SUMMARY

We landed widespread coverage across print and digital media outlets on our brilliant reactive campaign for Ladbrokes, which saw the Australian cricket team taunted with massive billboard displays featuring Ben Stokes’ winning salute.

The ad is a nod to the iconic ‘Welcome To Manchester’ poster of Carlos Tevez that went live after his transfer from Manchester United to City. That poster was a playful jibe to fans of Man U, insinuating that Tevez had only truly arrived in Manchester when he signed for the best team in the city.

We proactively approached Ladbrokes with the idea off the back of Stokes’ heroic Headingley display, cleverley tapping into the news agenda and creating a highly-engaging, attention-grabbing image that travelled far and wide in the media and among sports fans.

OBJECTIVES

As it was a proactive campaign with no specific brief from the client, we had no definitive pre-campaign objectives that we had to deliver on. However, we knew that the impact of the stunt idea would be judged on how it infiltrated national and social media. This meant that the image had to be iconic enough to capture people’s attention, whilst maintaining an essence of the original ad of Tevez to allow people to make the mental connection.

How we did it

The reactive campaign tapped into hysteria around Stokes’ amazing performance with a visually striking ad that carried Ladbrokes’ branding throughout the city.

Our photography team captured high-quality images of the billboards, ensuring that the impact wasn’t lost in press releases, whilst a social video was produced by our video team.

73

Pieces of coverage

2.65M

Estimated coverage views

411K

Social video views

1.3M

Social reach

“WITH THE AD GOING OUT ON THE 1ST DAY OF THE 4TH ASHES TEST, THE CAMPAIGN PIGGY-BACKED OFF STOKES HYSTERIA IN A VISUALLY STRIKING AND TIMELY MANNER“

We delivered national coverage in spades, landing the campaign in Metro (print and digital), Sun, Daily Mail, Express, Mirror and Star. The campaign also made it’s impact across the pond in The New York Times.

A handsome total return of 73 pieces of coverage across a variety of outlets represented a brilliant achievement with such tight turnaround on the proactive idea, with the iconic image central, carrying Ladbrokes’ branding to a vast quantity of their target audience with sports titles such as Eurosport running the stories.

73

Pieces of coverage

The social media aspect of the campaign reached an audience of 1.2 million worldwide, achieving 441,000 views and 1,353 engagements, with video content packaged up for social featuring the shocked public’s reactions to the ad.

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