Driving Anticipation with Audience-Led Out-of-Home

As the FIFA World Cup approaches, the opportunity for brands does not begin on opening day. Anticipation builds months in advance, shaped by national pride, community conversations, and shared excitement that grows well before the first match kicks off. For brands looking to show up meaningfully, the question is not just how to capture attention during the tournament, but how to build awareness and emotional momentum early, while recognizing where that anticipation lives.

And a recent campaign from one of the world’s most influential marketers highlights how out-of-home (OOH) media can be used to effectively build this awareness and anticipation, laying the foundation for bigger brand activations as we get closer to kick-off.

Coca-Cola applied an audience-first, awareness-building approach to launch a FIFA World Cup campaign in January, well ahead of the tournament this summer. Rather than waiting for kickoff, the brand focused on building anticipation early and embedding itself in the communities where World Cup excitement runs deep. With Nielsen reporting that 40% of the U.S. Hispanic population expecting an increase in interest in World Cup, Coca-Cola partnered with CCO to design an OOH campaign built to reach these fans in the environments they navigate every day.

Running across key national markets that over-index for Hispanic American communities, the campaign leaned into national pride as a creative throughline. Creative highlighted four World Cup teams with strong resonance among Hispanic American audiences and was placed in high-indexing neighborhoods to ensure relevance at the community level. The strategy centered on aligning message, location, and audience insight to make the tournament feel present long before game day.

To translate anticipation into tangible presence, the campaign relied on Posters built for precise, community-level reach. Posters extend brand stories into everyday environments along highways, surface streets, and neighborhood intersections, delivering consistent visibility where audiences are already present. With 100% share of voice in these placements, Coca-Cola ensured the campaign felt intentional and deeply rooted in the communities it appeared in.

This early launch of World Cup marketing was driven by some pretty compelling research into the power of OOH media to build awareness and brand meaning.

Five years of analysis from Kantar, conducted in partnership with CCO, reinforces why early investment in awareness matters. Across a broad range of studies conducted by Kantar, OOH delivered an average 13% increase in ad awareness, significantly greater than digital, CTV, and TV. OOH also delivered nearly four times more impact on brand favorability than digital and CTV, while matching TV in driving brand awareness and purchase intent.

The data underscores a broader truth: brand building channels like OOH fill gaps left by performance-focused media. When brands prioritize awareness and emotional connection in advance of major cultural moments, they create stronger foundations for engagement when those moments peak.

As Coca-Cola’s campaign demonstrates, World Cup fandom is not limited to screens. It lives in neighborhoods, on street corners, and in everyday spaces where communities gather and connect. In a media landscape where audiences increasingly opt out of ads across streaming and digital environments, building early anticipation requires presence in the physical world people move through daily.

By investing early and grounding strategy in audience behavior, Coca-Cola turned everyday spaces into signals that the World Cup was coming. The campaign demonstrates how audience-led OOH can build awareness and momentum well before kickoff, reinforcing that cultural anticipation is not confined to screens. It is built where communities live, commute, and connect.

Ready to build momentum before the moment hits? Connect with our team to start planning your next audience-led OOH campaign.

_{^{Source: Kantar, 2019–2024; Nielsen Fan Insights, 2025; Nielsen 2025 Hispanic DIS Report; Scarborough USA+ 2025 Release 1 Total (Jan 2024–May 2025)}}