Paddy Power

Paddy Power (@paddypower) is one of Europe’s biggest bookmakers and a leading provider of gaming services in the UK, Australia, Italy and Ireland. With its history of award-winning campaigns, the brand is considered among the top social media marketers in sport.

The challenge

Homophobia is a controversial issue in British football that is rarely discussed. Of 5,000 professional footballers in the UK, none are openly gay. For that reason, @paddypower chose the topic for its first brand led corporate social responsibility campaign. To give the campaign authority and ensure it wasn’t seen as a marketing stunt, the brand teamed up with @StonewallUK, the largest British charity for lesbian, gay and bisexual equality.

The solution

The seven-day campaign set out with two clear objectives. The first was to encourage professional footballers to wear rainbow laces, which were the physical symbol of the campaign and symbolized kicking homophobia out of football. The second was to get the public tweeting with the #RBGF (Right Behind Gay Footballers) hashtag and show support for the cause.

To launch the campaign, @paddypower ran two Promoted Trends. The first Trend quickly kicked-off conversation around the #RBGF hashtag and built momentum for a week of of planned activities. The brand extended reach and engagement with Promoted Tweets targeted to interests and keywords in search.

It connected Promoted Tweets to interests like football and the followers of @OfficialQPR’s @Joey7Barton who was prominently involved in the tweeting of the campaign. The offline activity included @paddypower press ads across the national freesheet @MetroUK as well as outdoor poster advertising that featured the Twitter logo and Promoted Trend hashtag.

@paddypower also planned well ahead to ensure that its campaign was truly real-time. To achieve this, a ‘War Room’ was set up at its offices for the entire week. The operation monitored conversation, responded and retweeted some of the best Tweets. This ‘War Room’ drew on representatives from the brand and its social media team, PR, creative and media agencies, as well as @StonewallUK.

The ‘War Room’ gave @paddypower the capability to make sure the campaign was always on. It allowed new creative executions and Promoted Tweets to be quickly rolled out on Twitter throughout the week by agency @LuckyGenerals. These included in-game images of players wearing their rainbow laces, which had been sent to every professional player, as well as photos of the many celebrities and members of the public who were tweeting about the campaign.

The widespread tweeting by celebrity figures, clubs and players were retweeted by @paddypower and featured on its blog. This helped sustain the campaign’s momentum, which was further maintained by a second Promoted Trend that carried the same #RBGF hashtag. Whilst the initial trend launched the campaign, the second trend was designed to capitalise on the organic activity taking place and provide a rallying cry to fans and further encourage clubs to lace up for the games that weekend (including the anticipated Manchester derby).

Celebrity Tweets included mentions of the campaign from the likes of former England player and BBC Match of the Day presenter, @GaryLineker; Olympic and horse racing broadcaster @clarebalding; and @stephenfry among others.

At club level, the likes of @CAFCofficial, @GFCgems, @OfficialQPR and @Everton threw their weight behind the campaign by actively tweeting images of players wearing rainbow laces. Support from individual players included Tweets from @NorwichCityFC’s @robsnodgrass7, @OfficialQPR’s @dannysimpson, @ReadingFC skipper @seanmorrison_91, and @Arsenal’s @_OlivierGiroud_.

“Twitter is now where everyone goes to talk about the things they have a passion for. The first conversation we had about this campaign was what will the hashtag be. That’s what pulls it all together. It would have been a very different campaign without Twitter.”

Christian WoolfendenGlobal Marketing Director, Paddy Power

The results

The results exceeded expectations. Backed by two Promoted Trends, the #RBGF hashtag drove 38K mentions, and trended organically worldwide and in the UK. Overall, there were 72K Tweets that mentioned the campaign.

The growth of the campaign’s awareness over the course of the week is well illustrated in the engagement rates of the two Promoted Trends. The first trend on September 16th recorded an engagement rate of 10.7%. The second on September 21st achieved an engagement rate of 18.6%. That’s an increase of 7.9% highlighting how news of the campaign spread and how it was widely reported.

In total, there were over 400 pieces of earned media coverage. This included 250 print and online articles, from the likes of the Daily Telegraph, Daily Mail, the Metro and The Guardian; 161 items on radio including BBC Radio 1 and TalkSport; and 35 pieces of TV coverage from the likes of BBC News 24, Sky News and CNN. This helped generate around 600 million PR impressions and generate 27% public awareness among UK adults.

In terms of mentions, the campaign saw 28,220 of the @paddypower username. This led to more than 101 million impressions. The best performing Tweets saw hundreds of Retweets. The launch Tweet alone was retweeted 2,206 times. That’s 20x @paddypower’s usual reach.

3 keys to success

1. Choose a unique, memorable hashtag.
   @paddypower chose #RBGF as its campaign hashtag. It’s memorable and short. This allowed it to be easily integrated on all campaign material including press and poster ads.
2. Listen and respond.
   The @paddypower team using its ‘War Room’ operation closely monitored feedback on Twitter throughout the campaign. It listened closely to what was being said and adapted its messages in real-time as the campaign progressed.
3. Know your audience.
   Targeting Promoted Tweets to interests like football and leveraging @Joey7Barton’s Twitter presence helped @paddypower reach the most relevant audience. These interest targeted campaigns can produce the highest engagement rates and lowest cost per engagement.