Marketing mischief a good bet for Paddy Power

During the 2011 Ryder Cup in Medina Golf Club, Chicago, television cameras captured Rory McIllroy as he looked into a cloudless sky to see ‘GO RORY!’ being spelt out by a plane emitting puffs of smoke from its bowels. He stopped, took out his phone and took a photo.

Back in Clonskeagh, Dublin, Paddy Power’s head of mischief Ken Robertson sat back in his chair and smiled.

The bookmaker had hired five planes to fly over the course and issue messages of support from people on Twitter to the European team with the hashtag #goeurope.

What a memorable Ryder Cup it was! #GoEurope #SPOTY2012 pic.twitter.com/BDvmEo96

— Paddy Power (@paddypower) December 16, 2012

Of all the stunts the Irish company has pulled in the last few years, the Planes Over Medina campaign is the one that gives Robertson most satisfaction. “That was very special,” he recalls. “When the coverage started on Sky Sports on the second day, they opened with a view of this perfect blue sky and a message slowly appeared saying ‘do it for Seve [Ballesteros] #goeurope’. The commentators were amazed by it and we could hear one of their voices beginning to quiver a bit. That was one of those rare moments when you are really grateful for getting a job like this.”

Robertson, who hails from Beaumont in Dublin, has worked with Paddy Power since 1999. He started his marketing career with Xtravision but was soon invited to “have a chat” with the bookmaker’s then-chief executive, Stewart Kenny.

“He is a very endearing and engaging chap,” says Robertson “He told me all about Paddy Power and how it was different from any other betting company. That he saw Paddy Power as being in the entertainment business.

“He didn’t see it as a traditional betting company; he didn’t want to market it as a way to get rich quickly because he thought that was essentially a lie. He wanted people to spend a couple of quid and enjoy themselves and maybe they might come out of it with a few quid. He was quite revolutionary in the way that he positioned betting.”

As part of Kenny’s vision, Robertson was put into the marketing department and soon became head of mischief — that is his actual title.

The last few years have seen Paddy Power’s marketing strategy become more and more daring and the bookmaker consistently makes headlines across the globe.

But if the marketing is sometimes a little impudent, it is quite often brilliant. In an effort to undermine strict guidelines surrounding guerrilla advertising at the London Olympics, for example, the company found a small town in France called London and with the blessing of the mayor, sponsored an athletics day there. It meant they were able to put up posters around the British capital stating that they were “official sponsors of the largest athletics event in London this year” while adding at the bottom “Ahem, London, France”.

The company’s most recent involvement with legendary basketball player Dennis Rodman, and the world’s most notorious dictator Kim Jong-un had mixed results. According to Robertson the story behind the bookmaker’s involvement stems from the death of Pope John Paul II.

“When the Pope died back in 2005, myself and Paddy Power, the actual person, decided we’d get ourselves over to Rome,” says Robertson.

“We brought a bookies’ board with us and we started taking bets on who would be next (to be pope). The media were hanging around with little to do so they turned to us as a barometer. It was a publicity stunt and it worked really well; we generated headlines around the globe. So when Ratzinger resigned last year, we decided to do it again.

“On this occasion, two of our [papal] front runners were black cardinals, so we decided to do a money-back special the tagline of which ran ‘if the next pope is black you get your money back’. I had stayed home this time and I was scanning the TV channels to see if I could see the lads. Lo and behold Paddy pops up being interviewed on Sky News so I sat back and thought ‘job done’. The story immediately after that was about Dennis Rodman being in North Korea with the Harlem Globetrotters so I said to myself ‘hold on here’.”

Robertson got in touch with Rodman’s manager in New York, who agreed to the basketball star coming to Rome on his way back from Pyongyang for a PR campaign.

“So we dressed Rodman up as a pope and sent him around Rome on the back of a Popemobile emblazoned with Paddy Power stickers,” continues Robertson. That night, Rodman joined Robertson’s colleagues for “beer and pizza” in a Roman trattoria where they discussed the motives for his trip to North Korea. During the dinner Rodman spoke about what he calls basketball diplomacy and how he believes that sport can be used as a force to start dialogue.

Suitably impressed, Paddy Power decided to “help him realise” his dream. The bookie’s job would be to sponsor an event which would involve an all-star American team playing North Korea in what was originally supposed to be a venue in Europe.

When Rodman returned to North Korea last August he put the proposal to Kim Jong-un. The dictator, who according to Robertson is a “basketball nut”, agreed wholeheartedly but felt it would be better to have the match in Pyongyang... on his birthday.

Everything was moving along nicely until the North Korean leader decided to have his uncle and five advisers executed for supposed crimes against the state. “All of sudden there was world- wide scrutiny and condemnation of the regime and we had to respond to that,” says Robertson. “We decided we could no longer associate ourselves with the event. I suppose that’s a round-about way of saying we got it wrong.”

Robertson is keen to emphasise that the Irish company did not go into the project blindly, and had taken advice from international NGOs working within the communist state, who indicated that the planned game could only be a good thing.

Either way, Robertson and his 25 marketing colleagues are on the lookout for their next ‘mischievement’. Are we likely to see Paddy popping up at this year’s World Cup in Brazil? You’d be a fool to bet against it.