Gambling with Engagement

Understanding + Innovation = Real Engagement

Though not yet quite falling into the category of a degenerate gambler, Zeitgeist regularly receives communications from various bookmakers keen to incentivise a bet or two. Indeed we’ve previously commented on the activities of bookmakers and the gambling industry both good and bad.

It is an unusual category, one where the consumer has a number of suppliers to choose from and the product is abstract.

Consquently the service is essentially the same across brands – anyone can take a bet – and punters can visit sites like oddschecker.com to find out the best odds on a given event.

In such a market, the equity each brand has, from a long heritage in a given sport to their brand attitude and from levels of innovation to ease of use, becomes ever more important as a means to differentiate them from their myriad competitors. Marketing activity becomes crucial as brands try to establish their territory in a cluttered category.

Event Based Promotions

Some activities are based around major sporting or cultural events such as the flyer below which was distributed in Paddington Station during the Cheltenham Festival a couple of months ago.

From the tone of the copy and the reference to a girlfriend rather than wife, one might infer that the target audience for this communication was a male up to the age of 40. However, this particular flyer was handed to a female colleague who indignantly passed it on in exasperation at such a poor piece of targeting.

While some media platforms don’t allow brands to ensure their message only reaches their target demographic, it is one of the benefits that handing out flyers does offer.

It’s simple really. If the message on the leaflet isn’t relevant to someone, don’t give it to them.

Given that there are more women than men in the UK it is entirely possible that some might like a wager or two.  Indeed the recipient of the flyer is a sports enthusiast who regularly places bets.

So why didn’t Boylesports produce a flyer that would appeal to women too? Or failing that, why didn’t they educate the people giving out the leaflets as to who they should be targeting?

They may only be leaflets handed out in a busy railway station, but just because an activity is intended to be quick and cheap doesn’t mean brands can be lazy and allow standards to slip.

In addition to short term tactical executions such as the poorly executed Boylesports example, some bookmakers also invest in attempting to build longer term engagement with initiatives that show an understanding of their target customer and the kinds of things that will appeal to them.

Trends

Since Conspicious Consumption and the Age of Bling disappeared along with our wealth, consumers have increasingly sought cool experiences that not only break the stress of daily life but also act as a form of social currency. By providing or enhancing such experiences, brands are able to create an emotional connection with consumers.

Whereas boasting about material wealth is seen as crass, sharing the fantastic things you’ve been up to with friends is perfectly fine.

As we live our lives ever more publicly, we can begin to experience a low level sense of peer pressure as we try to keep up with our more exciting friends. Tools such as Facebook, Twitter and Foursquare allow us to share what we are up to before we do it, while we are doing it and then upload photos after the event.

Another unsurprising consequence of the economic downturn is that people don’t have quite as much money to spend and as such want to get value out of any money they do spend.

For some, gambling might seem like a way out of financial strife but for the majority it is something that makes sporting events a bit more exciting and let’s us back up our hunches.

Innovative Engagement

For the past few weeks Zeitgeist recently been monitoring the development of a new initiative called BetDash which has been created by Paddy Power, a brand that is all too aware of the need to differentiate and maintain a high profile.

The site, currently in beta, claims to be Europe’s number one ‘Social Betting’ site and allows players to ‘buy’ a £100,000 bankroll to gamble on real events. The cost of the intial £100,000 is variable, ranging from free, then increasing by £5 to up to £50 and directly influences the potential winnings.

After 21 days the player wins cash depending on how well they have done – if they’ve been lucky enough to turn their money into a million pounds they win twenty times their original stake, otherwise they have to settle for smaller rewards, all the way down to nothing if they’ve blown the lot.

The site works because it simultaneously allows people to experience the thrill of making a bet worth tens of thousands of pounds with the safety blanket of not losing more than their initial stake. Importantly, it also allows people to compete with their friends and make the experience a shared one.

The site has a Twitter account which updates occassionally with news of new ‘millionaires’ and the odd retweet and a Facebook fan page, though they appear to be more of an exercise in getting ready for when the service is fully developed.

To that end, BetDash impressively crowdsources improvements via a page through which users can recommend improvements to the service.

With ‘gamification‘ a hot topic, Betdash taps into the trend and offers players rewards, such as free bets and badges for returning to the site on a daily basis and achieving feats, like winning three bets in a row. You can also challenge other players bets and laugh at their wagers.

And for those who still find it hard to pick a winner, there is a list of the trending bets so you can see what everyone else is betting on. If 96% of bettors think Watford will win and 94% have bet on a Federer victory then maybe you’ll feel safer putting money on a double.

With the curtain having just come down on the current football season players will have to try and make their fortune on summer sports, though with each round lasting 21 days that’s only three rounds until the 2011/2012 seasons kicks off.

In the meantime, the BetDash development team will be no doubt be busy implementing the ideas users recommend so that the site is ready for next season.

The site hopes to create a behaviour amongst users that gets them thinking and talking about bets they’ve placed socially. From gambling being something personal and secretive it will become something to be shared – there will be little stigma as you are gambling with imaginary money. The aim will be to make BetDash one of those handful of sites you visit with regularity.

And of course, if you see a bet that you think is too good to pass up, PaddyPower will no doubt be delighted to let you stake some real money.

Since we opened our account (for research purposes!), Zeitgeist has already bet on football matches from Poland, Russia, Japan and South America, not to mention Boxing, Tennis and Horse Racing with mixed success as we try to grow our bankroll.

We’ll be keeping an eye on BetDash to see how it evolves, but in a category where differentiation and staying front of mind are key, we’d bet that this type of innovative activity will prove more popular than poorly distributed flyers in train stations.

Paddy Power’s on to a winner with charity shirt offer

The importance of having a brand attitude.

In categories where the offering is essentially the same, a brand’s positioning and the way it behaves become all the more important as means of differentiating them from the competition.

One such category is online gambling.

In essence, all of the companies offer punters the chance to stake some of their hard earned cash on all manner of sporting and cultural events. The market is extremely crowded and with sites like oddschecker.com enabling gamblers to find the best odds on a given bet, building loyalty can be difficult.

All of which means that acquiring new customers is essential and online bookmakers must stay front of mind in order to be considered. For brands with large budgets, oft-pursued routes include high profile sponsorship, advertisements and idents.

One brand with a smaller budget that manages to maintain a high profile is Paddy Power.

Their novelty bets, early payouts, refunds and risky communications have helped them carve a niche position amongst their rivals. Ranging from the Last Supper reworked as a casino table to a poster seemingly offering odds on which old lady would be hit by a car to sponsoring Tongan rugby player Epi Taion to change his name to Paddy Power by deed poll for the duration of the the 2007 World Cup, their activities are marked by a rebellious streak and a desire to generate as much free publicity as possible.

Their ability to respond quickly to current events helps keep them in the public eye, the poster at the top of the article greeted visitors to Ireland immediately after they’d been knocked out of the World Cup Play-off by France and Thierry Henry’s imfamous handball. The stategy of capitalising on current affairs is as strong as ever has as evidenced by a couple of recent viral activities.

The first was an opportunist game, turned around in under 24 hours, which invited users to ‘slap’ former SkySports pair Richard Keys and Andy Gray. Capitalising on the furore caused by their sexist comments the game was passed around by football fans and feminists alike.

The second is a great piece of activation.

Following the high profile deadline day transfers of Fernando Torres from Liverpool to Chelsea and Andy Carroll from Newcastle to Liverpool, the bookmaker offered distraught fans the chance to trade their old hero’s shirt for a £50 bet.

Better still, the unwanted shirts will then be given to Oxfam and sent to Africa.

That's £50 you're setting fire to there sunshine!

Both activities will have been relatively cheap to implement, but their relevance both to current events and their target audience ensured that they were shared virally, thus saving a fortune in media costs.

Paddy Power’s long history of courting controversy and clearly defined brand personality distinguishes them from their myriad competitors and allows them to continue to engage their audience in such a distinctive style. Each stunt serves to raise their profile in the short term while further reinforcing their brand identity in the long term.

Their behaviour might not appeal to everyone and their stunts often cost them financially, however so long as no one used their £50 wager to bet on a draw after Arsenal went 4-0 up at St. James Park on Saturday, the Irish bookmaker will look back at a couple of weeks of good work courting publicity and living up to expectations.

The science of integrating eyeballs

As the media industry trade mag Variety reports this week, the annual “upfronts” for TV are in full swing. This is when TV executives put on an attractive show for the advertisers, in order to convince them that their shows are worthy of being invested in with some big brand names for those thirty-second ad breaks. What last year was a moribund affair – as the major US networks struggled with the economic downturn – has improved notably this year due to complex negotiations and a somewhat more bullish ad market. Variety notes that the iPad and its myrmidons will be a significant part of the push, as well as mid-end restaurants trying to lure back the consumers they lost to cheaper rivals and even a resurgence in the automotive category.

According to a Nielsen study undertaken at the end of last year, the average American watches about 140 hours of TV every month, “including more than seven hours via DVR [i.e. TiVo / Sky+] and another 3.5 hours via the Internet”. The TelecomPaper reported this morning that weekly internet usage has overtaken TV watching in Canada.

Digital expenditure remains a small piece of the pie for the TV industry. President of sales for Fox Broadcasting Jon Nesvig bemoans the lack of a “common measurement system” for both on and offline; digital spend for the moment remains a brand-building exercise rather than accruing a return on investment. The “old-fashioned 30-second spots still pay most of the rent”. Product placement also plays a large part in the US, while the UK continues to grapple with the implications of it. One interesting recent development is that of contextual advertising. As Variety explains, this means “… having spots run adjacent to relevant subject matter in programming. For example… a scene with a car crash in ‘The Bourne Identity’ transitions into a spot for the On-Star automobile security system.” Full measurement and integration of all platforms is clearly a way off yet, however when it happens expect digital ad spend to rocket up.

Overexposure on Chatroulette

Having first flirted with the random video chatting site Chatroulette back in December 09, Zeitgeist has watched with interest as different parties have innovated in their use of the functionality provided by 17 year old Russian Andrey Ternovskiy.

The honour of being the first brand to base a marketing campaign on Chatroulette goes to French Connection who, as part of their ‘The Man, The Woman‘ campaign, offered men (and then women after they received complaints) the chance to win a £250 French Connection voucher by arranging a date on the site.

Clearly not all brands will want to be associated with the random and uncontrolled nature of the site, where there is a slightly greater chance of seeing an unsightly erection than in a 1960’s architects casebook, but such a risque experience appealed to the brand that is arguably best know for its FCUK campaign.

The random nature of the site offers users an element of excitement as the user never knows who they will connect with next, which creates a ‘just one more’ click mindset before they finally turn off.

One reason you might want to stay on is that you could find yourself serenaded, either by a man in his bedroom or by Ben Folds in front of 2,000 people. After which, you’ll find yourself on YouTube viewed by millions.

Depending on what gets them goings, the risk of such exposure may encourage or indeed discourage people from wearing underwear in front of their webcams.

If the intimacy of a one to one chat being shared online grates with the initial idea behind the site, as we mentioned last week, the layer of anonymity is further eroded by Chatroulettemap.com which shows the location of each user.

Zeitgeist watches and waits, fully and respectably dressed, to see whether Chatroulette is here to stay or will just be an amusing memory in a few months time.

Luxury is Dead, Long Live Luxury

A sad day for Zeitgeist today as car manufacturer Daimler announced the beginning of the end for the luxury brand Maybach (courtesy of the excellent Luxuo blog). The Maybach is an incredibly expensive, incredibly indulgent, ridiculously large and ridiculously powerful car. It’s exclusivity is second to none, to the extent that actually too few of them are being sold. Despite risqué attempts at brand activation with cutting edge artists like David LaChapelle and despite manufacturing only a hundred cars for some lines, the dream is over. How does luxury struggle onwards as the world crawls out of the recession?

The pleasure of Zeitgeist’s company was requested for ‘Artisan’ afternoon tea at Christian Dior on London’s Sloane Street this week. Luxury was front and centre. More than playing on the bling nature of the brand name, the idea was to present the fantastic workmanship that went on behind closed doors.

At the event, with the help of an Italian translator, Zeitgeist was able to speak to one of the aforementioned artisans, who was responsible for making handbags. The Florentine, wearing an immaculate white labcoat with the Dior logo above the breast pocket, said he had no quota for how many bags to produce per day or week, that Dior demanded absolute perfection instead in every bag, no matter the time taken. Though each person will have his or her own speciality, they will work across both the Dior and the Dior Homme brand. Elsewhere in the store, people worked meticulously on Dior jewellery and watches with incredible patience. The work pace of those in the jewellery and timepiece department was similarly dedicated to quality over quantity. From a branding perspective, not only does this ensure a higher rate of product satisfaction, at the same time it also helps to enforce scarcity.

While all this was occurring, waiters roamed the boutique with tripled tiered treats, ranging from caramel pastries and petites tartes aux framboises to mini cupcakes with swirls of icing. The whole affair felt very similar to that of the recent Miss Dior Cherie campaign, directed by Sofia Coppola, who coincidentally directed a very similar scene in Marie Antoinette. Dior definitely had its thinking cap when it came to integrating retail environment and through-the-line campaigns. The event next goes to Tokyo.

Elsewhere in the fashion sector, Louis Vuitton streamed its Paris Fashion Week collection over Facebook (again), and Burberry’s collection in London was broadcast in 3D. And what of luxury in general, how will it manage in a world of frozen credit? Zeitgeist recently listened in on a Datamonitor webinar called “Recovery from Recession”, (definite articles clearly not being a trend for this year according to Datamonitor). Consumption has slowed holistically because people no longer have the money, or access to borrowed money, that would allow them to make those purchases they otherwise would have done. This economic realignment – some might call it sanity – will hopefully be a relatively short-term affair. There is a worry for luxury brands however that these more frugal tendencies will become deeply ingrained in the buying habits of their potential or erstwhile consumers.

As such, there has been a trend by some brands to open up further to the masses. This has its advantages in that it can persuade people to trade up, especially concerning “everyday luxury items and treats” which are “a treat, rather than a representation of lifestyle”. “It is important that the long term image of the product is not hindered through aggressive discounting policies.” For Datamonitor, Grey Goose is a fine example of this, as it sells below retail price in the duty-free sector to great success. The fact that it is not discounted at a supermarket – where a shopper might see it every week rather than on infrequent trips to the airport – means the brand retains its premium image despite price cutting in some choice locations. Value added services, in this case a cocktail guide, also help. For those that are able to keep up their pre-recession spending uninterrupted, the trend is toward more arcane brands, such as Loro Piana. Shops like Escada, cognisant of consumer fears over reckless spending, have provided unbranded paper bags of late.

With the rather large hiccup of the recession seemingly over, luxury brands can certainly breathe a very small sigh of relief. Just how much people will want to spend on arguably frivolous products in the years to come, and, importantly, how discreet they will wish to be about it, will be a very important factor.

The Belgians are revolting!

Exciting times in Belgium – yes, you did read that correctly!

A number of leading international and local agencies from the land of Poirot, Charlemagne and Enzo Scifo, including our esteemed colleagues at Ogilvy, have united, shut down their websites and gone on virtual strike for a week.

Their actions, organised by the local Association of Communication Companies (ACC) express their displeasure at the failure by clients to adhere to charter guidelines that limit the number of agencies invited to pitch for speculative business.

The message, in the form of an open letter (in English) to clients explains that too many agencies pitching against each other means time,  energy and just as importantly in these times of financial misery, money are wasted… to the detriment of existing clients.

The letter is split across the sites of the participating agencies and is read in the correct order regardless of which site a user starts on. As more agencies join the campaign, so the letter divides itself to ensure each site carries a portion of the message.

Quite whether clients heed the message and change their ways or not remains to be seen, however the agencies should at least be commended for standing up for themselves rather than simply grumbling in the shadows.