There was a time when halftime at a major sporting event meant marching bands, or perhaps a wardrobe malfunction, or simply a chance to refill one's beverage. On Sunday, at the Round of 16 World Cup match between Brazil and Norway, it meant watching a robot perform Erling Haaland's goal celebration.

Hyundai Motor Company, which has been a FIFA sponsor since 1999, deployed Atlas, the advanced humanoid robot developed by Boston Dynamics, to deliver the match ball at New York/New Jersey Stadium. The robot then performed signature celebrations from stars including Brazil's Matheus Cunha and Mr. Haaland of Norway — a sentence that would have required considerable explanation to a reader of this column even five years ago.

"Rather than talking about innovation, we wanted to demonstrate it at the biggest scale possible," said Sungwon Jee, executive vice president and global chief marketing officer of Hyundai Motor Company. "The World Cup gave us that stage."

Mr. Jee, in the manner of marketing executives since time immemorial, characterized the activation as something more than a stunt. "We're not just competing with other sponsors on that pitch," he said. "We're competing with every reel, every short-form, every piece of content flooding people's screens every second of every day."

(One imagines the reels are indeed flooding.)

The demonstration was part of Hyundai's "Next Starts Now" campaign platform, which positions the company as what Mr. Jee called "a future-focused mobility company" rather than merely an automotive manufacturer. Boston Dynamics, it should be noted, has been a Hyundai subsidiary since the Korean conglomerate acquired a controlling stake in 2020.

Atlas, Mr. Jee said, underwent extensive pre-training and rehearsal. While an operator initiates the robot's actions, its balance and movement are autonomous — a distinction that matters more to engineers than to the average viewer watching a machine mime a Norwegian striker.

A second Boston Dynamics robot, the quadruped Spot, is conducting autonomous security patrols at tournament venues, though this work is considerably less photogenic.

"They're not coming," Mr. Jee said of the robots. "They're already here."

So, apparently, is the future that sponsors have been promising for decades. It just walks a little stiffly.

Original story published in adweek.com: "Hyundai Upgrades World Cup Stunts With First Robot-Powered Halftime Activation"