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Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) Guide

Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) is transforming how brands show up in AI-powered search. Explore insights, strategies, and best practices to help your content rank and resonate across conversational engines like ChatGPT, Gemini, and Copilot.

Explore insights and strategies for Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) to help your brand stay visible and discoverable in AI-powered search.

Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) Blog Collection | Meltwater

Media monitoring helps organizations stay informed about what’s being said across online news, print, broadcast, podcasts, and other media channels. Whether you're tracking brand mentions, measuring PR performance, monitoring competitors, or identifying emerging trends, our expert guides, best practices, and industry insights will help you build a smarter media monitoring strategy and make more informed communications decisions.

Discover expert media monitoring guides, best practices, and industry insights to track brand mentions, monitor competitors, and stay ahead of the news.

Media Monitoring: Guides, Best Practices & Industry Insights

Every day billions of conversations take place on social media: tweets, posts, comments, blogs, reviews, podcasts, and much more.

Learn how to use social listening to make sense of all of that data.

On our social listening category page, you find all our blogs covering topics around social listening and social media monitoring. Read more.

Social Listening Blogs | Category

Business Reputation Management: What does it take to add reputation management to your marketing strategy? More importantly, how do you keep your reputation sparkly and shiny? Here’s your all-access guide to online reputation management for the long term.

On our reputation management category page, you find all our blogs covering topics around business reputation management. Read more.

Reputation Management Blogs | Category

From your brand's logo to your website, your social media presence to your customer support—these elements combined are what constitutes a brand in the minds of customers. But, there are thousands of other businesses that have a logo, website, social media presence, and website. So, how can you position your business on the market and make it stand out from the competition?

The key to success is branding & brand management!

On our brand management category page, you find all our blogs covering topics around brand management. Build your strategy and reach your goals!

Brand Management Blogs | Category

Competitive intelligence and the act of collecting competitive data can be seen as growth drivers for a company. Our guide will help you understand the concept of competitive intelligence (CI) by answering questions such as: What is the definition of competitive intelligence? How is competitive intelligence useful to organizations? What is the goal of competitive intelligence? And more.

On our competitive intelligence category page, you find all our blogs covering topics around competitive intelligence. Learn how to stay ahead.

Competitive Intelligence Blogs | Category

Let’s dive into the customer journey framework and how to optimize the process by creating a customer journey map and using metrics that matter when analyzing the customer journey.

On our customer journey category page, you find all our blogs covering topics around mapping and understanding the customer journey.

Customer Journey Blogs | Category

How do customers interact with my newly launched product?

How do I increase the productivity of my employees?

How do I know if my marketing efforts are working?

We have just two words for you...Data analytics!

On our data analytics category page, you find all our blogs covering topics around AI and data analytics. Technical and still easy to understand.

AI & Data Analytics Blogs | Category

Public relations and media relations can add impact to any marketing strategy. It’s an opportunity for brands to grow their reach beyond traditional sales messages. PR helps to shape the image you want people to have of your brand.

So, what is PR and how do you use it? This guide shows you everything you need to know to build a strong public relations foundation.

On our public relations (PR) category page, you find all our blogs covering public relations and communications topics. Step up your PR game.

Public Relations (PR) Blogs | Category

We all know exactly what the roles of sales or accounting are in a company, right? We might even have a slight idea of what the IT guys are doing.

But there is another business discipline, that plays a crucial role in organizations, even more so during the pandemic – internal communications!

But what exactly do we mean by that, what purpose does it serve and what steps can you take to ensure you and your employees will communicate effectively?

On our internal communications category page, you find all our blogs about internal comms topics. Learn about the intranet, internal newsletters, and more.

Internal Communications Blogs | Category

As the internet has taken root in more areas of our lives — everything from entertainment to shopping to paying bills and more — traditional marketing is becoming less impactful. As any marketer knows, you need to focus on where your audience is if you want to reach them. Since the average person spends about seven hours a day online, it’s no surprise that content has maintained its hold on marketers.

Here's a closer look at what content marketing is and why it matters more than ever in our digital-first economy.

On our content marketing category page, you find blogs about content marketing topics. Learn about strategies, KPIs, tips, and more. Make your content king!

Content Marketing Blogs | Category

The rise of the influencer marketing space – today a $10 billion industry, growing 50% per year – is one of the clearest examples of how social media is transforming traditional marketing. These days having a business website, presence on social, PR coverage, and your own content isn’t enough to compete.

We'll dive into the intricacies of influencer marketing to help ensure that you're equipped with the insights needed to be successful in this space.

On our influencer marketing category page, you find blogs about influencer marketing topics. Build your strategy, find influencers, and measure results.

Influencer Marketing Blogs | Category

Have you just launched a new product or service that you want to get the word out about? Maybe you want to share with consumers why it is awesome and how it is so much better than the one your competitors offer.

Well, then, there is one thing you can't do without...Marketing!

On our marketing category page, you find blogs about marketing topics. Learn about all the different angles and types of marketing and improve your results.

Marketing Blogs | Category

Building a following and using social media platforms to reach a wider audience requires a well-planned social media marketing strategy. In this guide, we’ll be looking at why social media marketing is so essential and how you can make it work for your business.

On our social media marketing category page, you find blogs about social media marketing topics. Learn how to get the highest paid social ROI!

Social Media Marketing Blogs | Category

In the fast-evolving realm of digital marketing and public relations, utilizing the right tools is crucial for success. Our interdisciplinary category showcases all the pertinent tools for digital marketing & PR. These tools help in enhancing your online presence and effectively reaching target groups, whether through reputation management, influencer marketing, or social media management.

On our digital marketing and PR tools category page, you find all our blogs covering topics around mapping and understanding the customer journey.

Digital Marketing & PR Tools Blogs | Category

From media coverage and social conversations to audience insights and campaign performance, communications teams have access to more data than ever before. But collecting information is only the beginning. The real challenge is knowing what it means, what matters most, and how to respond with confidence.

Data-driven communications turns scattered signals into actionable insights. By using data to understand audiences, identify trends, measure impact, and guide decisions, communications teams can create more relevant strategies and demonstrate their value across the organization.

Learn how data-driven communications helps teams understand audiences, measure impact, identify trends, and turn media, social, and AI signals into action.

Data-Driven Communications: Insights & Strategies | Meltwater

Kim Cattrall takes the lead in a campaign celebrating the intelligence behind confident brand decisions.

Intelligence is always in style: Kim Cattrall stars in Meltwater’s new campaign

AI adoption is no longer the challenge—trusted context is. Most organizations have AI tools, but many still rely on disconnected, stale, or unverified data, limiting the quality and trustworthiness of AI-generated outputs. Meltwater MCP brings trusted, real-time intelligence into AI assistants.

Your Best Context is Already in the Room

See how one platform can power every decision across PR, communications, and marketing.

The Meltwater Blog

Blog Topics: Generative Engine Optimization, Media Intelligence, Media Relations, Social Listening, Consumer Intelligence, Influencer Marketing

Find out how you can leverage Facebook to boost your brand's online presence and gain a competitive edge. Explore the Meltwater category page today!

Facebook Blog | Meltwater

Find out how you can leverage Instagram to boost your brand's visual appeal and gain a competitive edge. Explore our category page today!

Instagram Blog | Meltwater

Find out how you can leverage LinkedIn to grow your professional network and gain a competitive edge. Explore the Meltwater category page today!

LinkedIn Blog | Meltwater

Find out how you can leverage TikTok to elevate your brand with creative content and gain a competitive edge. Explore the Meltwater category page today!

TikTok Blog | Meltwater

Find out how you can leverage X / Twitter to engage your audience effectively and gain a competitive edge. Explore the Meltwater category page today!

X / Twitter Blog | Meltwater

Find out how you can leverage YouTube to create engaging video content and gain a competitive edge. Explore the Meltwater category page today!

YouTube Blog | Meltwater

Crisis communications used to be something organizations prepared for as an exception a rare, high-stakes moment when an unexpected event might spin out of control, causing untold damage to the brand. At Meltwater Summit 2026, held in New York earlier this year, speakers made it clear that this mindset is outdated.

Today, communications professionals face ever present reputational risk. It can emerge from a Reddit thread, a geopolitical flashpoint, a synthetic video, a misunderstood legal filing, a polarized social issue, a customer community, or a narrative that is surreptitiously being shaped by inauthentic actors. 

The modern comms team’s job is to understand these threats better, align earlier, and respond with clarity.

As McKenna Kelley, Content and Media Manager at Jabil, put it during her session on real-time crisis monitoring, “When I say crisis, sometimes I’m talking about those really bad things that can happen, but sometimes it’s just sensitive topics that we need to be aware of, or things that are impactful to our brand. It’s not always that the house is on fire.”

That broader definition of crisis ran through the event. Here is what we learned.

1. Crisis monitoring has to match how people actually talk

2. The best crisis response may be preventing the crisis altogether

3. Speed matters, but clarity matters more

5. Evidence-based communication is becoming the new crisis standard

6. Human tone still matters, especially when trust is damaged

7. Crisis communicators need to size the moment

8. Protecting the comms team is part of crisis readiness

FAQ - Crisis communications in the AI era

One of the clearest lessons from Summit was that organizations cannot monitor for risk using only the language they use internally.

How is your brand actually being talked about online by real people? It may not be the way that your internal team talks about your brand.

For global companies, that means thinking beyond English-language keywords and official brand terms. Jabil operates in more than 25 countries, and Kelley explained that employees, community members and stakeholders may discuss the company in local languages, with misspellings, old brand names, slang, or even without naming the company at all.

Her advice: build monitoring around the real-world language of stakeholders, not just the corporate vocabulary of the brand. That includes local-language keywords, common misspellings, old brand terms, proximity searches and offline intelligence from people on the ground.

“Lots of things are online,” Kelley said, “but sometimes you do still have to talk to people in order to inform your crisis monitoring.”

The insight is simple but important: if your search terms do not reflect the way people actually talk, your crisis plan may never see the crisis coming.

Several speakers emphasized that crisis communications is about more than what happens after something breaks. The relationships and systems that allow teams to spot issues early and prevent them from escalating are also important. 

Kelley shared a Jabil example involving recurring media coverage around California Worker Adjustment and Retraining (WARN) notices. The notices were being interpreted by reporters as layoffs, even though employees were simply taking holiday time off. Her team used media monitoring to show the issue, then worked with HR and legal to rewrite the notices so they clearly explained what was happening.

This successfully caused the recurring coverage to stop.

The key is stakeholder trust,” Kelley said. “Many crises can be prevented, or at least mitigated if PR teams or comms teams know more sooner.

That same theme appeared in Kiki Cloutier’s session on Turning Crisis into Opportunity. Cloutier, Director of Communications and Public Affairs at the Police Association of Ontario, said real-time alerts help her team identify issues before they spiral.

“As soon as stories broke, we were there,” she said. “We have our key phrases already loaded in for both media and social media. Our team is notified, so this allows us really to spot the issues early.”

Crisis readiness, in other words, extends beyond the communications team, and depends on trust with legal, HR, executives, regional teams, member organizations, sales, government affairs and frontline teams. The earlier those groups share context, the more options communicators have.

Across the Summit, speakers challenged the idea that the fastest brand always wins.

In a session on narrative attacks and disinformation, Wasim Khaled, CEO and co-founder of Blackbird.AI, warned that moving too quickly without understanding the dynamics of a situation can make things worse.

Just being loudest and fastest will get you into more trouble sometimes,

Khaled said. The goal, he argued, is to understand the signals, predict what may happen next and act “with the maximum amount of understanding.”

Dan Brahmy, co-founder and CEO of Cyabra, made a similar point in the “JARVIS” session. Using Iron Man’s AI assistant as a metaphor, he argued that brands need a calm voice in their ear before they react.

“He doesn’t just jump into it. He doesn’t respond. He doesn’t react first,” Brahmy said. “He acknowledges the situation, he understands, and only then he jumps into this.”

That is a useful model for crisis teams. Before issuing a statement, replying to a post, escalating to executives or correcting the record publicly, teams need to know what they are looking at.

Is this a real groundswell or manufactured amplification? Is it a bot attack, a customer issue, a media issue, an employee issue, a legal issue, or all of the above? Is the conversation still contained, or has it crossed into mainstream awareness? Is responding likely to clarify the issue, or amplify it?

Kelley suggested that before communicating internally about a crisis, communications professionals should ask four questions:

“How you communicate in a crisis can be just as important as what you’re actually communicating,” she said.

The Summit’s crisis communications conversations repeatedly came back to AI, synthetic media and narrative manipulation.

In the “Trust Under Pressure” panel, Radhika Shah-Meade, Chief of Staff at Blackbird.AI, framed the new challenge clearly: 

The question is no longer, what are people saying about us? The question is, what is real, what is being manufactured, what is moving and what should we do before our response makes it worse?

Khaled described narrative attacks as coordinated attempts to shape public perception. These attacks may use inauthentic coordination, generative AI, deepfakes or agentic swarms to push a narrative toward communities likely to act on it.

Charlie Baldwin, SVP, Insights and Analytics, North America Lead at WE Communications, warned that comms teams cannot treat artificial amplification as harmless simply because it is artificial.

“In some ways, it almost doesn’t matter,” Baldwin said, “because the perception is the reality, and that a swarm of bots can create the semblance of a true public groundswell.”

That means communicators need to evaluate both authenticity and impact. A fake account can still influence a real person, a synthetic video can still trigger genuine outrage, and a manufactured narrative can still create employee anxiety, investor concern, customer confusion or regulatory attention.

Michael McLoughlin, Senior Director, Corporate, External and Legal Affairs at Microsoft, described trust as something that is now “continuously computed, happening in almost real time.”

That changes the operating model for comms teams because trust can no longer be measured only through periodic surveys or post-crisis analysis. It must be monitored, interpreted and protected continuously.

A major Summit takeaway was that communications leaders need to bring evidence into the crisis room quickly.

Baldwin said every organization should be able to produce “within 30 minutes, a very clear, comprehensive, really importantly, non defensive, evidence based accounting of a situation.”

That does not mean waiting for perfect certainty, but rather grounding decisions in the best available facts: what is being said, who is saying it, where it is spreading, whether amplification looks authentic, which stakeholders are affected, and what level of business risk is emerging.

McLoughlin summarized the decision-making model as “both data driven… but also principle led.”

Data,” he said, “is the foundation for all these decisions that we make. But at the end of the day, we have to bring the data together with our principles in a way that creates clarity.

This is especially important when issues touch politics, social values, geopolitics, employees, customers or public trust. In those moments, data alone is not enough, and organizations also need pre-agreed principles that help them act consistently under pressure.

Technology may help teams detect issues faster, but speakers repeatedly emphasized that trust repair is human work.

In the session on reputation in real time, Heather Malec, Senior Director, Global Marketing Communications at Kaseya, shared lessons from navigating scrutiny and rebuilding trust in online communities, especially Reddit. Her warning was direct: “You can’t fake trust repair.”

She explained that when leadership asks comms to “fix this reputation problem,” there is often a deeper operational issue that must be addressed first. Communications can clarify, contextualize and humanize, but it cannot paper over unresolved stakeholder pain.

Heather also cautioned against defaulting to polished corporate language in community spaces. “A corporate response often doesn’t work,” she said. 

We needed to be human and actually show that we cared… We weren’t just there to paper it over.

Cloutier made a similar argument from the perspective of high-stakes public-sector-adjacent communications. When a crisis breaks, she said, “clear, consistent and empathetic communications really do shine.”

In moments of scrutiny, audiences are not only evaluating the message. They are evaluating whether the organization understands the concern, respects the audience and is willing to act.

Not every negative post is a crisis, not every spike requires a statement, and not every angry comment deserves escalation.

Cloutier called crisis communications “a sizing exercise.” She described moments when a colleague might say something is a crisis, but the reality is “there’s one tweet online, by someone who has 12 followers.”

Over-response can amplify an issue, and under-response can allow misinformation to spread. The communicator’s role is to understand magnitude, audience, credibility, velocity and potential harm, then advise accordingly.

This is where data and experience work together because, as Cloutier put it, “while this is a science, it’s also an art. So really do trust your gut.”

Kelley echoed that balance: “Data is so important… but as Gwyneth Paltrow said yesterday, I would also add your intuition is important.”

One of the more human insights from Summit was that crisis work takes an emotional toll.

Heather from Kaseya spoke candidly about teams that spend day after day reading negative commentary.

If you have a team that’s focused on your crisis communications or your reputation, they feel it personally,” she said. “The brand is not you.

Cloutier offered a similar reminder at the start of her session, encouraging communicators to keep something grounding nearby for difficult days. “Behind every crisis, there’s a comms person hiding underneath the table,” she joked,  a line that captured the pressure many communicators feel.

Crisis plans often include escalation paths, holding statements and stakeholder maps. They should also include sustainable team practices: rotations, breaks, role clarity, leadership support and permission to step away from the feed.

The clearest message from Meltwater Summit was that crisis communications has become a continuous intelligence discipline.

The new playbook looks something like this:

Monitor how stakeholders actually speak. 

Build cross-functional trust before issues break. 

Use data to separate signal from noise. 

Understand whether a narrative is authentic, manipulated or both. 

Communicate with evidence, empathy and clarity. 

Or, as Shah-Meade summarized during the disinformation panel:

Trust is no longer assumed. It’s something that organizations have to actively detect, protect and defend.

In 2026, crisis comms is about building the intelligence, relationships and credibility that make the organization ready before the moment arrives.

1. How has crisis communications changed in 2026?

How Modern Brands Can Detect, Navigate, and Defuse Reputation Risks

8 Lessons on Crisis Comms from Meltwater Summit 2026

Here after the World Cup has been kicked off? Check out our predictions blog with key findings, our week 1 FIFA World Cup 2026 analysis and our FIFA World Cup 2026 prediction dashboard.

Kickoff for the FIFA World Cup 2026 starts on June 11, but the hype around the high-profile tournament started much earlier with input from fans and brands around the globe. As we saw previously with the Super Bowl, this pre-event period is a critical one for brands looking to understand which marketing strategies are resonating with audiences most. In particular, as sponsorship costs rise and brand collaborations grow more competitive, marketers need to know which activations can give them the strongest ROI. 

To understand these factors, we used Explore+ to analyze digital, traditional, and social media content about the World Cup with a focus on identifying the highest-performing brands, campaigns, and individuals. Overall, between January 1 and June 1, 2026, this content generated 2.4 million mentions and 1.3 billion engagements across all tracked source types. However, awareness did not always equal engagement. Instead, the findings show that cultural relevance and audience responsiveness, not sponsorship status, are the main determinants of success during major global events.

Download a one-page summary of this analysis

Why non-sponsor brands generated more engagement than official World Cup sponsors

How Coca-Cola used global influencers to become the most engaging World Cup sponsor

How LEGO's product-led campaign became the most successful World Cup brand collaboration

How Lamine Yamal's TikTok became the biggest World Cup social media moment before kickoff

Why the World Cup song and halftime show drove outsized engagement

How Meltwater helps brands win attention during major cultural events

FAQ: World Cup marketing, sponsorship effectiveness, and social media engagement

<table style="width:100%; border-collapse:collapse; font-family:Arial, sans-serif; font-size:14px;">
  <tbody>
    <tr>
      <td style="padding:12px; border:1px solid #ccc; font-weight:bold; width:30%;">Capability</td>
      <td style="padding:12px; border:1px solid #ccc;">Explore+</td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <td style="padding:12px; border:1px solid #ccc; font-weight:bold;">Analysis window</td>
      <td style="padding:12px; border:1px solid #ccc;">January 1 – June 21, 2026</td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <td style="padding:12px; border:1px solid #ccc; font-weight:bold;">Data sources</td>
      <td style="padding:12px; border:1px solid #ccc;">
        30 sources, including broadcast television and radio, online and print news, blogs, comments, reviews, forums, podcasts, TikTok, Instagram, Reddit, Facebook, Pinterest, X, Douyin, Red, YouTube, and more
      </td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <td style="padding:12px; border:1px solid #ccc; font-weight:bold;">Brands / entities tracked</td>
      <td style="padding:12px; border:1px solid #ccc;">
        FIFA World Cup 2026 and related terms and hashtags, official sponsor brands, and select athletes, celebrities, events, and most discussed brand collaborations 
      </td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <td style="padding:12px; border:1px solid #ccc; font-weight:bold;">Key term definitions</td>
      <td style="padding:12px; border:1px solid #ccc;">
        <strong>Engagement:</strong> The number of shares, comments, likes, retweets, replies, direct messages, etc.<br><br>
 <strong>Engagement per mention (EPM):</strong> The total number of engagement actions divided by the number of mentions<br><br>
      <strong>Mentions:</strong> The number of instances when keywords and phrases appeared within a piece or collection of content.<br><br>
      <strong>Share of Voice (SOV):</strong> The percentage, or share, of total mentions attributed to a particular brand, market, or entity.
      </td>
    </tr>
  </tbody>
</table>

Official World Cup sponsor brands generated about 30% more mentions than non-sponsoring brands that launched campaigns around the event. However, the latter group dominated in terms of audience interaction, generating nearly double the total engagement and 2.8 times the EPM of official sponsors. 

So while official sponsors like Coca-Cola and Adidas won conversation volume, non-sponsor collaborators like LEGO, Nike, and Puma won audience attention. As we explore more thoroughly below, high-production value ads and strategic influencer activation were key factors in differentiating brands within oceans of World Cup content. 

Why it matters: Sponsor or not, earning attention is often more challenging than earning awareness. This year's World Cup demonstrates that a well-executed collaboration, product launch, or influencer strategy can deliver stronger engagement than official sponsorship rights alone.

Of the official World Cup sponsors and partners, Adidas and Coca-Cola were neck-in-neck in terms of discussion, together generating about half of all mentions. However, Coca-Cola emerged as the winner when it came to audience action with over 43% of total engagement compared to Adidas’s 37%.

Its partnership with soccer megastar Lamine Yamal included a wildly successful post on his personal Instagram account that drove 0.8% of all sponsor-period engagement. However, Coca-Cola’s success was also thanks to a number of successful social media activations featuring influencers from around the world. 

So although about half of tracked World Cup conversations originated in the US, the soda brand’s campaign generated high-engagement posts from a wider range of countries. Standouts include: 

this TikTok from a Brazilian humor and lifestyle influencer (2% of total engagement)

this Instagram post from an Indonesian soccer influencer (1.4%)

this TikTok from a US- and Ghana-based dancing influencer visiting Côte d'Ivoire (1.1%)

and this Instagram post from a Thai actor (0.8%)

These and other posts from influencers across Latin America, Africa, and Asia helped Coca-Cola tailor a global campaign to local audiences, in line with the kind of national pride the World Cup naturally inspires. That approach attracted audiences and helped the brand achieve 40% positive sentiment, higher than any other official sponsor. 

Why it matters: Audiences experience global events like the World Cup and the Olympics through local lenses. Coca-Cola's influencer strategy shows how brands can scale campaigns across markets without sacrificing brand identity or consistency.

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LEGO outperformed other top World Cup brand collaborators like Nike and Puma thanks to a coveted new product and partnerships with the world’s leading players.

Instead of being a sponsor, LEGO got in on the event with an official product licence for the iconic trophy. The brand’s resulting World Cup Official Trophy set, part toy, part collector’s item, was the focus of its Everyone Wants a Piece campaign. 

With ads featuring the 2,842-piece set, Cristiano Ronaldo, Lionel Messi, Kylian Mbappé, and Vinícius Jr. (and their toy counterparts), the campaign went viral. But it wasn’t just star power and a flashy product that drove its success. 

The ad’s impressive giant lazy Susan got audiences debating over whether or not the video was created with AI. In response, LEGO released a behind-the-scenes video captioned “Still think it’s AI?” showing how the original video was created with practical effects. 

As a result of a multi-wave campaign that tuned into audience conversations, the toy brand generated 82% share of engagement of the top 50 most engaging brand collaborator posts and 13% of the 50 most engaging World Cup posts overall.

Why it matters: LEGO showed that brands don’t necessarily need official sponsorship status to be a leading voice in major cultural moments. By combining a multi-stage launch with big stars and audience interaction (as well as appealing to overlapping football and LEGO collector audiences) the brand turned a licensing deal into one of the tournament's most talked-about campaigns.

<blockquote class="tiktok-embed" cite="https://www.tiktok.com/@lamine.yamal/video/7645346910550691094" data-video-id="7645346910550691094" style="max-width: 605px;min-width: 325px;" > <section> <a target="_blank" title="@lamine.yamal" href="https://www.tiktok.com/@lamine.yamal?refer=embed">@lamine.yamal</a> <a title="fifaworldcup" target="_blank" href="https://www.tiktok.com/tag/fifaworldcup?refer=embed">#FIFAWORLDCUP</a> <a target="_blank" title="♬ sonido original - Lamine Yamal" href="https://www.tiktok.com/music/sonido-original-7645346922064136982?refer=embed">♬ sonido original - Lamine Yamal</a> </section> </blockquote> <script async src="https://www.tiktok.com/embed.js"></script>

Spain’s Lamine Yamal posted a TikTok on May 29 that far outperformed all other FIFA, brand, and athlete posts about the tournament. The video, which uses an official, gamified World Cup 2026 filter, shows him attempting to correctly pronounce the names of other competing players. 

In a funny twist, the filter fails to register his pronunciation of his own name as correct, causing him to lose the game. That single TikTok has generated 19.6 million likes and counting, along with over 196,000 comments, one million saves, and 1.5 million shares. Its success highlights how unpolished, personality-led content (along with interactive filters, as we saw in our Lunar New Year analysis) can be a magnet for audience participation. 

The most strategically significant planned post is Lamine Yamal's @lamineyamal February partnership, generating 0.8% of all sponsor period engagement from 40M reach off a single post. Yamal's personal TikTok generated 12.6% of all event-wide top-50 engagement, more than any brand, FIFA account, or other athlete in the full tournament conversation. A single February partnership post converting that audience into sponsor engagement is the clearest example in the data of athlete reach translating directly into sponsor equity.

Among players driving World Cup engagement, Messi was Yamal’s closest competitor, thanks to his starring role in both the LEGO and Adidas campaigns, as well as Michelob Ultra and Lay’s. The Argentine player is the star of Adidas’ collaborative campaign with fashion brand Kith. A fancam TikTok featuring clips from the main Adidas ad along with Messi’s on-field highlights proved to be the highest-engagement post across all sponsor mentions, accounting for 5.9% of all sponsor-period engagement.

Why it matters: Yamal and Messi's success shows that both authenticity and strategic sponsorships can deliver outsized attention when they align with how fans already consume content online.

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