The brand cover-up became the story

Whether or not you’re following the World Cup this week, you may have seen this white tarp.

As the games continue across Canada, the US and Mexico, I’ve seen plenty of discussion about outrageous ticket prices, host city costs, fan experiences, sponsorships, and FIFA's famously strict rules.

One of those rules is the tournament's "clean stadium" policy. FIFA requires venues to remove or cover branding from companies that aren't official sponsors. That means some of the most recognizable venues have temporarily lost their identities…

• BMO Field became "Toronto Stadium"

• Levi's Stadium became "San Francisco Bay Area Stadium"

• Mercedes-Benz Stadium became "Atlanta Stadium"

• MetLife Stadium became "New York New Jersey Stadium"

They all temporarily removed the main stadium sponsor name, but this week I’m writing about what happened with Levi’s (it’s too good not to deep dive into).

Before getting into it — I recorded a video version of last week’s edition below. (A few people suggested it, and I’ve been meaning to try). Feel free to watch and let me know if you prefer it for future editions:

The best logo at the World Cup wasn't a logo

To comply with FIFA's rules, Levi's Stadium had to hide the sponsor’s name and branding — so naturally, they covered it.

Instead of using a generic rectangle or taking down the sign, they preserved the silhouette of the famous Levi's "batwing" shape.

It’s just the shape showing (no colour or typography is visible, just the outline).
But we all knew exactly which brand was being hidden:

It went viral. A bunch of us posted about it here on Threads.

Levi's doubled down quickly.

I genuinely laughed as soon as I saw that Levi’s changed its social media profile image to the same covered-up version of the logo and joked about welcoming the world to the beautiful "[redacted] stadium."

I love that in trying to hide the brand, FIFA unintentionally created one of the most talked-about brand moments of the tournament.

Brand strategy meets the Streisand Effect

A quick refresher on the “Streisand Effect”: The more aggressively you try to suppress something, the more attention you often bring to it. (Here’s a big list of examples).

That's part of what happened here, I think. People shared photos, marketers like me covered it, fans joked about it, articles were written about it.

So the covered logo became more interesting than the original logo, and got way more attention.

But I don’t think we’d care as much if Levi's hadn’t already spent decades building one of the most recognizable visual identities in the world.

(You can't pull off this stunt if people don't already know who you are).

Brand is what remains

Even as a trained designer, for years I’ve reinforced the concept that a brand is not a logo. Still, many organizations think their brand is their logo. Visual identity does matter of course, and there are really important visual assets — but they're not the brand.

A brand is the collection of associations, memories, emotions, and expectations that exist in people's minds. The logo is simply one shortcut to see them.

Levi's removed the shortcut, but the associations remained. That's why we instantly recognized the shape.

It's the same reason you can identify the outline of a Coca-Cola bottle, the Nike swoosh, the Apple icon, or McDonald's golden arches without seeing the company name attached. As a design/branding guy, I’ve always enjoyed tests like this one:

What FIFA accidentally revealed

The irony is that FIFA's sponsorship rules exist to protect the value of official sponsorships. The rationale makes sense, because sponsors pay massive amounts of money for exclusivity. FIFA has every incentive to protect that value.

This situation also exposed that brand visibility and brand recognition are not the same thing.

Visibility can be removed, but recognition is harder to erase.

Even reports from inside stadiums described how extensive the debranding efforts became, with branding covered throughout venues and even on everyday products.

Yet one of the most recognizable brands at the tournament wasn't even officially visible. I think that’s an awesome demonstration of accumulated brand equity.

What’s the lesson?

It's easy to look at Levi's and say that this only applies to billion-dollar global brands, but the principle scales down. But whether you're a business, nonprofit, founder, educator, consultant, or community organization, the goal is the same:

Build recognition that extends beyond your logo.

Similar to what’s in some of my branding workshops, I’ll ask you to think about:

• What ideas are people associating with you?

• What perspective do you consistently bring?

• What stories do people remember?

• What shape, phrase, visual cue, format, or experience instantly signals that it's yours?

Crappy AI-generated logos are appearing, and low-lift content is becoming commoditized, so those deeper associations matter even more.

Beyond visibility, it’s about recognition.

Building brands, bending rules

For decades, Levi's invested in building a brand so recognizable that it could remove its name and still be identified instantly. That's the kind of brand equity you can only dream of.

A test of a brand isn't whether people can see your logo, but whether they know it's you when they can't.

And with so many eyeballs on the World Cup, brands are doing whatever they can to get a piece of the action, unofficially. I’ve been enjoying reading about examples of businesses that are not official FIFA sponsors getting as close as they legally can.

What other World Cup brand moments caught your attention? Any examples of brands, host cities, or local businesses finding creative ways to participate within FIFA's restrictions?

As always, thanks for reading.