FIFA Finale, Which Brands Are Celebrating With Us?

It's 3am in Singapore. World Cup final. And McDonald's, an official FIFA sponsor, had nothing for me when I opened their app to order.

I remember their World Cup menu items earlier in the tournament. By the final, nothing. No limited-edition World Cup nuggets, no themed combo, nothing tying the brand to the single biggest, most important night of the entire tournament.

And it's not just McDonald's. Brands poured an estimated $10.5 billion in incremental global ad spend* into this World Cup, and a lot of the partner marketing I saw ran hard through the group stage and into the knockout rounds. Then it just stopped. By the final, the most-watched match of the whole tournament, the exact moment attention and conversation peak hardest, brand conversations were quiet.

Brands don't just need a launch. They need an ending, timed to the moment the world is actually watching. We have 4 years to fix this in time for the next World Cup.