Lay’s extends World Cup push with star campaign and WhatsApp fan hub

Lay’s has unveiled the next phase of its “No Lay’s, No Game” platform as it ramps up activation around the FIFA World Cup, shifting focus from travel-heavy live attendance to an at-home watch party proposition.The PepsiCo snacks brand said this is its first time serving as a global sponsor of the World Cup, driving a bigger campaign playbook that blends mass-reach advertising with direct-to-fan messaging on WhatsApp.Alexis Porter, vice president of marketing for international foods at Lay’s, said: “We’ve taken it to another level.”The new creative reunites previous campaign faces David Beckham, Thierry Henry, Lionel Messi and Alexia Putellas, and adds actor Steve Carell to broaden the appeal beyond core football audiences.Porter said: “It’s a cultural moment, and so we want to make sure we’re not a brand that’s just going to put our logo on it.”The central stunt was filmed in the parking lot of a real supermarket in southern Florida, where the celebrity group approached shoppers to check whether Lay’s products were in their bags.Consumers who had bought Lay’s were handed invitations to a high-profile watch party, with the brand capturing real reactions and unscripted interactions as the core storytelling device.Carell’s role is positioned as an accessibility lever, using humour, including a karaoke moment, to make a football-first campaign feel welcoming to casual viewers and social watch party audiences.Porter said: “It’s for everyone, so we wanted to make sure that we weren’t just using footballers, that we were including somebody that represents every fan — somebody who’s there for the snacks and the good time.”The broader platform is running in 90 markets across digital, social and broadcast, with Lay’s also planning in-stadium experiences, localised fan gatherings and limited-time flavours to extend the campaign beyond advertising.Behind the work are agencies Slap Global, Hungry Man, Washington Square Films, Omnicom Public Relations and We Are Social, reflecting a production and distribution approach designed for scale across multiple channels.A second pillar is a WhatsApp group chat built for the campaign, which Lay’s said has attracted more than four million followers since launching in March.Porter said WhatsApp built new product functionality to support the activation, allowing fans to follow a celebrity-led group chat style narrative linked to watch party planning.Porter said: “[WhatsApp] had to build a new product for us to be able to create that new storytelling where you had a front row seat to what this famous friend group was talking about as they were planning.”Lay’s said campaign ambassadors post into the group, with controls that allow followers to react and share while limiting open replies, a structure the brand described as “scaled intimacy”.The chat also functions as a distribution hub for brand content such as recipes and games, and as a first-party engagement channel that Lay’s expects to inform future marketing activity beyond football.