My favorite World Cup social moment
My favorite World Cup social momentI talked to Norwegian Air about their viral logo bet with British Airways.
Good morning from New York! Thank you for all of the kind feedback on this quarter’s trend report. Yesterday I spoke at Travel + Leisure’s World’s Best Summit. During my prep for the panel, I went down a deep dive of how hotels and travel companies are using social media. Many felt stuck in the old era. Posts that think they are owed attention instead of trying to earn attention. One photoshoot, rolled out over a month. Reels that are more focused on brand guidelines than entertaining. I always tell clients, what’s the point of demanding your logo be at the beginning of a video if no one sees the post in the first place? Of course, I came across some great examples too. Like how the Ritz Paris follows the “your brand’s ordinary is your audience’s extraordinary” framework to a tee—creating short vignettes that show the care they pour into each guest experience. Then there’s the content studio helping Tulsa tell its story through serialized videos, taking the “ethos of a PBS show” and applying it to a destination. I recently received a pitch that SkyBeach Resort in St. Petersburg is working on a microdrama. One great example I shared on the stage is the subject of today’s newsletter. In the lead up to the Norway vs England World Cup game, the Norwegian Air social team extended a bet to the British Airways social team. Publicly. The caption of the post reads, “If Norway wins, you have to switch to our logo on Instagram on Sunday (one day). And vice versa. Deal?🤝.” It racked up 324K likes. What ensued was a friendly airline rivalry that lasted a week and garnered over 25M views. One person wrote that they don’t watch soccer but they “watched this match just to see who won the bet!”
The final post from the stunt is the social team sitting down to do the Netflix documentary trend with “The social media team preparing to tell the story behind the Norwegian x British Airways bet.” Well, today they are telling that story to Link in Bio. Below I talked to Nora Berntzen, Social Media Specialist at Norwegian, about how it all came together. Rachel Karten: First, can you tell me a little bit about your role at Norwegian? Nora Berntzen: I’m a Social Media Specialist, which means I work across pretty much everything organic social. I create content, help shape our strategy, and have a particular responsibility for community management. A lot of my day is spent making sure we’re not just posting content, but actually having conversations with people. Rachel: How would you describe the overall social strategy for Norwegian? Nora: Norwegian has always been a brand that doesn’t take itself too seriously, and that’s something we try to reflect across our social channels. Of course, there are certain boxes every airline has to tick—destination inspiration, travel tips, aviation content—but we’re also always looking for opportunities to join conversations people are already having. Newsjacking and cultural moments are a big part of how we think about social. Rachel: Going into the World Cup, what was your plan? And how did it evolve? Nora: Like any major event, the World Cup sparked a lot of brainstorming. Normally we’d find a fun angle around “fly with us to the cup,” but this year was trickier since we don’t fly to any of the host countries. That said, Norway had qualified for the World Cup for the first time in 28 years, so we knew we wanted to celebrate that moment. We created a few football-related posts that performed well, but we didn’t have a grand campaign planned.
Rachel: Let’s talk about the British Airways rivalry. Take me into what the planning process looked like for that! Had you talked to their social team before making the initial bet video? Nora: Calling it a planning process might be generous...It took about 30 minutes from the initial idea to publishing the first post, and British Airways had no idea we were doing it. That was pretty much how we worked throughout the campaign. We reacted quickly, built on whatever happened next, and didn’t overthink it. An example is our posts with a tiny teacup. My colleague Emilie and I were filming something completely different at Oslo Airport when we realized we should probably create a follow-up to the bet. The only stereotypically British thing I could think of was tea, so we ran into an airport shop, borrowed the fanciest teacup we could find, convinced a cabin crew member to pose with it, and had the whole thing shot within half an hour.
The only content we actually planned in advance was the outcome of the bet. We created both a winning and a losing version beforehand so we could publish immediately after the final whistle. Rachel: At what point did you get in touch and make it an actual thing? Nora: British Airways commented on our very first post with a cheeky “Don’t make bets you can’t win 😉,” so we knew they’d seen it, but we still weren’t sure whether they’d actually accept. We tried reaching them through comments, Instagram DMs, email, and LinkedIn, but they stayed completely silent. Looking back, I think that was a brilliant move because the anticipation just kept growing in the comments. And BA later confirmed that was their strategy.
Rachel: How did this post of the two social teams exchanging logos IRL come together? Nora: The day before the match, my colleague Emilie flew to London to hopefully hand over our logo on a memory stick at British Airways’ headquarters, without them knowing. We posted about it on Instagram Stories, and British Airways quickly responded, and put a team together to welcome her with open arms. We shook hands with them on camera, and the bet was on!
Rachel: What did the approval process on your team’s end look like for making it happen? Nora: We checked in with Norwegian’s Marketing Director, who has the final say on anything involving our logo. His response was: What’s the worst thing that could happen? So we went for it. Rachel: The logo change created such good “stakes” to build audience investment. What did it feel like actually changing your logo? Nora: Obviously, we were disappointed that Norway lost. But the reaction to the logo swap completely blew us away. The match finished around 2 a.m. our time, and I stayed up until 4:30 a.m. replying to comments. After four hours of sleep, I woke up to more than 20,000 new comments. I genuinely couldn’t believe it. I basically spent the rest of the day in bed with my phone and laptop, trying to keep up with the conversation.
Rachel: Turning the viral moment into a promotion is really smart. Are you able to share how it performed? Nora: I am able to say that we were very happy with the performance of the sale. Rachel: Overall, how did content shared around the World Cup perform for the airline? Nora: Overall, the World Cup bet became record breaking for us. Across the campaign we generated 25M views, over 1.5M reactions/likes, and 55K comments, while also seeing significant growth in both followers and brand awareness. And you could add even more to these numbers if you combine the results of our other World Cup-themed posts. But I haven’t come that far yet, haha.
Rachel: What did you learn from this stunt? Any advice you’d give brands that want to try something similar? Nora: I think people have become incredibly good at spotting when brands are genuinely enjoying themselves versus trying too hard to “go viral.” We never set out thinking this would become a global story, we simply had a cheeky idea and committed to it. As someone who is responsible for community management, I will never underestimate the value of it. But I think many others did before this campaign. The original post might have started it all, but the comments are where the campaign really came to life. Some of the funniest moments weren’t planned or created by us, they happened because we kept responding and building on what the audience gave us. And luckily, the audience had a good sense of humor! What I’m scrollingSprout Social to cut 20% of workforce as AI-fueled tech layoffs continue. According to the Very Online Survey this year, around 30% of social marketers use the tool. Sending support to the ~260 employees who are impacted. Everyone is talking about Hailey Bieber in this Gap ad, but I am more focused on the voiceover. It’s so good! Commenters are speculating that it’s Chad Michael Murray... Threads, Meta’s ‘Twitter killer,’ finds its people. Great piece from The New York Times. “The percentage of users who come to Threads independently, and not through promotions on Instagram or Facebook, is increasing, Meta said, without revealing numbers.” Kathryn Turner, Director of Product Development at M&S Food, has accumulated 7.8M views across 12 videos. I wrote about her first viral video, which now has 1.5M views, back in May. I have never seen an official M&S Food TikTok video on my FYP, meanwhile every new Kathryn video is in my feed waiting for me. It’s a good case study for the type of habitual viewing that can come from “side quest” accounts that have a throughline of familiarity.
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