get then kind of millions and millions of engagements to that because people start talking about that and say that's really interesting piece of marketing for example so we're looking at those things we track these things quite meticulously track these things it isn't there's no perfect measurement system but we're we have our measurement system and we're tracking ourselves and we're tracking what the what the rest of the brands who are sponsors or partners and we're tracking what they're doing as well to see where we're ranking versus those guys i mean i think we all know everyone listening to this will know adidas is a is and coca-cola they they're really the it'll mix my metaphors a bit but they're really the champions league of this kind of thing right so any other brand or marketing person company will be looking at those guys and saying right we want to if we're able to mix it with those guys we know we're doing well so we're tracking what they're doing and we're looking at what we're doing and seeing how we're kind of measuring up measuring up to them and like i say there's loads of things we could do better and loads of things that we learned but for our first men's world cup i think we're pretty happy with the impact that we had so you've got your own league table essentially because obviously post world cup a lot of the market is flooded with research companies have said right okay here is a the visibility ranking and you're right adidas coke all these people they always end up near the top of these things you are doing that yourself and you're monitoring against a competitor set that you think is more realistic is that how it how you frame it because again it's the adidas nike thing is different isn't it there's a sort of different thing going on with those than there is for others yeah i know absolutely look we're measuring ourselves against everybody the league that we want to be in is certainly all of the partners the official partners if you like of the world cup but we're not ignoring or leaving out then those that aren't official partners who might have done stuff around the world cup and got quite a lot of traction i mean the famous one is levi's covering the logo in the stadium it was objectively was a great piece of great piece of content and a really fun way of of handling that so that that's quite a specific situation that kind of gets thrown up in in these kind of tournaments but we wouldn't exclude those things because they're not official part because because really it's what do audiences see out there right so so we're talking to everybody we're wanting to make sure we're having an impact against everybody so we give ourselves kind of almost like the universe is is everybody and yeah we're sitting quite well versus that let's say the brands that are doing the best both in terms of kind of the buzz that they are generating and then the engagement that's coming from that buzz as well so that the linesman or the tire you know the the sign the Rexona sign that went up fourth official is what I'm the word the term I'm now scrambling for so the fourth official that is again a really it's like holding up an advertising billboard that there is a there is a simplicity to that and the brand is unavoidable in that situation in the same way as power aid and the the much discussed hydration breaks those are sort of new is that the first time that they've sold i know the hydration breaks is is new but the boards itself because i always associate that with a watch company hublo or one of those yeah yeah so normally i think hublo have a lot of them actually in in different tournaments i think that space has been has been sold before as a ride what they've never sold before this i think when i came onto the pod last time i wasn't able to you were yeah i was excited you were blushing prettily you're excited sort of not to reveal too much and then afterwards we hit a few bumps in the road afterwards actually so I was thinking I'm gonna I'm gonna end up with egg on my face but we managed to get it over the line actually but that's the thing that hadn't been done before in in the World Cup with FIFA was to get the armpit branding and it's yeah if I may just really quickly I think it's the big idea for me was to sponsor the fourth official was to say look there here's somebody in the game who is no one supports the fourth official do they they're either giving too much time or too little time they've got to hold up that board which is very heavy by the way i've got new newfound respect for them holding up that board they've got to keep the two things you sometimes see them fiddling about you think how hard can it be to put numbers in actually i had to go with the official board it's not as easy as you think it might be on tv anyway they're like the sort of the supply teacher of the whole thing aren't they there's a they're they're around the they're around the place i've got a question about what proportion that takes of your return because it's a really nice asset which you've bought and there's a clean position for the brand and putting that into the league tables and what sort of percentages that takes up of the sort of engagement that you talked about.

12:19Ben Curtis:Yeah, good question. I mean, that's something that we're still working through in terms of how do we try to isolate that in particular. When we were doing the deal, the way we sold it internally here, like bearing in mind we'd already paid quite a lot as Unilever, as Personal Care to be a sponsor of the World Cup, of the Men's World Cup 2026. Is that quite a lot? Yeah. It's quite a lot. It's quite a lot. Is there an official number for it? Yeah, no, there isn't. But anyone listening will know this is one of the benefits of working on a big brand and a big organisation is that we can do that. But it is expensive.

12:55Ben Curtis:And of course, everything then is about return on investment. So everything's looking at how do you really make this a really efficient spend? you pay the money to be part of it and then but that's just the beginning you've then got to activate that and you've got to kind of bring that to life and when the when this became available on the one hand you could look at it and just say look that's just another cost it's just we're just adding another cost onto this you know we've got led boards in the stadium do we need this as well and what we were saying was look this is this let's just quick quickly check the media value of this and again we can calculate based on the number of people that will watch the games around the world you can put a kind of minute how often per game that will be shown and you can put a media value to that and that's your return on investment is based on effectively the same calculation you'd make on an outdoor poster which is these calculations have been refined over 100 years or whatever so so you get a reasonably strong kind of return on investment calculation there but for us we were like that's just that that's so that's just the basic how do we make this authentic how do we make this really make sense how do we kind of push it a step further every brand always needs to keep reminding people of that they exist that they're there because nobody cares about antiperspirants and rexona as much as me and my team do and we have to keep reminding ourselves of that but so you may well be the number one brand and very well known in all of the markets but actually reminding people of the brand is not a bad thing however that only takes you so far if you can sort of move how people really feel about the brand in that moment then that's even better so trying to kind of come back and say so what is it about this is this pressure moment everybody's going to be looking at it's too much time or there's too little time or this is the sub of the substitution of the game finally he's bringing sacca on he's been on the bench all right why hasn't he brought he's bringing sacca on and here it is it's being held up in that moment and having the brand there in that kind of pressure moment for the fourth official was was just really our way of trying to yeah trying to really put the put the brand because it's not a natural fit necessarily at the game for for rexone it's not like a coke or a Lay's crisps or something like that I think I guess and my it's a question for both of you actually it's a joke isn't it it's a really nice joke being told and the question I guess is the sustainability of that position because actually right the it's is it something that you think I'm sure FIFA will carry on selling it but there's a question about oh that's nice it's Rexona and Unilever turning up with a sense of humor and that was my response to it I thought okay there's a nice bit of color there and there's a question about its sustainability as a media buy I guess and whether or not you think about that okay this is our place now we've it's hit a lot a big number and we're going to go again or you think actually no that's we've done that joke yeah for me I mean I hear what you're saying but for me I took I see it much more as a as actually a strategic play we're in the game now and this is how we're in the game we our role has typically been you want to you don't want to sweat and you want to smell good when you're playing football you probably don't want to smell bad but sweating is part of it right it's going to happen so having a natural fit for the brand and the product in this point of saying look we're all about the pressure moments when you're when when the pressure really hits and you're starting to get hot under the collar and you're worried about sweating or whatever we're there we've got you and this is just a great great reminder of that I don't think it's the only thing we'll ever do and I'm not sure if we'll do it forever but I didn't ever see it as a kind of one-off I saw it more as a kind of this is a great way for Rexona to be relevant and in the game in an authentic way in in that moment and I think because it was a the first time it's been done in football it was it was surprising it was surprising and it was kind of yeah it was kind of exciting I think it was a nice use of a once again like a touch print I think ultimately when you look at the portfolio of what Rexona brought to the World Cup.

16:40Ben Curtis:You had talent in terms of playing talent, which is also great because there's an association there. But to have another point that isn't what everyone else uses already makes you look different in market. And I think to what you mentioned, Ben, for that to be the first appearance at a World Cup with a Women's World Cup coming next year and to have like, again, it's one of those floaty words, but actually build real cultural cachet with audience is super, super important. And I think often there are a lot of brands that are synonymous with football, but they're only synonymous because we've seen them there so many times.

17:13Ben Curtis:There's not like a real feeling towards them. So to do something that maybe does feel like a stunt, but has meaning and purpose and is the baseline for you reoccurring in the space. It's just like a really smart thing to do. Like, again, if you think about the product, one of the, it won't let you down. Great tagline, pressure. There's like natural synergies to football. so a lot of the time you just have to one be present but to actually build real connections to the audience and i think across this conversation we'll speak about how those connections were made across content or creators yeah let's talk about that then in terms of the how we're consuming the world cup so let's just push on that for a minute because again this was it doesn't matter how i consumed it but it was almost entirely by clips so because of the time differences and because I'm quite lazy I'm it was essentially a sort of the first time really I'd seen a world cup that was really clip based I was just watching everything on highlights apart from the England games and then also you then get to the people who are bringing the story to me and that includes people like you in terms of whether it's creators or it's official mainstream media outlets that are doing things on YouTube or doing stuff on TikTok or whatever talk to me about this what do you think because there's a question about has anything changed and that feels like something that we could get into and you're right in the middle of this question and there's a lot of people that come on this podcast and say yeah it's great all of this distribution stuff but they ain't paying the the rights and that the money that comes from television still sustains everything and then we're gonna get into that question but let's just hold off on that but Just talk to me about the question about how we consume it and what it looked like from your position, because you're right in the middle of it.

19:02Ben Curtis:This is a great question. I mean, without kind of like going like too much into the theology and everything, I think if we look at trends and what's happened, we've gone from a world where everything was television and newspaper. Everything is now social, like things naturally change. And I think the big question mark about this World Cup before we even got to America was, one this is probably going to be the most heavily commercialized world cup ever because it's the land of commercialization yeah but two because we've seen so many shifts in social and culture what effect is that going to have and i think the third one that is a quiet undertone is how will the miracleization of sport show itself in a sport that's kind of been restraining itself from that for so long it's a great question i mean ultimately if you look at american sports they're used to click culture they're used to taking the product and creating in different ways so you can then broadcast it football hasn't traditionally been there because the purity of football is you go and watch it in the uk you have 3pm blackouts the whole thing is you watch the whole spectacle but as you mentioned richard we can't watch the games like sociable times because the times are in difference so i think what this world cup represented was a chance for the miracleization of sport and that clip culture to all come to life and i think the result of it was well how do we meet the market where the market is yeah if you look at majority of young demographics watching the game now they're getting younger they're consuming a different way they're not all purchasing sports packages they're watching games through their favorite influencers they're watching streamers they're watching cut down shows they're watching all of these new proponents that are getting deals on netflix they're not traditionally going to the broadcaster yeah and And funny enough, because of the change in the space, the broadcasters and media buyers are acting like those other individuals.

20:51Ben Curtis:The shift we've seen, if you're looking at any sort of broadcaster at any level now, they're thinking, how do we act like a creator? How do we create something that enables us to get that beat or get that cut down product? So I think that's what the big shift was in terms of the consumption and how it was all brought to life. And I think it was about everyone figuring out almost like the race to me. And how do we make sure we find the sweet spot that we can engage in and benefit from it? Yeah. Ben, you're I mean, the thread of who's going to pay quite often ends at Unilever. People quite often say, oh, the big brands will write a massive check and that will pay for all the clip economy because that's where the bank is.

21:32if the media rights market is going to decline, then we're going to run back to sponsors and say, yeah, look at you, you're distributed across all of these varied channels. Brilliant for you. As long as you get a marketing return, here's the check. You look at that emerging story. What do you think?

21:51Ben Curtis:Yeah, I mean, for us, I think we're still in the evaluation phase of what we've done and how well that's performed for us as we went through the tournament. As I said at the beginning, we're very happy, initially very happy with what we've got so far, but we're definitely in the evaluation phase. And I read in the press, this has been a hugely successful World Cup as far as FIFA is concerned in terms of revenue as well. So it's making money, it's returning well for sponsors and brands that are part of it. And as I say, probably the first World Cup for me where I've kind of watched it with a slightly different mindset, almost with a business mindset.

22:31Ben Curtis:But if I try and take myself out of that, I think it was an enjoyable World Cup. I thought having the expanded World Cup with more teams in there worked well. And nobody was... There were a few hide-ins handed out. I realise I was about to say, nobody was kind of on the end of a really big hide-in. There were a few, but it wasn't kind of like crazy. And it didn't feel like, why are we doing this? Players going out, getting injured against, playing games they don't need to play it wasn't like cricket and rugby where the globalization comes with this risk does it of the hiding risk yeah so for every hiding there was a romantic story of a giant killing or an almost giant killing or an individual player or group of players that kind of came through and held their own against the the best of the best you know the goats etc so I was kind of very much carried away with the romance of the whole thing and maybe I'm a bit naive in that sense so look i'd obviously caution i'd be very cautious if there was a kind of look there's a decline in revenue from a rights perspective in terms of media rights broadcast rights and that's that shortfall has to be made up for by brands and i think it's kind of like well look where's the where's the value there because i think the role that sponsors and brands play is different to the role that kind of the broadcasters play in terms of bringing the game to the to the audiences and in fact bringing the clips there's no reason why that that can't all be kind of those things can't all be kind of brought together in in such a way as well and i think fifa's been quite thorough in their guardrails and then policing of those guardrails in with regards to rights in terms of what can you show during the game or or initially post the game etc so creators are very they work very hard to try to make engaging content that's maybe at the game or just before the game or just after the game but not infringing the rights that that fifa of FIFA have set out.

24:18Ben Curtis:So I'm not too worried about that. I don't see an impending kind of big issue there. I think there's like an interesting development here as well, because I think when you speak about the media right holder and the role of the brand, I think there's developing roles for both. And I think as football continues to grow into, I can't really say that football is the biggest cultural landscape that exists in the world. If you want to connect to any audience, you go through football because now the football fan isn't the stereotypical fan you imagine way back in the terraces. A football fan could be someone that's in love with fashion.

24:59Ben Curtis:A football fan could be someone that's in love with a specific footballer. It's the greatest canvas. And I think the role of brands is to tell stories that connect to their brands, whereas the media holder is still bringing this beautiful game to the masses to see so for instance when I think about FIFA and this World Cup there was a lot that was said beforehand but adding more teams worked the hydration break despite the fact that it was heavily criticized added a sense of jeopardy which is the Americanization of sport that typically happens in their sport that they've we're seeing over there and also the slight rule change of once we get to knockout stages we're going to have seeded teams still gave us the best semi-final and final that we could have hoped for because first second third and fourth still ended up being first and second now people can have their views on how the quality of the football in the final was and i certainly do myself but we got to see the top four teams right so at every level i feel like we had products that worked for each entity's natural point within it and I think it's just about everyone understanding well what do I want from this and how do I make sure I get the best out of this to the point that you mentioned Ben with creators I can speak about my own experience from being a creator working with creators that are out there and having people around me that were creators the unique thing about creators is they know their audiences very well so when you're working with a brand I think the sweet spot is the brand understanding and giving you leverage to speak to your audience in your authentic voice but also the creator knowing that well how do I integrate the brand the best way and once you get that marriage right the brand's basically getting an additional platform to speak directly to the customer because if we break it down Rexona what are Rexona selling anti-post print but from my own engagement it wasn't about selling antiperspirant it was about building the connection to football because i've got a connection to football i've got a credible connection how do we leverage that to make sure that rexona can be seen in that way and if further down the line because of that people on the bad products fantastic but the whole essence isn't we're going to go to the world cup and sell as many units as possible because the second you try to do that you're fighting a losing battle well it's the obvious question for you i guess which is the whether your audience values or wants Rexona in your bit of the conversation and there's a sort of official and unofficial route into the audience and that's always in play and it's been in play since newspapers took advertising so it's not a new dynamic exactly but there's a question of because the relationship that you have with your audience is intimate and personal and people have chosen to sort of engage with you and you're giving them something they like and enjoy you must think quite hard about actually how do I not jeopardize that I'm just interested in how you think about that question a hundred percent and I think that is why who you work with is super important there are and there's loads of examples across the world cup where content that was created was very much ad content which is whether you're here or there about it that's what it is There's a lot of content that was creators specific niche or their storytelling.

28:27Ben Curtis:And the brand was allowed to play a part in that. And I think that sweet spot is the perfect sweet spot because no one wants to feel like they're being sold to. However, people do like being informed. And I think for the brand wants to appear authentically to certain verticals of consumer. So for instance, I did a post at the World Cup final, which was a deliverable that I said I'll do. It looked exactly like any other piece I would do in terms of a carousel and just recapping a moment and how grateful I was. Was there certain touch points and nuggets that linked to Rexona? Yes. Were people able to pick up on that?

29:06Ben Curtis:Yes. Did it feel like an advertisement, Rexona, 72 hours, it won't let you down? No. and that's the beauty of top-tier content creation you are bringing the brand into your world seamlessly that could organically sit within that space that's been a lot of trust from the brands there as well because ultimately the brand are putting money towards something and I think once you get those marriages right you get culture cachet and building as opposed to an advertisement because if brands wanted to pay for advertisements to what you said they could you could put Instagram grab ads up you could put newspapers television ads but brands don't want that anymore they want connection they want the fact that because you can speak to this audience and this audience is engaged in football culture we want to speak to them too but we are trusting your delivery to do it because we can admit that you probably can do that a little bit better than we can to that audience and that is what i liked about a lot of the approaches i saw at the world cup for this is probably the biggest example of brands shifting from a advertising model to a content creator influence model and not the influence model of before where you get someone to just hold a product but how do you actually use your influence your gained capital with an audience okay take me inside this part because this is really interesting because we're getting to the nub of a nice question which is that how does it work so do you go to unilever and say i've got a good idea for the final or do Unilever come to you and say I've got a good idea for the final just take me inside that process and there's a risk reward question always with these things about and it's very nuanced Ben from your point of view it could you could choose a creator that either does not enough and you don't get any value or you actually could go the other way and go too far try to over please Unilever because it's a massive global brand and you like value the work and they go too far and it becomes that doesn't work either that's a great question i guess there's two perspectives there because you've got client exactly that so let's just run it through so from my perspective i think my user case here is quite unique because i had done work with unilever before in terms of my versus remit so sometime last year we worked on a project where i sat down with five footballers and it was telling their stories and essentially unilever were a part on it for that so i had built a connection with the brand through my own storytelling so they therefore had an understanding of what I'd do and how I could add value.

31:34Ben Curtis:Sometimes I still went out and said to them these are the pieces of content I would like to do and I think to the point we mentioned before because it's a world cup because there's certain image rights because there's certain things that you can and can't do you have to make your content work within a certain constraint. Now that is where the challenge is for the creator because you're not just going out and doing what you normally do you're having to make it work in a very smart way which is a challenge I'll be honest it is a very difficult challenge it's not just going out and whipping out your phone it's about curating something that speaks specifically to what you want it to speak to but maybe in a different way so from my own experience that relationship with Unilever was there I still came up with concepts the concept then had to be approved and then it was about okay how do I deliver this in the best way possible so my audience are appreciative of the content but it also meets the brand deliverables as well.

32:25Ben what do you think about that question that the risk no I

32:29Ben Curtis:look indeed it's a great question and I mean I think the the clues now in the name creators so so a creator actually creators create brands and they're they've already created to become a creator they've already created an audience for themselves and typically that's doing something either really informative or entertaining or both and they're the fastest way for them to lose followers is to do something where it just looks like they're sort of selling out and just doing something for the oh hey here i am at the world cup and i've been brought here by a brand that i've got absolutely no kind of connection to and it's hard for my you as my audience to see why i would have a connection to this brand and can think of examples of that happening and i think it's just people will just switch off and say oh great you're good for you whereas actually when it's something that that where it makes sense you can make a connection indeed we'll we'll have a contract and there'll deliverables in that contract but we've shifted from the different deliverables being really very specific and you have to get these messages in i think we now talk and say look here's our brand this is what we're all about this is what we're trying to say this is what we'd love your audience to think and feel about our brand as a result of whatever you do this is what we would love that to happen that's again coming from someone who lives and breathes and wakes last thing i think about first thing i think about in the morning is rexona and how to grow my sales i'm one of probably about 10 people in the world that live that way and so getting that across is fine for me but actually then when you give it to a creator they'll say okay for my audience and for me this is how i'm going to bring that to life and there's a lot of trust there that you put across and as you said in the beginning sometimes that works and sometimes sometimes it works really well and sometimes it works less well very rarely nowadays does it not work at all and i think that's when it's that that's what's changed a lot in the last few years it's kind of it's really changed a lot and i think that audiences out there are wise to it as well and they understand yeah this is what this is what's paying for the i like this person i like the content they're creating i've chosen to follow them which is a kind of a big deal right and i understand that in order for them to do the stuff that they do they need to get income and that income is often coming from brands and from other sponsors and that kind of thing but the message coming across is a kind of is an authentic message and i can take it or leave it if you like that i just wanted to ask you a Because you're right, it does feel like it and it has shifted.

34:43So the five years ago, even at the last World Cup, the person in your seat would have been looking at a media landscape and said, OK, well, here are the rights that we've paid. Here is a media activation budget, which would be predominantly television and other forms of more traditional advertising. and now that's changed just give me a sense of how much that so in terms of the activation budget how much is going towards the creator economy however what you want to define it and has how

35:12Ben Curtis:has that shifted yeah much more than half it's kind of it's a lot more than half and it's going in in some cases it might be really the majority like 70 80 percent of the budget and from our sense of course we had big assets for traditional media so we had a big tv ad with a very expensive music track don't let me down the the beatles track we had that the ad was featuring vinicius junior christian pulisic we had cole palmer and then that was a bit of fun wasn't it because we aired the ad just after the england squad was announced and cole was a partner of ours and we had him in the ad which was tricky but full of a-list footballing talent and that was our big tv commercial and of course we bought in markets that that were operating the world cup we're buying spots and with that but it was last world cup that would have been everything was kind of based around that that's and then things would kind of fall out of there and this time it was like yeah we got that that's fine we've ticked that box but actually the where we're spending most of our time is around our content creators mapping out who we want to work with who are the authentic voices that can help us and it's my always saying look football's gone doesn't live solely within the sport now it's crossing into culture it's crossing into fashion into music and living in culture beyond that so how do we get in there as well what's our authentic voice there and our relevance there and we created a well it was kind of a content creation hub in manhattan the new york sweat club we called it and we had a cage football in there so we had 3v3 cage football there and we had creators coming from all over the world but we also say again sorry they're gonna sweat in there we're sweating there yeah it was i mean we were like come on there's it was rexona everywhere and we had a very high air conditioning but yeah it was hot it was like 40 degrees outside and it was one of the few places in manhattan where you can actually get a game of football so so yeah it was it was really good i've got another question sorry i've got another question that sort of i want both of your view on because again you're on either side so it's quite a nice dynamic so you talk there about a shift and that's a big number so over 50 and sometimes 70 80 going towards creators again what's the role of the media agency here because when you're looking at that world um i mean i remember talking to goat the agency 10 years ago and they would be they were sort of positioning themselves as a creator media agency that would handle that job of identifying the myos of this world and trying to work out where the return would be and then the client would buy that and that was seen as a sort of future of the media agency and obviously they got bought by wpp i don't want to talk about goat But there's just a way of framing that role between the head of marketing for Unilever and a creator at the other end, how you find them and how you do the job of working out where to allocate that money.

38:01Ben Curtis:Yeah, so look, Mayo can also give from his point of view, but we of course work with the media agencies. So we have a media agency partner, but we also work with specialist content creator agencies as well. So that have a roster of talent that they represent. And we will typically, with our media agency, we will identify the communities of people that we want to talk to. And again, when I started out, that was kind of done on socioeconomic demographics, which was a very blunt instrument. And now it's done on kind of attitude towards needs in moments. You could be a, the same person actually could be in many different communities, but you give them, you serve them a message that's relevant to their, to how they, what they're feeling in that moment.

38:43Ben Curtis:So it's far more sophisticated now than, than it's ever been before and I'm getting more and more so. And that then starts to, that then starts to just naturally percolate up who are the important creators to those communities. You put those people together, then you say, right, this, these are the creators that this community is following and engaging with. And so they're naturally so right, well, is there, could we work with them for Rexona? Would they, would that work would that make sense and there are some that kind of just come to the fore obviously and make perfect sense and there are others that are perhaps less obvious but when you get into it you're like okay yeah no this is this is really good and that's true now as well so what's interesting i think i think it's interesting is that's the way we're working with creators and how we find creators and there are even within creators there's creators and creators right so there are mega creators and then there are kind of like macro micro nano creators and nano creators are really important because they massively amplify the message of the bigger creators so a group of say I don't know 10 or 100 whatever a thousand nanos amplifying the message of a much bigger creator is really in an authentic way for their audiences is really how you kind of it's like word of mouth if you like it really gets out there very well and it's quite I want to say it's easy but it's possible to identify exactly who those people are and to map them against the different kind of cultural territories or needs that you have in those moments and then start to work directly with them.

40:03Ben Curtis:And it's complicated now because it's lots of creators as opposed to I'm just going and talking to... A few channels. Exactly, yeah, a few TV channels or a few magazine titles or whatever. So it's complicated in that sense, but it's actually not hard to do. It's very easy. Well, it's straightforward to do it. It's kind of possible to do it very straightforward. Easy is probably not right, but it's straightforward to do my own. It is interesting. It's interesting because I feel like there needs to be like a very good marriage between the brand and the media agency because ultimately if the media agency doesn't understand what the brand is trying to do, it means that the input of talent is going to be wrong.

40:42Ben Curtis:And I think especially when you're thinking of a World Cup, it's a global phenomenon and you're not just looking to audiences to speak in one area. You're trying to find creators that speak in different locations, locality across the world that have different audience spectrums, etc. So that is where the media agency is super important because you may understand in this market who the best people are for us. Or if you bring us 100, we can say, well, these 20 will work the best. So locality is an interesting part of it. But I think what is also important from there is, even though there are a media agency, which is almost ultimately the middleman, the connection to the brand is important because that's how you know what's working or not so even though i worked for a media agency i still had a connection with rexona direct i was still having conversations i was still understanding what was needed and therefore when you're creating it doesn't feel like you're creating something that's abstract or distant from you which can often be what happens with a lot of brands like you've got someone creating for you but you've briefed it through this person they've never really engaged with you therefore they don't understand the essence which is sort of what the again one of the things the market tends to want to do and it's looking at creators now is consolidate and essentially what that means is putting middlemen in the middle between you two and that i can see the problems of that one of the questions i just put beforehand back to ben one of the questions i've got for you my is the because of your sort of mix of football and culture cut those are two big words two big audiences and how that plays because you've got two audiences you've got the ones that you're talking to as a creator at the other end and then you've got the corporate audience at the on the behind you saying actually yeah that culture bit is interesting talk to me about that so but that needs defining and every brand i've ever spoken to in the last 10 years has said i want to be culturally relevant okay it's almost like I have a stamp that they put on things what does it mean when they talk to you about that because I'm fascinated because when I look at you I think okay I get what a football creator would be I'm going to be service 24-hour football stuff whether it's club by club or country by country or injuries transfers all of that stuff going on you sound different to me and you're telling a different story and I'm really interested in terms of just what that means and connect that back to the sort of the bigger question about why Unilever are interested in you that is a great question I mentioned earlier I said that football is the greatest cultural landscape that exists now I think ultimately you are right they are creators that so solely focus on results what we're selling the press conference transfers but I often try to take a step back and say when you look at a footballer you're seeing a human being that person has a lived experience they come from a certain area they have interests they have a family they have things beyond the game of what they're playing that they're interested in and ultimately if we break it down the 90 minutes on a Saturday and the two training sessions in the week is a small proponent of their life so what else is important about this individual what else do they care about I'm very fortunate I've worked with a lot of footballers through like the workings I do and often not when down with footballers guess what they're not speaking about football they're speaking about other things a great example that I saw today was in Germany there is a footballer that plays for a football club and he was the photographer for his clubs Awake It because he's into film photography and they were like well why don't we use this because it tells another story so from my lens it's about what are those interesting things that connect a footballer who's a human being to different audiences that people might care about yes you might be the most passionate premier league club fan and you want your club to do well but you also may love music i think one of the smartest things in recent times is a certain england footballer jude bellenham and a song that's been around him because he actually likes the song like you can build storylines away from the game of football and that's the sort of set that i sit in and it's interesting because we often say football culture football culture but football is a part of culture it's a part of society i often say that it's the true global language i could go anywhere in the world and maybe not speak the same language as someone but we can speak football so how do we use this great multiplier to connect across different things and that's where i sit in terms of what i curate at versus and what i do for my own platforms as well ben what do you think about that just to just take me into that football versus the broader football plus yeah no i love that i mean i think exactly as we were saying earlier football is it's it doesn't start and stop with the sport i mean as an example we had daniel sturridge with us in the in the new york sweat club and also with us in dallas as well and daniel sturridge is ex-liverpool chelsea man city england scorer of worldies and i think a great pundit as well and he but what he brought was not just he wasn't the person with the most followers or something like that but what he brought to our activation to the so to the kind of content creation hub we had there with the new york sweat club the cage football thing i was talking about he brought a kind of if i can use the word vibe he brought a vibe to that right which was which was brilliant it was an energy that he brought it was the fact that he is he knows about fashion he knows about music he's got he goes beyond the game of football and we had young creators that come there few of them were from the philippines national team youngsters from the philippines national team and they were playing 3v3 and studge if i can call him that went on and played with them and just and it was just it just elevated the whole thing up and like I say we also had Roberto Carlos there who was also amazing in a different way because he's Roberto Carlos he's an icon and that brought a Brazilian vibe the day before but what Daniel Sturridge brought was just something completely different and I think it kind of talks to that point around and the chat I had with him wasn't really about football it was it's exactly say it was about kind of yeah fashion and music and how there is this this this kind of crossover point now between football and those other worlds and yeah I think there's a big opportunity for brands there and I think I'm quite excited about that and equally just finally to kind of bring it bringing it back to Rexona a little bit the what I'm interested in is it's less about in the old days we would show we would work with our footballers and we'd show them kind of really it's like a torture test so you'd have a footballer running up and down the kind of the training pitch in a gray t-shirt there'd be a bit of sweat here or whatever but their armpits are dry because the product really works right it keeps you dry under your armpits great that's brilliant it's like but actually when you're watching that as a viewer you just see footballer and a bit of sweat and i don't really i don't really understand it far better to take them out of the game and put them in their life because they have a life just like the rest of us they have stuff going on for them that makes them sweat puts them under pressure and it's probably not the 90 minutes that that's where they're free and they can express themselves and that's what they that's what they're best at but the rest of it is actually a pressure situations so and that's life and that's what all of us are experiencing and i think there's a lot of interest from audiences out there for that because it's like these these people we see these boys and girls we see on a weekend in front of millions of people great but actually seeing them then as normal people with lives and things that put them under pressure that's that that's quite interesting and that's where personal care brands play a role right they use deodorant they brush their teeth they wash they use shampoo whatever that that's kind of that that's kind of an interesting space for us indeed okay right the other side of the world cup is fifa fifa is always in the headlines it was in the headlines before the world cup it's always in the hydration breaks all of the decisions diane infantino ben this is one for you really and you know it's coming but what do you do with the current news cycle because the question will if it's come to you already or will come to you what do you think and will the sponsor make some sort of statement by taking away the money that's what the where the story will go I'm just interested in what how you view that yeah I mean look the the I think it for us like I say the first and foremost early days we've not got all the results in yet but like I say from the daily measures that we were looking at during the tournament this has been a really successful world cup for us so we're quite excited about that and we're looking forward to the women's world cup next year all I know about the sort of FIFA proposals are just what I've read in the press I don't really I don't really know enough about it to be able to give an informed comment really and we for us it's a watching brief so it's just to kind of have a look and to understand if i just speak from a kind of personal perspective not not representing unilever here i think the game is this i think this world cup as we've just been talking about for the last hour or so has proven that the game kind of the game can stay the same the beautiful game can stay the same and it can evolve and it can grow and it can reach new audiences and kind of yeah reach new heights and they did all of that without changing a huge amount so either they can kind of kind of carry on doing that organically or they say look we need new investment and new ways to kind of bring this to new audiences and that's worked well in other sports and the question is whether that's needed or and whether it will have the same impact on football just kind of those are the the kind of thoughts I would have but for us as an organization like I say we're very happy with how it performed and we'll wait to see what comes for the for the future and indeed if we if we go again beyond the uh the extent of our existing deal when is the existing deal when does that end so we go to the end of the women's world cup next year which we're really excited about really looking forward to okay the news cycle around fifa generally whatever it is it could be this week it could be whatever week it's always in the news whether that impacts on the sponsor and you think there's a separation people see the world cup and the noise around fifa is priced in is what you're saying yeah potentially i mean we were tracking throughout the tournament and pre-tournament sentiment and it's a bit of a crude measure but we were just tracking kind of what's being said about the world cup and it's you can try it down you can dig down and isolate that between fifa and the world cup etc but there was initially a lot of negative negative sentiment and then it's and then it started to move into the positive and then through the tournament most of it was was by and large really positive obviously there were some things that happened during the tournament that then will play with sentiment but broadly speaking by and large things move very much into the positive during during the tournament i was never really worried that i was never really worried that there would be a i think it's my always saying like it's the biggest game in the world it's the beautiful game right and it's i think that there's once it gets going once once the whistle blows and it kicks off that's what matters I think to people and yeah so I'm not necessarily seeing the fact that FIFA are in the news and that that's not all of that stuff is seen as positive and I'm not really seeing that as necessarily having an impact on partners over the short term but it's something that obviously they've got their own brand right that's their own brand FIFA they need to also somebody doing my job there is is responsible for protecting that brand and growing that brand and we have been talking about we have been talking about FIFA for a very long time and I quite often say it appears to be a bulletproof brand because the money just keeps coming in.

52:04People just say, right, OK, the World Cup is just too valuable to worry too much about what FIFA do.

52:09Ben Curtis:I find it interesting because I think without going into it too, I think we're approaching the crossroads where it could get very interesting. And I think with a lot of the news that's come out over the last few days and the conversation points, there's a real tension arriving because people perceive their input to be important. Whereas FIFA, the entity, who is just the governing body of football, seems to be going in their own direction, which is unique. And for me, I think the key stakeholders that often get forgotten in these conversations are one, the audience and two, the players. and I'm a big proponent and believer in player power and players speaking up whether that's on field or off field issues I think Rodri last year spoke about the playing time and that had large repercussions for the game I do think that this conversation could shift dramatically if players get involved and start having conversations about it yeah I think that there are peculiar constituencies the players I mean again there there are the Rodri's of this world who are earning fortunes but also very famous and have enormous power and then you've got a very very large pyramid of people who not without sounding facetious you wouldn't recognize if you walk past them in the street so there is a sort of a level of player power and the people with the most to lose are the ones at the top who have the most power to try and influence and to take a stand so it's really quite an interesting question like these are stories that quite often as a journalist you go to constituencies like sponsors or you go to players or you go to football associations and ask them to act without actually ever stopping covering the game yourself that would be quite a statement from the media side of it as well i think as a sponsor you want to be involved in something that's positive net positive you want to be involved in something that's people love people enjoy you want to associate your brand with something like that and there are some things that maybe are a little bit polarizing there are some things that are that are that are um yeah kind of kind of i don't know you you could have a question mark over like do you want to be involved in that but like i say football is the beautiful game the biggest game this world cup has been the the big by whatever metric we want to put it put out there is probably the biggest world cup yet feels like it's been a success yeah threw up some brilliant games and worthy winners in the end and kind of i think there's a lot of positivity there and a lot of goodwill there and fifa are the custodians of the game as well as the national associations and regional association regional governing bodies etc so i think they've got a lot of work to to sorry they've got a lot of work they it's their responsibility to go almost like hold that together and kind of make sure that they're keeping on moving in the right direction i think that that shouldn't also stand in the way of innovation and progress and trying things and taking some risks um and i say that without any comment on what the proposals are i've not seen them in enough detail but trying something new is not always a bad thing have you spoken to fifa this week me no no okay interesting okay right thank you so much for your time i really enjoyed it maya where can we find your work point us in the right direction of course so day-to-day a lot of the output is on versus so that is versus on instagram tiktok and then for myself my equadry that's on instagram linkedin i also have a sub stack where i drop occasional notes and stacks and yeah appreciate you having me on i really enjoyed it not at all thank you for coming and ben curtis thank you so much as ever thanks for coming pleasure thank you so much

55:56Thank you.