Sweetgreen Tapped Atmosphere TV To Introduce World Cup Viewers To Its Wraps
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By Alyssa Boyle
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What does Sweetgreen have in common with the 2026 FIFA World Cup?
They both recently wrapped.
The salad and grain bowl chain first rolled out wraps in May of this year. And the World Cup was an opportune moment for Sweetgreen to showcase the menu item over the course of several weeks, said Katie Sheeran, the brand’s VP of marketing. Portable, handheld items like wraps are a particularly relevant fit for sports content depicting athletes on the move, compared to the salads Sweetgreen is known for, she said.
Speaking of salad, it’s been a rough week for leafy greens, but the campaign was not a reaction to the cyclospora outbreak, Sheeran said. She noted that Sweetgreen is not implicated in the cyclospora outbreak. AdExchanger also prefers to talk about what comes in than what goes out. (Now, lettuce move on.)
Sweetgreen focused on digital out-of-home (DOOH) ad placements designed to capture the attention of viewers watching the World Cup in bars, restaurants and other public places. Sweetgreen tapped the video advertising startup Atmosphere TV for help running a video ad in those public spaces where people were likely watching the World Cup. Atmosphere TV has free ad-supported TV (FAST) channels that it distributes to roughly 60,000 venues in exchange for the ability to run ads on the content. During the World Cup, Atmosphere TV’s FAST channels ran alongside screens airing the tournament.
Even so, Atmosphere TV doesn’t categorize itself as a DOOH platform, according to CRO Ryan Spicer. Instead, it positions itself as connected TV for people who are out and about, because it says its platform is more technologically sophisticated than a lit-up billboard.
Labels aside, what matters to Sweetgreen is capitalizing on the growing number of sports fans who watch tentpole games with others outside the house.
Goal!
This year’s World Cup kicked off on June 11 and ran until July 19, when Spain secured the championship. For Sweetgreen, that nearly 6-week period represented ample time to get the word out on its new wraps, Sheeran said. Repetition over time is a good way to make the message of an ad really stick, she added, especially when that ad feels bespoke to the environment it appears in.
Sweetgreen’s World Cup ad on Atmosphere TV-powered screens was a video featuring a green soccer ball with the company’s branding alongside rotating images of its four wrap flavors. The ad’s call to action encourages fans to “order online or in-app.” The ad was part of Sweetgreen’s broader campaign promoting the launch of its wraps, which also had social videos featuring a range of content creators on social platforms including TikTok.
To increase the odds that its ads would reach the right people, Sweetgreen concentrated its campaign spend within its top regional markets — Chicago, LA, Boston and Washington DC — rather than do a “sweeping national buy,” Sheeran said.
But for Sweetgreen, just showing up in the right cities isn’t enough. It needs to reach fans who are close enough to a Sweetgreen location for the best odds of persuading those fans to try a new wrap while they’re already on the go.
According to Spicer, Atmosphere TV can help brands consolidate their ads to venues that are within two to three miles of store locations. In comparison, brands who buy regional ads by designated market area may reach people as far as 10 miles away, he said, which isn’t as effective.
So far, Sweetgreen’s World Cup campaign results look promising. Audiences who saw the campaign on an Atmosphere TV-run screen visited a physical Sweetgreen store at 113.9% higher rate than those who were not exposed to the ad, according to the brand.
Not every customer is buying in, however. Due to concerns over the cyclospora outbreak, Sweetgreen saw a roughly 4.7% drop in foot traffic on July 18 compared to an average Saturday this year, according to CBS News. You win some, you lose some.
While Sweetgreen primarily considered its campaign as a reach play to build brand awareness and favorability, Sheeran said Sweetgreen also expects to see lower-funnel business outcomes, particularly foot traffic to store locations near where the ads ran.
When asked for additional campaign insights, Sheeran said Sweetgreen is “still wrapping up the reporting.”
Play Bowl!
Sweetgreen is one of many brands that wanted to monetize the momentum around the World Cup with a DOOH play. Turns out live sports are persuading some advertisers to try DOOH.
For Atmosphere TV, it still needs to sell advertisers on why DOOH is a smart investment decision in the age of performance, where campaigns need to demonstrate a high caliber of ad personalization as well as measurement. While Atmosphere TV considers itself to be CTV in real life, its label of choice doesn’t change the fact that most advertisers earmark their CTV budgets for the big screens inside the home.
To woo advertisers, Atmosphere TV pitches itself as a way to reach audiences that are more likely to purchase something (because they are out of the house) at a fraction of the cost. For example, during the World Cup, Atmosphere TV ran video ads on screens directly next to TV sets airing the tournament. Which gives brands a way to appear alongside the game without shelling out the exorbitant costs of appearing within the World Cup as an official sponsor.
Atmosphere TV credits this year’s World Cup for helping it attract new advertiser clients, including Lowe’s, GMC, Modelo and Sweetgreen. According to Atmosphere TV, the World Cup campaigns it ran rewarded advertisers with an average sales lift exceeding 20%.
And Atmosphere TV expects sports fans in urban areas to continue congregating in person to experience the cultural milestones that sports increasingly represent, from the New York Knicks victory in New York City to the World Cup matches that captivated the globe. Spicer said each of these public gatherings represent a critical moment of “attention, joy and positivity.”
The goal for Atmosphere TV, Spicer said, is helping brands “capture that moment.”
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