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.

FIFA World Cup 2026 - Pre-Event .pdf

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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font-family:Arial,sans-serif; font-size:14px; font-style:normal; font-weight:550; line-height:18px;">View this post on Instagram</div></div><div style="padding: 12.5% 0;"></div> <div style="display: flex; flex-direction: row; margin-bottom: 14px; align-items: center;"><div> <div style="background-color: #F4F4F4; border-radius: 50%; height: 12.5px; width: 12.5px; transform: translateX(0px) translateY(7px);"></div> <div style="background-color: #F4F4F4; height: 12.5px; transform: rotate(-45deg) translateX(3px) translateY(1px); width: 12.5px; flex-grow: 0; margin-right: 14px; margin-left: 2px;"></div> <div style="background-color: #F4F4F4; border-radius: 50%; height: 12.5px; width: 12.5px; transform: translateX(9px) translateY(-18px);"></div></div><div style="margin-left: 8px;"> <div style=" background-color: #F4F4F4; border-radius: 50%; flex-grow: 0; height: 20px; width: 20px;"></div> <div style=" width: 0; height: 0; border-top: 2px solid transparent; border-left: 6px solid #f4f4f4; border-bottom: 2px solid transparent; 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overflow:hidden; padding:8px 0 7px; text-align:center; text-overflow:ellipsis; white-space:nowrap;"><a href="https://www.instagram.com/reel/DWnBCQLj7iW/?utm_source=ig_embed&amp;utm_campaign=loading" style=" color:#c9c8cd; font-family:Arial,sans-serif; font-size:14px; font-style:normal; font-weight:normal; line-height:17px; text-decoration:none;" target="_blank">A post shared by LEGO (@lego)</a></p></div></blockquote>
<script async src="//www.instagram.com/embed.js"></script>

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.

The World Cup song, “Dai Dai” by Shakira and Burna Boy, captured 20% of the total engagement of the top 50 most engaging posts, making it the single biggest cultural asset of the pre-tournament period. Ahead of its premiere, audiences around the world were already anticipating the release of a World Cup anthem, a tradition since 1990. So when “Dai Dai” officially dropped in May, it did so to an already involved fan base.

Building on that momentum, the May 14 announcement of the Cup’s first-ever halftime show, headlined by Madonna, Shakira, and BTS, also had a huge impact. Together, it and the World Cup song generated 37% of the engagement of the top 50 posts. So while the sport was the obvious backbone of pre-World Cup hype, the entertainment side of the event expanded its reach beyond die-hard sports fans.

Why it matters: Brands looking to capitalize on major sporting events shouldn't focus exclusively on the game. Some of the tournament's biggest engagement drivers came from adjacent cultural moments, suggesting that entertainment partnerships can be just as effective as sports-focused activations for reaching broad audiences.

Use Case 1: Turning Cultural Moments Into Marketing Opportunities

The Problem: Some of the biggest World Cup conversations emerged from creator content and audience debates.

Monitor emerging conversations, viral trends, and breaking cultural moments with Meltwater Explore+.

Set alerts for sudden spikes in discussion around athletes, creators, campaigns, competitors, and event-related topics.

Identify opportunities to join conversations while audience interest is still growing.

Business Outcome: Increase campaign relevance and earn attention by participating in cultural moments before competitors do.

Use Case 2: Identifying Which Content Resonates Most on Each Social Platform

The Problem: Content that performs well on one platform may underperform on another, making it difficult to know where to invest resources.

Use Meltwater Explore+ to compare engagement, share of voice, and engagement per mention across TikTok, Instagram, X, YouTube, and other social channels.

Identify which content formats—from influencer videos and product launches to athlete partnerships and entertainment activations—are generating the strongest results on each platform.

Analyze audience sentiment and interaction patterns to understand why specific posts resonate with users on different channels.

Business Outcome: Optimize platform-specific content strategies and allocate resources toward the channels and formats most likely to drive engagement.

Use Case 3: Activating the Right Influencers in Every Market

The Problem: Global events create worldwide audiences, but engagement often depends on local relevance.

Use Meltwater Influencer Marketing to discover creators by country, audience demographics, interests, and engagement rates.

Evaluate influencer performance across regions to identify the creators generating the strongest audience response.

Measure campaign impact across markets to determine which partnerships are driving awareness, engagement, and positive sentiment.

Business Outcome: Build globally consistent campaigns that feel locally authentic and generate stronger engagement across priority markets.

The lead-up to the World Cup proved that visibility is important, but audience attention and cultural intelligence differentiate leading brands from the rest of the pack. This is especially true for global events, where every brand is fighting for relevance in an oversaturated playing field.

Coca-Cola, LEGO, Yamal, and others proved that audiences are eager to engage in campaigns that give them something to relate to and discuss in digital arenas. Inviting fans into the action can have a greater impact than just giving them something to watch. As the event unfolds, the brands that succeed will be those that can identify and quickly adapt to emerging conversations. 

Want to move beyond awareness and measure what truly captures audience attention? Discover how Meltwater helps brands track engagement, uncover emerging trends, and understand which campaigns are driving meaningful audience participation.

How did non-sponsor brands perform compared to official World Cup sponsors in pre-event conversation and engagement?

Some non-sponsor brands like LEGO generated significantly higher engagement despite lower mention volume. According to Meltwater Explore+ data, LEGO’s campaign drove stronger audience interaction than those of official sponsors through creators, product launches, and shareable content.

Which World Cup sponsor generated the most engagement?

Coca-Cola generated the largest share of sponsor engagement. Meltwater’s Explore+ analysis shows the brand captured more than 43% of total sponsor engagement, outperforming Adidas despite similar levels of conversation volume.

Why were influencer campaigns so successful during the World Cup?

Influencers helped brands connect global events to local audiences. Meltwater’s Explore+ insights show that creators across Latin America, Africa, and Asia played a key role in extending Coca-Cola’s campaign reach and increasing audience participation.

What was the most engaging World Cup-related social media post?

A TikTok from Spain's Lamine Yamal generated the highest engagement of any World Cup-related post during the reporting period. According to Meltwater Explore+ data, the video accumulated millions of likes, shares, saves, and comments by combining humor with a platform-native, interactive filter.

What made LEGO's World Cup campaign successful?

The campaign combined a premium product launch, global football stars, and audience participation. Meltwater’s Explore+ analysis found that LEGO's multi-stage campaign generated the largest share of engagement among major World Cup brand collaborations.

How important was entertainment to World Cup engagement?

Entertainment content became one of the largest engagement drivers before the tournament began. Meltwater Explore+ data shows that the World Cup anthem and halftime show announcement accounted for more than one-third of engagement across the 50 top-performing posts.

What can brands learn from World Cup social media trends?

Audiences increasingly reward relevance and opportunities for participation. According to Meltwater’s Explore+ analysis, campaigns that aligned with creator culture, local audiences, and platform-native behaviors tended to outperform campaigns focused solely on sponsorship visibility.

Learn how to turn global cultural moments into marketing opportunities. See Meltwater in Action

Who Won World Cup Marketing Before Kickoff?

We analyzed over one million online discussions of GLP-1 medications (widely used for weight management) to understand consumer attitudes towards these increasingly popular drugs. 

GLP-1 medications continue to be one of the defining healthcare and consumer trends of 2026. The swell of online conversation supports this, however it also reveals a distinct fragmentation and wide thematic differentiation depending on where conversations are happening. 

While aggregate mention and engagement figures suggest a single massive discussion, Meltwater Explore+ social listening analysis reveals something more nuanced: each platform is hosting its own distinct interpretation of what GLP-1s represent.

Understanding GLP-1 conversations therefore means reading each platform separately rather than averaging them together. The differences between them reveal how audiences process healthcare trends through entirely different social behaviors depending on platform context.

GLP-1 conversation volume remained stable, but engagement became more volatile

Reddit has become the internet’s unofficial GLP-1 support network

Pinterest users are focused on the practical side of the GLP-1 lifestyle

How Meltwater Explore+ helps marketers understand platform-specific audience behavior

FAQ: GLP-1 consumer intelligence and social listening

<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, 2026 – May 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;">
        Reddit, X and Pinterest, with all-platform totals used for broader volume and engagement context.
      </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;">
        Ozempic, Wegovy, Mounjaro, Zepbound, Semaglutide, Tirzepatide, Retatrutide, Saxenda, Rybelsus, Orforglipron, Novo Nordisk, Eli Lilly, Liraglutide, Cagrisema, Pfizer, Berberine, Survodutide, TrumpRx, Metformin, Mazdutide, Roche
      </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>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.<br><br>
        <strong>Subreddit:</strong> A user-created community on Reddit dedicated to a particular interest or topic.
      </td>
    </tr>
  </tbody>
</table>

Download a one-page pdf summarizing the findings of this analysis

Across the three-platform analysis set, Reddit accounted for approximately 81% of total mentions, followed by X at around 16%, and Pinterest at around 3%.

GLP-1 discussion volume remained broadly stable between January and April 2026, fluctuating by only around 11% between the lowest and highest full months of analysis.

March and April represented the highest sustained discussion periods, driven by GLP-1 pill approval news, ongoing Reddit community activity and viral educational content such as the widely circulated Kurzgesagt Ozempic video.

The Uncomfortable Truth About Ozempic

At the same time, engagement became more volatile. Total engagement peaked at 24.7 million in January before falling by roughly 27% by the partial May dataset despite relatively stable mention volume. Rather than indicating declining interest, the data suggests the conversation is shifting from viral, event-driven spikes into higher-volume, lower-engagement community discussion.

1.18 million: the number of GLP-1 mentions across Reddit, X and Pinterest between January 1 and May 21, 2026

97.5 million: Total engagement actions across the analysis period

81%: Share of analyzed platform mentions occurring on Reddit

Why this matters: Monitoring strategies focused only on engagement spikes risk misreading the maturation of the GLP-1 conversation. As discussion shifts toward sustained community participation, marketers need platform-level behavioral intelligence rather than viral metrics alone.

Reddit is where the GLP-1 patient conversation lives at its deepest and most sustained level. The platform functions less like a traditional social network and more like a distributed peer-support infrastructure for people actively navigating treatment and researching treatment options. At 81%, Reddit accounts for the highest SOV in GLP-1 mentions, compared to X and Pinterest. 

Patient experience and treatment management accounted for roughly 28% of Reddit discussion themes, making it the largest conversation category in the dataset. Posts focused heavily on dosing, side effects, medication switching, injections, and compounding. Side effect discussion intensified steadily through April, suggesting users are moving deeper into long-term treatment journeys and increasingly relying on peer communities to fill information gaps — amplifying studies on side effects not captured in trials, such as this April study. 

Access, cost and insurance concerns represented another persistent theme, accounting for approximately 12% of thematic discussion. FDA action against compounded GLP-1 medications sharpened these anxieties during February and April, particularly in drug-specific subreddits.

One of the clearest structural signals is the divergence between patient language and public language. Tirzepatide-focused communities accounted for roughly 44% of mentions across the top 30 GLP-1 subreddits, compared with approximately 20% for semaglutide-focused communities, even while Ozempic remains the dominant public shorthand for the category.

Also of note is the emergence of retatrutide discussion. Despite not yet being FDA-approved, retatrutide already accounts for roughly 4% of Reddit mentions, with dedicated communities such as r/Peptides and r/ResearchCompounds discussing trial data, peer experiences, and potential future use cases. The level of interest suggests consumer demand is running ahead of the regulatory timeline, with an active community already building its own reference framework.

28%: Share of Reddit thematic signal focused on treatment management

44%: Share of top-30 subreddit mentions tied to Tirzepatide communities

4%: Share of Reddit mentions already discussing retatrutide despite lacking FDA approval

Why this matters: Reddit reveals the gap between cultural perception and patient reality. For marketers and healthcare communicators, understanding side effects, access anxiety and treatment management behavior requires listening to patient-led communities rather than relying solely on broader social commentary. The growing retatrutide conversation also offers an early view into how patient expectations and narratives can develop well before a treatment reaches the market.

GLP-1s have become a cultural flashpoint on X

X is hosting a fundamentally different GLP-1 conversation from Reddit though, importantly, mention volume on X accounts for lower overall SOV (16%). Rather than functioning as a patient support environment, the platform operates as a cultural commentary arena. 

High-engagement posts frequently came from media personalities discussing celebrity weight loss trends, political commentators framing GLP-1 adoption as an economic or healthcare policy issue, and wellness influencers debating the long-term implications of pharmaceutical weight management. Viral moments were often sparked by reactions to celebrity transformations, discussions of Ozempic's impact on beauty standards, or commentary on the growing market power of companies such as Novo Nordisk and Eli Lilly.

Body image, culture, and social commentary represented roughly 19% of thematic signals within the X discussions analyzed, and generated a disproportionately large share of engagement. Conversations around the perceived collapse of body positivity in the era of Ozempic resurfaced repeatedly throughout January, March and May without any single triggering event, suggesting the topic has become a recurring structural feature of GLP-1 discourse on the platform.

Political and economic framing represented another highly engaging discussion category on X particularly around pharmaceutical dependency, healthcare economics and policy speculation. Unlike Reddit, where discussions were largely driven by patients sharing treatment experiences and navigating day-to-day realities of GLP-1 use, the highest-engagement X posts were shaped by journalists, political commentators, and general-interest accounts that repositioned GLP-1 topics into broader cultural narratives.

Skeptical or anti-GLP-1 viewpoints made up a relatively small share of overall discussions on X, but they generated outsized engagement. In other words, posts criticizing GLP-1 medications were more likely to be shared, commented on, or debated, highlighting how a relatively small group of voices can exert a disproportionate influence on public perception.

19%: Share of thematic posts tied to body image and cultural commentary

5%: Share tied to political and economic framing

3%: Share tied to skepticism and opposition narratives

Why this matters: The highest-engagement GLP-1 discussion on X is being shaped by cultural commentators rather than healthcare experts. Brands need culturally fluent communications strategies capable of responding to recurring narrative cycles around body image, celebrity culture, and economic anxiety.

Pinterest functions less like a debate platform and more like a lifestyle implementation engine for people already committed to GLP-1 treatment or adjacent health routines. Pinterest discussions also occupy just 3% of total mentions, meaning the lowest SOV between all 3 platforms.

Unlike Reddit and X, Pinterest users are focused on putting GLP-1 routines into practice. Approximately 96% of sampled Pinterest posts referenced a specific GLP-1 medication, suggesting users have largely moved beyond the awareness and decision phases and are now focused on optimizing daily routines around treatment.

The dominant content categories on Pinterest tend to be protein recipes, meal planning, exercise, body composition, and low-carb nutrition. These themes remained stable throughout the analysis period, reinforcing their role as foundational GLP-1 lifestyle behaviors rather than short-lived trends.

The strongest emerging signal on Pinterest was the rapid growth of product review and personal experience content, which increased by roughly 60% between January and April. At the same time, interest in “natural Ozempic” alternatives and wellness-adjacent discovery content declined sharply, suggesting audiences are moving away from speculative exploration and toward long-term treatment management.

Pinterest also showed dramatically more positive sentiment than the broader platform ecosystem. However, the data suggests much of this positivity reflects Pinterest’s save-based mechanics and coordinated affiliate-style content amplification rather than true patient emotional sentiment.

It's also worth noting that many of Pinterest's highest-engagement GLP-1 posts were near-identical versions of the same keto cookbook content, which contains mention of “wegovy diet plan”, and has been republished across multiple accounts. This pattern is more consistent with coordinated affiliate-style distribution than a diverse creator ecosystem, and likely contributes to both the platform's unusually high engagement figures.

+69%: Share of sampled posts featuring protein recipes

+60%: Growth in review and personal experience content from January to April

-66%: Drop in natural GLP-1 alternative content between January and May

Why this matters: Pinterest users are actively searching for practical lifestyle support around GLP-1 treatment, but credible guidance remains limited. Brands that provide useful, savable, and platform-native educational content have an opportunity to fill a growing information gap.

Use Case 1: Identifying platform-specific audience dynamics

GLP-1 audiences behave differently across Reddit, X, and Pinterest, making aggregate social listening insufficient for understanding consumer behavior.

Monitor platform-specific conversation themes, and sentiment shifts in real time

Track how narratives evolve differently across patient, cultural, and lifestyle-oriented communities

Identify emerging behavioral trends before they appear in mainstream reporting

Audience strategies informed by how consumers actually behave on each platform, rather than relying on blended social averages, deliver better results. 

Use Case 2: Detecting emerging cultural narratives

Recurring cultural narratives around GLP-1s, including body image commentary, and anxiety around affordability, can reshape public perception rapidly.

Surface fast-moving cultural narratives through real-time social listening

Detect early spikes tied to policy decisions, research studies, and viral commentary

Benchmark evolving discussion themes against broader industry conversation

Respond earlier to emerging reputational risks and cultural shifts, staying in control of evolving conversations rather than constantly playing catch-up.

Use Case 3: Understanding long-term consumer behavior trends

The GLP-1 conversation is shifting from viral moments toward sustained lifestyle and treatment-management behavior.

Analyze long-term thematic changes across social and community platforms

Track shifts in patient concerns, lifestyle behaviors, and treatment expectations

Use cross-platform intelligence to identify changing consumer needs over time

Develop more durable marketing, communications, and consumer intelligence strategies grounded in evolving audience behavior.

Want to understand how your audiences behave differently across platforms? Explore the Meltwater platform and learn how our social listening capabilities help brands uncover emerging trends, cultural narratives and consumer behavior shifts in real time. 

Book a meeting with one of our product experts by filling out the form below

GLP-1 discussion is not a single unified conversation. As of 2026, audiences are interpreting the same healthcare phenomenon through entirely different platform behaviors: patient support on Reddit, cultural commentary on X, and lifestyle optimization on Pinterest.

That fragmentation matters because it changes how brands, marketers and healthcare communicators should interpret online conversations — and shift their approach based on where and how conversations are evolving. The next phase of GLP-1 discussion will likely be shaped less by explosive viral moments and more by sustained behavioral patterns around treatment management, affordability, cultural identity, and lifestyle integration. Emerging discussions around next-generation treatments such as retatrutide further suggest that online communities are already looking beyond today's leading offerings and actively shaping expectations for what comes next.

Detect emerging cultural narratives and tap into long-term consumer behavior trends with real-time intelligence. 

How Reddit, X, and Pinterest Are Shaping Completely Different GLP-1 Conversations

LLMs have become hugely influential in consumer decision making, but that impact doesn’t stop at ecommerce. Nearly half of all prospective college students are using AI to help decide which institution is right for them, according to one survey. For universities, that begs the question of what these students are seeing. 

We used GenAI Lens, Meltwater’s AI Visibility Tracking capability, to dig into the data behind LLM recommendations to UK and US students seeking schools with strong alumni networks and the promise of high salaries. 

What we found highlights just how dynamic AI visibility is, shifting across markets, prompts, and even the LLM models themselves. For all organizations, including schools, understanding how that landscape operates is a key capability for remaining competitive.

Stanford and Harvard dominated LLM responses across both prompts and markets analyzed.

How do LLMs recommend the top universities for alumni networks?

How do LLMs recommend the top universities for future earnings?

How do college recommendations vary across LLM models?

How Meltwater AI Visibility Tracking helps universities own their AI visibility

FAQ: AI Visibility in Higher Education Recommendations

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        Capability
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      <td style="padding:8px 14px 8px 10px; border:1px solid #d9d9d9; font-size:12px;">
        AI Visibility Tracking
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        Analysis window
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        April 27 – May 18, 2026
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        Markets
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        US &amp; UK
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        Data sources
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        <ul style="margin:0; padding-left:16px; font-size:12px;">
          <li style="margin-bottom:1px;">Claude</li>
          <li style="margin-bottom:1px;">DeepSeek</li>
          <li style="margin-bottom:1px;">ChatGPT</li>
          <li style="margin-bottom:1px;">Grok</li>
          <li style="margin-bottom:1px;">Llama</li>
          <li style="margin-bottom:1px;">Google AI Mode</li>
          <li style="margin-bottom:1px;">Google AI Overviews</li>
          <li>Perplexity</li>
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        Prompts
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            “Which universities have the best alumni networks?”
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          <li>
            “Which universities lead to the highest salaries?”
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        Key term definitions
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          <span style="font-weight:700;">Visibility / Visibility Score:</span>
          A score from 0 to 99 measuring how prominently an entity appears in AI-generated responses
        </p>

        <p style="margin:0; font-size:12px;">
          <span style="font-weight:700;">Mentions:</span>
          the number of instances when key words and phrases appeared within a piece or collection of content
        </p>

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  </tbody>
</table>

Meltwater GenAI Lens University AI Visibility One-Pager.pdf

Download a one-page pdf summarizing the findings of this analysis.

Across models in both the US and UK, the US-based Stanford and Harvard Universities have the highest visibility scores, followed by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). With all three being internationally recognized schools that have among the highest numbers of billionaire alumni, their prominence highlights how much LLM recommendations currently reflect established prestige, with few surprises in the top rankings. 

More revealing is how each school’s prominence shifts based on prompt and geography, as seen in the table above. Overall, Stanford is the most consistently strong institution across all four prompt breakdowns.

Notably, a non-US competitor only emerges when we narrow our focus to the UK. There, the Institut Européen d'Administration des Affaires, a graduate business school in France better known as INSEAD, achieves an aggregate 43% Visibility Score on the alumni network prompt. On ChatGPT alone, however, its visibility jumps to 94%.
INSEAD’s AI narrative consistently emphasizes a multinational alumni network spanning 90+ nationalities with strong European consulting and finance placement. Among the content informing that narrative is up-to-date, AI-crawlable content, including owned assets like its employment statistics and UK-based alumni network websites.

Why this matters: AI visibility is highly shaped by prompt context and intent, with established reputation playing a large part. In the case of higher education, schools looking to improve their prominence and mention frequency need to build up their online footprint with published assets that speak to their target audience’s biggest concerns. Websites with content like data-backed salary reports and alumni network resources can prove to be the strongest LLM magnets.

Sources featuring user-generated content (UGC) and niche expertise are most influential in LLM recommendations for schools with the top alumni networks. Meanwhile, owned and earned media are largely absent. 

Because “best alumni network” is a relatively subjective distinction, LLMs seek out first-person testimonials to determine its answers. As a result, Reddit tops the source list in the US with 188 citations, followed by Almabase, an alumni engagement CRM, with 177 citations. That top two ranking is swapped in the UK, with 179 citations for Almabase and 174 citations for Reddit.

Almabase’s prominence is particularly notable as it is the only B2B higher education brand with this level of influence. Its website features a robust ecosystem of public-facing blogs and other resources with structured information focused on alumni engagement. Thanks to this established footprint on the topic, LLMs trust it for focused expertise. 

Why this matters: In this higher education use case, prompts that lean more subjective, LLMs prioritize sources where real people can share their lived experiences and subject matter experts can share their insights. For organizations, driving alumni engagement on platforms like Reddit, LinkedIn, and Facebook can have a meaningful impact on AI visibility.

Finance-focused, data-rich, and niche information sources are most influential on LLM responses to the prompt "Which universities lead to the highest salaries?"

Unlike the alumni network prompt, the question of earnings comes down to hard numbers. So, instead of looking to user-generated content, LLMs rely on news and statistical reporting. Specifically, CNBC was the top source in the US and the UK with 199 and 143 citations respectively. Statista was also a trusted source, generating 102 citations in the US and 71 in the UK. 

Interestingly, results for each region also leaned on student-focused websites alongside broader media and data sources. In the UK, Save the Student, a UK-based student deals website, was cited 94 times, making it the second leading source. In the US, Poets & Quants for Undergrads, a news and resource hub for undergraduate business students, achieved 85 citations and ranked third. The prominence of both speaks to the importance of including niche, expert-led digital outlets in earned media strategies.

Another meaningful geographic difference emerged in the terms LLMs used in their responses. In the US, answers primarily associated higher salaries with leading tech, followed by finance (288 vs. 215 mentions). In the UK, finance and tech were almost equally visible (301 vs. 302 mentions). This variation highlights how LLMs adapt recommendations to regional economic and employment priorities.

Why this matters: In the above example, prompts seeking more objective information and data tend to lean on structured content rich with statistics and figures. Organizations looking to influence LLM responses around measurable outcomes should prioritize publicizing relevant data and research, complete with tailored messaging, in the financial and student-focused media outlets that influence them most.

DeepSeek has the most polarized recommendations while others, including ChatGPT (a college student favorite) offer more measured, distributed visibility between the top schools.

For example, in the above visibility score heatmap for US and UK LLM responses to our alumni network prompt, three schools achieve over 90% visibility on DeepSeek, more than on any other model. But while MIT and Stanford score high there, their visibility plunges on ChatGPT, where no school scored above 58%.

Similar discrepancies emerged in our salary prompt, with Stanford scoring 99% in DeepSeek versus just 17% in ChatGPT in the US, and 99% versus 16% in the UK.
Why this matters: There is no single AI search result or visibility score. Instead, different models cite and weigh sources differently, creating meaningful narrative variations. Identifying and addressing these gaps are possible, but it all begins with model- and prompt-specific analyses instead of aggregate ones. 

Use Case 1: Identifying influential LLM sources

Meltwater AI Visibility Tracking, also known as GenAI Lens, automatically identifies the most-cited sources as it analyzes prompts. 

Identify leading sources, including individual websites and leading journalists 

Determine topic strengths and narrative gaps

Highlight opportunities for GEO optimization

The result: Stronger GEO and earned media strategies that boost AI visibility for the prompts that impact you most. 

Use Case 2: Identifying and benchmarking AI visibility against competitors

Outstrategize your peers with GenAI Lens’s competitive benchmarking across prompts, models, and regions.

Benchmark AI Visibility Scores against established and emerging competitors

Pinpoint the narratives and content that drive competitor visibility

Track visibility shifts across models like ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, and DeepSeek

The result: Spend less time doing exploratory research and more time executing the strategies that will have measurable impact on your LLM share of voice. 

Use Case 3: Tailoring LLM strategies to geographic markets

GenAI Lens’s geolocation capabilities highlight the nuances organizations need to know to shape their strategies for different regions.

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