case study - 05
Carlsberg
date. 2025
city. Stockholm
world cup campaign
The Berif
Carlsberg isn’t the official beer of the World Cup 2026.
THE SOLUTION
Without official rights, brands are locked out of symbols, assets, and visibility.
But football doesn’t live in logos or broadcasts. It lives in people, rituals, and shared emotional moments.
For decades, Carlsberg has existed exactly there. Not just on Liverpool shirts or Premier League billboards, but in pubs, on sofas, and between people watching together.
So the strategy for Carlsberg wasn’t to compete with brands like Budweiser for ownership of the tournament. It was to own a universal behavior inside it.
The hug is football’s most human moment. Instinctive, shared, and impossible to "sponsor".
By owning the hug, Carlsberg becomes the social glue of the World Cup.
Not the beer of the event, but 'probably' the beer of togetherness.
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Out of Home
The following ā¤µļø are billboards with more copy besides the tagline. We ended up not not presenting them, but they still match the campaign message.ā
These ā¤µļø were made for specific markets included in the brief.
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We decided to conceptualize types of Carlsberg hugs. More will be shown on the social media and physical activations.
Social Media
Physical Activation
The main physical activation was a product mechanism in which you could only open your bottle with the friction of another one. This emphasizes that Carlsberg endorses collective, well-spent moments. In one word, togetherness.
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For Carlsberg’s role in the customer journey, we chose to reach people where companionship and football are truly lived: outside stadiums.
In bars, living rooms, and on friends’ couches.
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We created a Labubu hugging itself in the shape of a can, coasters for sports bars, and a pair of inseparable socks designed to be shared with the friend supporting the same team.ā
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Another key objective was to embed the hug in people’s minds. So we didn’t just define different types of hugs for different occasions; we also playfully created a “how to hug” tutorial on our coasters.
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