Paddy Power's extraordinary online presence

Paddy Power is, without a doubt, a powerhouse in the gambling industry. The Irish bookmaker was established in 1988 and is legendary for its online betting system, website, and offline sporting retailers.
In recent years, Paddy Power has become documented for its stunts – sometimes they’re clever, often they take it too far. For the team behind them, the stunts cause 2 things: coverage within the media and social buzz.

Power Tower

At a recent Social Media summit, Michael Nagle who happens to be the Social Media Manager in Power Tower gave a few words on how the bookmaker treats social media. “Cheltenham and Christmas are the biggest weeks of the year for us every year. We start planning for something like Cheltenham a long way out. We have monthly and weekly planning meetings and talk about how we are going to run the marketing campaign.”

“From a Paddy Power point of view, we try to set the agenda ourselves. Now obviously we piggyback on certain stories, but we want people talking about Paddy Power. We want people saying ‘have you seen that ad or that video that Paddy Power did?’ we don’t want people saying ‘have you seen that video of the funny cat?’, that drives brand awareness and brand affinity. It is important that we push the brand with strong logos and strong imagery that people associate with Paddy Power."

“On my team, we have the social team who create all the content for twitter, Facebook, snapchat, etc. Then there is the blog team who write all our content. For example, this year for Cheltenham we had people like Ruby Walsh and Mick Fitzgerald on the blog team who would appeal to the hardcore racing punters who want information on betting and what they should be better on.”

Some figures to stew over

Paddy Power makes mincemeat of the competition when it comes to the number of likes on Facebook -

• Paddy Power: 1.4 million likes
• William Hill: 503k likes
• Sky Bet: 480k likes

As you can see from above, Paddy Power puts great thought and planning into their social media excursions and more often than not they succeed in completing their goal. That goal being, getting people/punters talking about Paddy Power.

Cunning Stunts

Other marketing stunts by Paddy Power have included the unveiling of a hot-air balloon in the shape of a pair of lucky underpants at the Cheltenham festival in 2013, and the display of a wax figure of the former Manchester United manager, Alex Ferguson, in a box labelled “In case of emergency break glass,” when the football club was troubled in 2014.

“There is no quick fix for social media, you can’t dip in and our here and there, sending the odd tweet. A lot of it is about hard work, constantly being on and driving engagement, engaging with people, and driving contact with people.”

Online Editors

Paddy Power’s original (and famous) mixture of banter, mischief, and disruption with a touch of controversy, may be a winning formula and one that will see them reside at the forefront of betting for an extended time to come.

Check out our Paddy Power Casino Review now!