By Bolu Akindoyin, COO, Miai+ 

Audiences can easily sniff out an inauthentic, clunky brand partnership. So it’s incumbent on marketers to ensure that any brand tie-up they venture into is based on more than a commercial exchange. The best partnerships are genuine collaborations that feel rooted in shared values. One only needs to look at gaming, one of the most creative industries on the planet, to see how collaboration, innovation, and a deep understanding of what excites communities can build lasting connections.

Today, that same DNA drives our creative evolution. We believe the future belongs to ideas that connect, and that principle sits at the heart of every successful brand partnership.

As brands kick off major World Cup campaigns, the competitive landscape for attention has never been fiercer. The challenge isn’t just to be seen, but to master the art of connection.

To bring brands together through strategic partnerships that build real cultural value, can be set up for success when brands put authenticity, shared purpose, and audience insight at the heart of every collaboration.

With that in mind, here are three points of advice to consider when devising brand partnerships to win the competitive race in a fight for attention this season:

Solve the audience problem first

Start the process of devising your partnership with a genuine audience insight and use that as the creative engine, rather than bolting brands or talent onto an existing ad concept.

Now more than ever, during the World Cup, we will be witness to the live examples of the most interesting partnerships, which aren’t all taking place at the global top table. This 2026 tournament will mark a significant shift in the rise of host-city-level sponsorships and brand partnerships, adding a secret-sauce layer of hyper-local marketing to support local community activations. That only works if you start with the audience question first: what does this tournament actually mean to people in this city, not the abstract global fanbase, and let that shape who you partner with locally, rather than parachuting in a global campaign and hoping it lands.

Credible voices can outshine star wattage

Celebrity wattage is all very well, but a partnership can be equally, if not more, effective with a lesser-known talent whose authority and authenticity match the message.

A celebrity lends a brand rented fame, but a credible voice lends a brand borrowed trust, and trust is what actually moves people. Unilever’s move to bank half its global media budget in social & creator marketing for the World Cup is a deliberate strategy to avoid limiting it to one brand star talking to millions, and instead to multiple credible voices engaging many fan communities who genuinely belong in that conversation.

New Zealand defender Tim Payne's meteoric rise to become the 2026 World Cup's breakout star moment shows what brands are up against and aiming for. A story so rooted in real fan culture that it needed no celebrity at all to travel across continents in 48 hours. The risk for brands chasing the same effect with a big-name signing is obvious; star wattage gets noticed, but it rarely becomes the fans' own story the way Payne's did.

Build for the long tournament, not the opening whistle

A World Cup runs for weeks, not a single moment, and the brands treating it that way are winning. The World Cup is a ‘six-week Super Bowl’ for advertising, so brand partnership campaigns need to be designed for longevity that scales up at the tournament level, not a single launch moment. Nike’s rollout, for example, is designed to maintain its presence throughout the full 39-day tournament via staggered product drops, collaborations, and creator content, ensuring brand visibility across communities. Compared to a single-hero film that peaks on day one and fades by day three, it is nothing more than a big bang, with nothing after, abandoning most of the opportunity on the table.