Five things the World Cup taught marketers about creators 

The World Cup has wrapped, which means it’s time for the obligatory marketing takeaways piece. This time it stops, predictably, on creators. They were one of the main conduits for fandom this tournament for broadcasters and advertisers alike. How they pulled that off is instructive. Because for marketers, the World Cup isn’t really about football. It’s a stress test for where marketing is headed.

Here’s what that test revealed. 

CMOs know creators matter. The real issue is managing them at scale

That’s the real talking point from the tournament’s largest creator activation. Unilever worked with 50,000 creators across more than 35 brands in over 120 markets. The numbers validate creators’ pull on brand growth, but scale like that isn’t a marketing decision — it’s an infrastructure problem.

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‘It’s a CEO conversation,’ Accenture and Whalar on their playbook for the creator economy

Last month, Accenture Song acquired creator and social agency Whalar along with its scaled creator engagement tools and growth capabilities. Without providing details, Whalar told Adweek it was the “largest creator economy transaction,” which puts it at least at the $500 million mark, based on Publicis’2024 acquisition of Influential. 

Whatever the cost of the acquisition, it marks another major shift and investment in the creator economy. Accenture didn’t buy Whalar for its creator relationships, it bought the operational layer that makes those relationships more tangible and sellable — the sourcing, vetting and campaign execution that turns individual creators into something an advertiser can plan and budget around. As more and more creators look for long-term partnerships rather than one-off deals, this is a crucial building block.

After the initial press around the announcement, Digiday caught up with Brian Yasko, managing director at Accenture Song, and Emma Harmon, co-CEO of Whalar, to learn more about the partnership, what Accenture is building in the creator space, why they see creators as a CEO conversation rather than a CMO one, and what they’re working on building, now together.

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