Industry Issues 1 Paddy Power

Learning Objectives: To study The Paddy Power ad campaign with consideration given to Industry issues, regulation, marketing, promotion.

Key words: Industry Issues

• production
• distribution (and exhibition where relevant)
• marketing and promotion
• regulation issues
• global implications
• relevant historical background

With the Paddy Power Campaign we can discuss regulation issues and distribution.

Paddy Power is an international betting and gaming group founded in 1988. Its unconventional approach to betting and gaming includes the simple vision that interacting with Paddy Power should be entertaining, fun and fair.
Cornerstones of the business are a commitment to providing users with the best product range and highest quality customer service.

But with their core audience comprising men in their twenties and thirties, Paddy Power knew that their customer base was likely to be made up of smartphone users, so by not offering mobile betting the company stood to deny themselves a major competitive advantage. 

Goals 
• To position the company as a 21st-century digital brand 
• To build a point of difference among consumers 
• To achieve a competitive advantage over other bookmakers

Marketing

Why Paddy Power's marketing is all about mischief, PR and press coverage

Irish bookmaker Paddy Power thrives on its reputation as a controversial and, dare I say it, disruptive brand.
The company's marketing strategy is built around headline-grabbing stunts that always sail close to the wind and occasionally verge on being a bit distasteful.
To find out more about how these stunts are put together, I spoke to Paddy Power's mischief champion Harry Dromey.
Dromey is one of the speakers at Econsultancy's Festival of Marketing in November. The two day celebration of the modern marketing industry also features speakers from LEGO, Tesco, Barclays, FT.com and more.

Please briefly explain your role at the company.

My title is Mischief Champion. I am responsible for Paddy Power’s stunts that get the company a huge amount of media coverage and create a load of social buzz.
It’s a cost effective way to build brand awareness, increase affinity with the brand and differentiate us from the competition.

What is the Mischief Department? Why was it created?

Mischief has been an intrinsic part of the brand ever since we were founded 26 years ago.
The founding fathers of Paddy Power realised it really chimed with our customers and differentiated us from our dusty, old competitors.
The Mischief Department's formation in late 2011 was about the business formally recognising the key role mischief has played, and will continue to play, in our growth.
Our main role is to ensure that we continue to land big stunts. Great examples include Nicklas Bendtner scoring to reveal Paddy Power lucky pants at Euro 2012; planes flying over the Ryder Cup spelling out customers tweets in letters made out of smoke; hijacking the 2013 Papal Election with Dennis Rodman in a Popemobile; and getting Professor Hawking to produce a formula that gave World Cup 2014 predictions.



We also help other customer-facing departments across the business to have a consistent, mischievous tone.
This is so customers see one brand whether they see Paddy Power on the telly, in press, on Twitter or Facebook, on the blog, in shop, etc.
To be honest, there are so many talented deviants in the business that I probably do more learning rather than advising when I speak to these other departments.

Does the company have a core traditional marketing team? How do you work with them?

We have a great team who are responsible for the more traditional paid-for channels.
They certainly aren’t traditional in their approach though and are constantly innovating in their own mischievous way.
In all marketing activity, we have to make each euro or pound we spend work extra hard because we don’t have the most money so can’t spend our way to victory.
The core marketing team, editorial team, social team, PR team, mischief team, etc. work pretty seamlessly together because we see massive benefits of being joined up.
Mischief simply wouldn’t work if we didn’t plan campaigns together as we need the other teams to get the news of the latest stunt out there.

Explain the creative process. I assume you have a content calendar tied to sporting events?

No two stunts are ever the same. Most of the time an idea comes from one of our partner agencies.
This year Lucky Generals and Taylor Herring have been on fire. We then work with them and our internal teams to produce an all singing, all dancing campaign to extract as much value from the idea as possible.
We like to see ourselves as an entertainment brand. If we can bring a bit of excitement to life by hijacking an event that few people are betting on, then we’ll do it.
For example, there wasn’t a huge amount of revenue from Papal Election voting or the Brit Awards but we decided to do stunts at both because people were watching and we had something funny to say.

How do you measure the success of your mischievous campaigns? What metrics do you use?

Media coverage, whether that is broadcast, online or print, and social buzz which for us is predominantly on Twitter and Facebook.
We don’t do econometric analysis of the stunts as it would be almost impossible to get an accurate ROI.

Which campaign has been most successful for you, and why?

One of the most successful and most interesting campaigns we did was pretending to cut “C’MON ENGLAND” into the Amazon rainforest a week before the World Cup kicked off.
In a nutshell, we leaked pictures onto the internet, people across the world quite rightly went bonkers, before we revealed the pictures were fake and it was all to draw attention to deforestation in the Amazon.

Task 1: 
Based on the above notes. Sum up Paddy Power's marketing strategies.

Below are some PP ads:

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Most complained about ad in 2010 - Paddy Power Blind Football

An advert that suggests a cat has been kicked across a football pitch by blind players has not been banned by a watchdog, despite 1,000 complaints.Viewers said bookmaker Paddy Power's advert was offensive to blind people and could encourage animal cruelty. The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) said it was not offensive in itself to create an advert referring to people with a disability. Paddy Power said it featured an action "so unlikely that it was absurd". The television advert opens with a shot of a kitbag marked Blind Wanderers FC and two teams of blindfolded men in the middle of a game. A cat is shown running on to the pitch before a player takes a kick, followed by the sound of a thud and a loud meow. A man in a suit then appears and tells viewers they "can't get Tiddles back" before going on to promote a way that customers can get their money back on certain bets.

'Surreal and improbable'

Paddy Power said the advert did not show the cat being kicked or suffering any violence or cruelty. It was clearly and deliberately shown to be unharmed at the end of the item. It also said it had chosen a blind football match to promote a lesser-known sport, as the World Blind Football Championships are to take place in 2010. The company provided a letter from the manager of the England Blind Football Team, who supported the advert's concept. He also stated all the players were actual blind football players, many of whom had represented the national side.

The ASA said: "We considered that the action in the ad would be interpreted by most viewers as a humorous depiction of a fictional situation, with the humour derived from the surreal and improbable circumstances, when an unforeseeable and accidental action occurred.

"We considered it was unlikely to be seen by most viewers as malicious or to imply that blind people were likely to cause harm to animals whilst playing football.

"We therefore concluded that the ad was unlikely to be seen as humiliating, stigmatising or undermining to blind people and was unlikely to cause serious or widespread offence."

Paddy Power's 10 most controversial ads#

1,089 viewers objected to this ad. 220 viewers objected that the ad was offensive to blind people; and 1,070 viewers objected that the ad was offensive and harmful, because it might encourage or condone cruelty to animals.

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Task 1:

Make notes on how you would approach this exam question.

Discuss the marketing strategies used by your selected industry. Refer to your three main

texts.