HOT@DOT: Owning the Response
| Red Dot
Hot@Dot is a blog series where the Red Dot team explores what’s catching our attention—and why it matters. From emerging tools to standout ideas, we connect inspiration with real-world impact. In a crowded comms landscape, these are the sparks that lead to smarter strategies, stronger brands, and better business decisions.
By Amy Johnson, Digital Growth Director
I grew up playing soccer, so I expected the 2026 World Cup to catch my attention for the obvious reasons: teams, players, matchups, scores. But that’s not what’s pulled me in this year.
The stories that stuck with me had very little to do with soccer itself. Instead, they were about how brands, cities, and communities responded to the events happening around them. Levi’s turning a branding restriction at Levi’s Stadium into a conversation piece. Boston welcoming Scottish fans with open arms. In both cases, the memorable part wasn’t a perfectly scripted campaign. It was an intentional response.
Brands don’t always get to choose the moment. But they do get to choose how they show up.
For Levi’s, what could have been viewed as a limitation (FIFA requiring all brand names to be scrubbed from official venues) was leveraged as an opportunity to create engagement. The company went all in—from changing its profile picture on Instagram to covering up Levi’s logos on storefronts around the world, including Paris, London, Brazil, Mexico, Hong Kong, and more.
In addition, watching Boston embrace the onslaught of Scots (from my social feeds on my phone at home in Iowa, mind you) truly warmed my heart. In a time when it’s easy to focus on disruption or inconvenience, city leaders and residents chose instead to focus on hospitality and connection.
Moments like these are what make a global event like the World Cup so interesting. Millions are paying attention to the same thing at the same time—yet their attention isn’t only on the games, but everything around them.
They notice how cities prepare (or don’t).
They notice how businesses adapt.
They notice who seems genuinely welcoming and who seems inconvenienced.
They notice which brands are trying too hard to be a part of the conversation and which ones are adding something that actually hits.
That Levi’s reel reportedly earned 2.5 million likes, 28,000 comments, 41,600, reposts and nearly 90 million impressions—a huge jump from the brand’s typical post performance. The numbers are impressive, but what I like most is what they prove: people respond when a brand knows who it is, understands the moment and shows up in a way that feels natural.
That difference matters. Sometimes the best strategy is about understanding the moment, you’re in and responding with creativity, empathy, and a clear sense of who you are.
At Red Dot, that’s where this becomes more than an interesting World Cup observation. We talk a lot about brand as more than a logo, a website, or a campaign. Brand is how an organization behaves. It’s how decisions are made. It’s how teams respond when the plan changes. It’s how people are treated when they walk through the door, land on the website, call customer service, or interact with your team in a moment that no one had fully scripted.
It also makes me appreciate the team at Red Dot. Each person on our team brings a different lens. Strategy, design, content, digital, project management, public relations, operations, client service. On their own, each perspective has value. Together, they help us see more of the picture.
That matters because our clients are rarely dealing with simple, isolated marketing problems. They are navigating growth, internal alignment, new technology, shifting customer expectations, changing markets, and moments they did not see coming.
The work is not just asking, “What should we say?”
It’s also asking: What is really happening here? What are people paying attention to? Where is there friction? What does this moment reveal about who we are? How can we respond in a way that feels useful, human, and true?
For our clients, that means there’s value in looking beyond the campaign brief and considering the bigger context. That kind of thinking requires curiosity. It requires empathy. It requires paying attention to context, not just deliverables.
The World Cup has been a good reminder that some of the most meaningful brand moments are not planned years in advance. They happen when organizations are paying attention, know who they are, and are ready to respond.
Because brands don’t always choose the moment.
But they do choose what people experience when it arrives.
