Viking chants and chicken sandwiches

Hello friends,

I think the biggest branding lesson of the past few weeks, and the one I want to touch on in this week's article, is how successfully Erling Haaland and Norway world built around this FIFA World Cup. I get asked all the time how to world build on a budget, and I believe Norway and the brands around them absolutely executed what world building represents without needing a lot of money to do it.

Norway Treated the World Cup as a Product Launch

Norway is a small country of five and a half million people, and it had not played in a World Cup since 1998. They decided to create a moment out of simply showing up. They had a star player leading the roster, and instead of doing what every other team does, i.e., Argentina building around Messi and France around Mbappé, they leaned into character development. They created a storyline, amplified their culture, and created a reason for you to participate and cheer them on. That is exactly what world-building is, whether you are selling a product, selling a service, or playing as a team in the World Cup, because the way to win in the current landscape of algorithmic saturation is to stop the scroll and stand out in a way that is different and authentic to your brand.

Haaland Leaned Into Content the Rest of His Sport Still Avoids

There are so many pieces of this you can lean on, starting with Haaland's ability to create content and come across as relatable and real, which is extremely rare for an athlete and rarer still for one in a team sport. For as long as I can remember, sports has looked down on players who take the time to individually create content, whereas Haaland leaned all the way in. His Snapchat has been popping off, and he spent the tournament posting vlog-style footage of himself trying on cowboy hats and boots and eating his way through the American cities he was playing in. That is so new coming from a sports figure, and he did it in a way that was tasteful and likable, right down to buying a taxidermy raccoon in Dallas and carrying it home to Norway.

The Viking Ro Turned Heritage Into Something Anyone Could Join

Then you have Norway building one of the most iconic world-building sounds of the whole tournament with their Viking Ro. It started at a goalless friendly against Switzerland in March, when the supporters sat down in unison and began mimicking the pull of a Viking oar to a drumbeat and the chant of "Ro," the Norwegian word for row. By the time the World Cup arrived, it had become the country's signature, with captain Martin Ødegaard banging the drum, the players dropping to the grass to row alongside the fans after wins, and the movement spilling out into Times Square, New York subway cars, and the streets of Oslo.

Norway Turned the Team Photo Into a Storyline

Look at how they handled their team photo, and then look at how every other team does the same boring version, i.e., identical rows of players in matching tracksuits against a plain backdrop. Norway staged theirs dressed in their Viking heritage, created characters and a plot, and released so much behind-the-scenes footage that the storyline became genuinely interesting online. It almost looked like AI or CGI, which is part of what made it so cool.

Two Airlines Won World Cup Attention Without a Sponsorship

You can even look at the wager between Norwegian Air and British Airways, where Norwegian, which pays FIFA nothing, dared BA on Instagram to a bet that the loser would wear the winner's logo for a day. They then lost when England knocked Norway out, changed their profile to the BA crest, and turned the whole thing into a flash sale across their "Norwenglish" routes.

Consistency Is What Compounded the Pieces Into a World

What all of this comes down to is consistency. They did not do one thing; they did a whole collection of things, and the accumulation of all of it, the hairstyles, the uniforms, the Norwegian culture, and the chant, compounded into a world people could enter into during the World Cup. That is why they were such a captivating team, and it is why so many people ended up cheering, in that final quarterfinal, for a country that had not made a World Cup since 1998.

Chick-fil-A Has Run the Same Playbook for Sixty Years

Which brings me to the book I want to focus on this week, which is S. Truett Cathy's Eat Mor Chikin: Inspire More People, his story of building Chick-fil-A. I did a case study this week on the power of consistency because the four pillars that make a strong brand are:

● A good product
● A good story
● A good experience
● Consistency

What Norway and Erling Haaland did was execute exceptionally on that fourth pillar. They had a great product in their player, they had a fantastic story they created for themselves, they built an experience that let people buy in, and they stayed consistent in how they delivered all of it. Those things together are what compounded over time into a great brand.

This week I sat down with the founders of Hot Girl Pickles, who quit their jobs to start a pickle company while everyone around them asked what the hell they were doing. They bootstrapped it, had no budget for ads or influencers, launched with shipping that cost more than the jar, and still sold out in under three months. Since then, they've landed at Erewhon and Whole Foods, and have become the brand that marketing agencies keep bringing up in client meetings.

On the episode:

● Why they left the corporate world to build one of the internet's most talked-about pickle brands.
● How they turned their comment section into the world's biggest focus group, without anyone realizing they were part of it.
● The story behind two months of flat growth, followed by 10,000 new followers in just four days from content that barely featured the product.
● How breaking every rule of food marketing, including putting a pickle in a condom, helped land them in Erewhon.
● Why 150,000 followers can have more cultural influence than 20 million, and the audience metric most founders still get wrong.

♢ Social Media & Brand Planner: The ultimate tool to build your brand and your social media at the same time. Purchase Here.

♢ My Masterclass: Learn the exact system top brands use to turn attention online into customers and sales. Enroll Here.

♢ My International Marketing Agency: Strategic and creative services for leading brands and ambitious small businesses alike. Inquire Here.

♢ Substack: Daily case studies and breakdowns that go deep on what separates brands that scale from brands that stall. Subscribe here.

♢ Podcast: Tune in for the most informative and entertaining debates on brand, business and trends. Subscribe & Listen.