Major sporting events such as the FIFA World Cup have evolved from mass-viewing spectacles into highly social, mobile-first experiences shaped by creators, communities and real-time conversations. In this interview with Communicate, Maria Manouk, Head of Retail, Digital First and QSRs UAE (Large Customer), explains why brands must move beyond traditional advertising, embrace participation-led storytelling, and connect cultural relevance with measurable business outcomes. She also shares insights on the growing role of creators, augmented reality, commerce and mobile-native experiences in engaging MENA audiences during the world’s biggest sporting event.
The way people experience moments like the World Cup has changed, especially with younger audiences increasingly engaging through creators, conversations and communities rather than passive viewing. How should brands rethink storytelling and participation during major cultural moments today?
Brands need to stop treating the World Cup as a media moment and start treating it as a participation moment. In MENA especially, football is not just watched, it is shared, debated, memed and celebrated with the people closest to you. In fact, 91% of daily Snapchat users engage with friends and family around the World Cup, highlighting just how social the tournament has become. That is why the brands that win are not the ones shouting the loudest, but the ones finding ways to join the conversation in a way that feels natural. On Snapchat, that means showing up where the World Cup becomes personal: in creator storytelling, in Chat, in the Camera, and in the rituals fans build around the game.
The creative implication is significant. Rather than relying on polished, one-way campaign assets built for passive viewing, brands should create experiences that encourage reaction, sharing, and self-expression. The most effective storytelling gives people something to do, not just something to watch. That could be creator-led content that evolves throughout the tournament, interactive experiences that allow fans to express their passion, or timely content that reflects the conversations already happening among communities. The strongest campaigns don’t interrupt the World Cup experience, they become part of it. The role of a brand today is not simply to broadcast a message, but to enable participation.
During moments like the World Cup, brands are no longer just competing with each other but with creators, communities and culture itself. What are marketers still getting wrong when trying to win attention during these moments?
The biggest mistake is still thinking attention can be bought purely through visibility. During moments like the World Cup, attention is earned through relevance. Audiences are not waiting for brand messages; they are already deep in their own conversations, communities and real-time reactions. If a campaign feels generic, overly polished or disconnected from how people are actually experiencing the tournament, it gets ignored very quickly.
What marketers often underestimate is that they are not just competing with other brands. They are competing with real human behavior. They are competing with the group chat, the creator reacting in real time, the meme that spreads after a goal, and the conversations unfolding between friends throughout the match.
On Snapchat, that is especially important because the platform is built around close connections, not passive follower culture. Around 70% of messages are sent to a user’s top five friends, which shows just how much attention is concentrated within close relationships and trusted communities. The benchmark for relevance is not another ad, it is the content and conversations people genuinely care about.
That is why some of the most effective World Cup campaigns are not necessarily the biggest. They are the ones that understand the context, speak the language of the audience and add something meaningful to the experience. The common mistake is showing up too late, too broadly and too much like an advertiser. The smarter approach is to be culturally sharp, locally resonant and useful in the moment. The bar is no longer “did people see it?” The bar is “did it feel like it belonged there?”
Attention during moments like the World Cup is harder to earn and easier to lose. What actually drives meaningful engagement today, and how should brands think beyond traditional metrics like impressions and views?
Meaningful engagement today comes from active engagement, not exposure. Impressions and views still matter, but they are only the starting point. During a moment like the World Cup, the more important question is whether people did something with your brand. Did they share it, use it, respond to it, visit a location, buy a product, or bring it into a conversation with friends?
What events like the World Cup demonstrate is that audience behavior extends far beyond passive viewing. People react in real time, share content with their closest circles, create their own commentary and express themselves through moments that matter most to them.
During the last tournament on Snapchat, we saw significant spikes not only in content consumption, but also in sharing, messaging and Lens engagement throughout key match moments.
Those behaviors are often a stronger indicator of impact because they signal active participation rather than passive attention.
This is why brands need to evolve their measurement frameworks. Reach remains important, but it should be complemented by signals of resonance and action: shares, playtime, store visits, app installs, swipe-ups and purchase lift. The strongest campaigns are the ones that move from “I saw it” to “I joined it” to “I acted on it.”
MENA audiences are incredibly mobile-first, yet many campaigns still feel like traditional ads squeezed onto smaller screens. What does a genuinely mobile-native World Cup campaign look like today?
A genuinely mobile-native World Cup campaign is designed around behaviour, not adapted from another screen. In MENA, the tournament lives on mobile before kick-off, during the match, and long after the final whistle. People move seamlessly between conversations, creators, content, commerce and real-world experiences throughout the day. The most effective campaigns are built to meet audiences across that entire journey.
That means moving beyond a single format or a single objective and thinking in full-funnel terms. On Snapchat, people in Saudi Arabia open the app more than 50 times a day, creating multiple opportunities for brands to engage them across different moments and mindsets. A mobile-native campaign should use each touchpoint with a clear purpose: creators can build anticipation and cultural relevance, Chat captures real-time conversations and reactions, Camera enables self-expression through AR, while Map can bridge digital engagement with real-world discovery and action.
The common mistake is treating mobile as a smaller version of television. The reality is that mobile is interactive, personal and always-on. The strongest World Cup campaigns are not built around one hero asset. They are built around a sequence of experiences that reflect how people actually engage with the tournament throughout the day.
In other words, mobile-native means immersive, reactive and participatory. It should feel immediate, reward engagement and create opportunities for people to actively take part, rather than simply watch from the sidelines.
AR has been one of advertising’s favourite buzzwords for years now. At what point does it stop being a gimmick and start becoming genuinely useful or memorable for consumers?
AR stops being a gimmick the moment it gives people a meaningful role in the experience. The best AR is not decorative; it is participatory. It lets people express themselves, interact with a brand, unlock something exclusive, or experience a moment in a way that feels both personal and useful.
That is particularly powerful during cultural moments like the World Cup, which are built around identity, ritual and emotion. Fans want to show who they support, react in real time and feel part of the occasion. AR naturally enables that because it transforms audiences from passive viewers into active participants. Instead of simply consuming content, people become part of the experience.
We have seen this play out consistently on Snapchat. That behaviour is already well established among fans, with 51% of Snapchatters using AR Lenses and Filters during the World Cup. During the last World Cup, Lens engagement surged across the region as fans used AR to celebrate key moments, share reactions and express their support. The value was not the technology itself, but the behaviour it enabled. People were not just viewing branded experiences, they were actively engaging with and sharing them.
The real test for AR is simple: does it make the brand more memorable because it gave people something enjoyable, social or useful to do? If the answer is yes, it has moved beyond novelty. At that point, AR becomes one of the most effective ways for brands to turn fandom into participation and self-expression at scale.
We’re seeing social platforms move closer to commerce, retail media and even footfall attribution. During high-attention moments like the World Cup, how important is it for brands to connect awareness with real-world action?
It is critical, because attention is most valuable when it can be converted into action. The World Cup creates emotional intensity, but for brands, the bigger opportunity is turning that intensity into something measurable: a store visit, an order, an app install, a purchase, or a booking. On Snapchat, engagement and performance do not sit in separate worlds; they work together.
The connection between cultural moments and commercial outcomes is becoming clearer. During major sports events, 77% of Snapchat World Cup fans say they are more likely to learn about and research a brand they see on Snapchat, while 75% say they are more likely to consider and purchase from brands supporting the tournament. That shows us that moments like the World Cup are not just awareness opportunities; they are powerful drivers of intent and action. In markets like the UAE, where commerce behaviour is already deeply mobile, that matters because it demonstrates that tentpole moments are not just brand-building opportunities. They are performance opportunities too.
That is also why formats such as Promoted Places, Dynamic Product Ads and creator-led commerce solutions are becoming increasingly important. They help brands move seamlessly from awareness to action in a way that still feels native to both the platform and the moment.
QSR and retail brands usually dominate these moments because they can move fast. What can more traditional or slower-moving categories learn from the way those brands operate during events like the World Cup?
They can learn that speed is not just operational; it is strategic. QSR and retail brands tend to perform strongly because they are built around occasions. They know how to identify a moment, connect it to a consumer need, and respond quickly with a clear action. That mindset matters just as much as budget.
More traditional categories do not need to mimic QSR execution exactly, but they do need to adopt some of the same principles. First, they should plan for multiple moments throughout the tournament rather than a single campaign launch. Second, they need to localise faster and build greater creative flexibility into their planning. Third, they need to connect their role in the tournament to a real consumer behaviour, whether that is getting ready, gathering with friends, commuting, shopping, upgrading, ordering, or celebrating.
Snapchat makes that easier because it offers brands multiple ways to engage audiences depending on their objective. Creators can help build cultural relevance, AR can drive participation, Chat enables real-time engagement, and Map can bridge digital engagement with offline action. The lesson is not to be more playful. It is to be more present, more contextual and more useful in the moments that matter.
What do brands need to learn about marketing around the World Cup and other major cultural moments?
The biggest lesson is that major cultural moments reward brands that are prepared enough to plan, but flexible enough to react. The World Cup is not a single campaign window. It is a series of emotional peaks: anticipation, build-up, matchday, reaction, aftermath and memory. Brands that treat it as one media burst miss the deeper opportunity.
The second lesson is that participation now matters more than interruption. The most effective brand role is not to sit outside the moment and comment on it, but to help people express themselves within it. That is why creators, chat-native storytelling, AR and community-driven behaviours are becoming increasingly important. On Snapchat, the World Cup lives within close circles, creator communities, real-time reactions and shared rituals. That gives brands a very different, and often more powerful, way to connect with audiences.
The future of moment marketing is not about louder campaigns. It is about smarter engagement tied to real business outcomes. The brands that will win are the ones that understand both sides of the equation: cultural relevance and measurable action. On Snapchat, those two things are increasingly inseparable.
