Inside Lay’s celebrity-led World Cup marketing push

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TL;DR:

Lay’s is turning FIFA World Cup 2026 marketing into a WhatsApp-led watch party, betting on first-party fan engagement over logo visibility.

Article:

Lay’s has launched its FIFA World Cup 2026 marketing push with a global “No Lay’s, No Game” campaign built around celebrity-led watch parties, WhatsApp engagement and in-market fan activations. The move matters because the brand is using the World Cup not just as a media buy, but as a first-party data and community-building play.

The PepsiCo-owned snack brand is running the campaign across 90 markets, featuring Lionel Messi, David Beckham, Thierry Henry, Alexia Putellas and Steve Carell in ads that invite shoppers into a football watch-party setup. Lay’s says its Epic Watch Party Channel on WhatsApp has already drawn more than 10 million followers, making it one of the brand’s largest social activations to date.

Alexis Porter, vice president of marketing for international foods at Lay’s, told Marketing Dive: “It’s a cultural moment, and so we want to make sure we’re not a brand that’s just going to put our logo on it.”

The strategy reflects a wider shift in sports marketing: brands want measurable fan interaction, not only tournament visibility. Lay’s WhatsApp channel offers reactions, behind-the-scenes content, recipes and games, while limiting open posting to manage safety around celebrity-led engagement. Porter called the model “scaled intimacy,” with insights expected to shape future brand experiences.

Lay’s is also launching a U.S.-specific “Bandwagon” campaign to welcome casual soccer fans as the World Cup returns to North America for the first time since 1994. For marketers, the signal is clear: the next big sponsorship battleground is not the stadium. It is the group chat.