There was a time when the World Cup sold itself, at least in countries where football meant something played with feet. The United States has never been such a country, which is why Fox Sports, holder of the English-language broadcast rights to this summer's tournament, has spent the better part of a year trying to persuade Americans that they ought to care.

The campaign began last summer and has continued through the network's other sports properties — NFL games, Nascar races, IndyCar events — in what amounts to a sustained effort to borrow enthusiasm from competitions Americans already understand and redirect it toward one they historically have not.

"We're not just targeting the soccer fans or the die-hards," said Keri Gajewski, vice president of brand marketing for Fox Sports. "We want the entire country to know. It's not just a sports event; it's a cultural moment that we want everybody to be part of, and we have to sustain it for 39 days."

Thirty-nine days is, of course, a long time to sustain anything in the American attention economy, which may explain the inflatables. Fox Sports has deployed 40-foot-tall balloon likenesses of Lionel Messi of Argentina, Lamine Yamal of Spain, and Christian Pulisic — the United States men's national team player sometimes called Captain America — in various locations around the country. The intention, Ms. Gajewski said, was to generate social media sharing and conversation during what she described as the awareness phase of the campaign.

(One imagines the awareness phase for Mr. Messi requires somewhat less inflation in, say, Buenos Aires.)

The United States men's team, which has never won a World Cup, has so far advanced to the round of 32, providing Fox Sports with at least a temporary narrative tailwind. Whether American audiences will remain invested through the tournament's later stages — when the matches no longer feature Americans — is the question that no number of giant balloons can answer in advance.

Original story published in Marketing Brew: "Inside Fox Sports’s World Cup marketing blitz"