Klaviyo has published research on how UK brands are planning marketing campaigns around the 2026 FIFA World Cup. The study found that more than half of marketers expect to activate campaigns during the tournament.
Based on a survey of 435 UK marketing decision-makers, the findings indicate a broader push by brands to move faster during major cultural moments.
According to the research, 53% of UK brands plan to run campaigns linked to the World Cup, while 88% said they would increase marketing spend during the tournament. Of those increasing budgets, 54% said spending would rise by more than 20%.
Sporting events remain a major focus for consumer marketing teams. The research found that 77% of brands had already activated campaigns around sporting events in the past year, suggesting brands now treat live sport as a recurring opportunity rather than a one-off event.
Campaigns this summer are expected to focus on discounts, curated collections and reactive content tied to fan moments. The survey found that 61% of respondents planned to use discounts, 48% curated collections and 37% reactive fan-moment content.
Speed to market
The report identifies speed as a key factor in campaign success. Some 40% of marketers said their most successful World Cup activations launched within 1 to 3 days of a moment occurring, while 42% said they planned to react to key moments within 6 hours.
Social media emerged as the leading channel, with 58% of respondents saying it dominates cultural-moment activations. That reflects the pressure on brands to respond while fan conversations are still active and before attention shifts elsewhere.
Many marketers also acknowledged struggling to keep pace. The survey found that 63% had missed at least one cultural moment in the past year because they could not move quickly enough.
That gap between opportunity and execution is one reason brands are looking more closely at tools that can cut the time needed to prepare creative work, tailor messages and launch campaigns. The report argues that timing and personal relevance are increasingly linked during sporting events, when public attention can shift within minutes.
Nearly three-quarters of respondents, 72%, said cultural moments such as the World Cup gave them more creative freedom than at any other time of year. That suggests marketers see such events not only as opportunities to increase sales activity, but also as occasions to experiment with tone, format and brand personality.
AI uptake
The study also found widespread planned use of artificial intelligence in campaign work. Some 88% of marketers expect to use AI for summer sporting activations, making this tournament the first World Cup in which the technology is available at scale for real-time marketing.
Half of respondents said they felt positive about the rise of what the report called "vibe marketing", in which marketers describe a campaign in plain language, and AI generates material aligned with brand voice and existing data. A further 33% said access to real-time customer data would halve the time needed to launch a cultural-moment activation.
For brands, the commercial logic is straightforward: major sporting tournaments create large audiences, abrupt shifts in sentiment and a sequence of shared moments that can shape marketing messages. The challenge is that many brands are trying to do the same thing at once, increasing competition for attention.
"This summer is going to be one of the most competitive marketing moments we've seen in years. Brands globally are showing up for the World Cup, and when everyone's in the market, budget alone doesn't cut it. What does is how quickly and how personally you can respond to the moments that genuinely move people. A shock result. An underdog story. Those cut through because they're real, and campaigns that tap into that, rather than just riding the hype, are the ones that actually land. That's not just true of sport," said Jamie Domenici, Chief Marketing Officer at Klaviyo.
"I'm excited to see how brands use AI this summer to jump on sports cultural moments, push their creativity and connect with people in ways that feel authentic. For the first time, marketers have the tools to tap into a moment that happened only an hour ago and turn it into a personalised, on-brand campaign at a speed we've genuinely never seen before," added Domenici on the role of AI in campaign timing and creative work.