The Question…
How do you launch an entirely new way to bet in a market that isn’t used to innovation?

What we did…
Betfair wasn’t just a new betting brand – it was a new way of thinking about betting. That’s why the key to launching this revolutionary idea to a cautious betting community was education.

Betfair’s betting exchange model allowed customers to bet at odds set by other customers, rather than by a bookmaker with ‘back’ (normal bets on a selection to win) and ‘lay’ (the opposite side of the Back – against the selection) bets against each other. What this means to a customer is that the odds available are 15% better than those offered by a fixed-odds bookmaker.

This kind of radical concept needed an identity to match and we created a strong, standout logo which visually nodded towards the ‘back and lay’ concept with the use of opposing arrows to signal the two-way nature of the betting model.

The next, and perhaps most crucial, challenge was to create a simple to use interface design so that customers could quickly become familiar with the ‘back and lay’ structure.

Finally, we introduced the ‘Sharp Minds betfair’ concept. The thinking behind this campaign was to draw the analogy of regular betting being draughts and betfair being chess; chess may take a little longer to learn, but ultimately the results are far more rewarding. We rolled this concept out across all their advertising both on and offline.

Once the brand was firmly established in the marketplace, we created a huge array of marketing activity across a wide range of media – from Fulham FC shirt sponsorship to advertising campaigns and brochures and even developed an interactive poker tool to help beginners learn about the various hands and plays.

What happened…
Betfair quickly became established in the marketplace, and are now not only the largest online betting company in the UK but the largest betting exchange in the world, with over 2 million customers.

What was next…
Ten years on and they still use the logo we created and the interface has become the benchmark for exchange betting worldwide. They have recently refreshed their brand look, but their logo still remains the same. And they’re even still using our poker tool to help educate new customers.

The Question:
How do you drive traffic and capture quality data in a notoriously fickle online environment?

What we did…
As digtital overtakes print as the primary medium for news and content, newspapers face a huge challenge to attract and engage users with their online offer. TimesOnline came to us wanting to increase traffic to the Driving section of their website to raise dwell time, number of page views per person and ultimately, capture data. They had a seriously good prize as an incentive but needed help to leverage it for maximum possible effect.

We recognised that for an online promotion to be successful it must have two things. Firstly an enticing prize (which TimesOnline already had – in this case a Porsche Boxster); and secondly it must have simplicity, of both the concept and the mechanic so it’s easy for people to understand and participate.

We developed a ‘treasure hunt’ mechanic whereby, after registering, users had to browse the driving section to collect a total of 5 virtual keys to gain entry into the free prize draw for the porsche. “Collect and Drive” worked in such a way as to allow TOL to either fix the keys into specific pages on the site or set the number of pages a visitor had to view before they found a new key allowing the promotion to be responsive to how it was being used. Traffic was driven to the site with a banner campaign that ran across the whole Times site and repeat visits were encouraged with spot prizes.

What happened…
Collect and Drive was a huge success. The banner campaign received the highest internal click through rate of any promotion in the history of the TimesOnline site.
We smashed the client’s target of 10,000 sign ups by over 50%, delivering just under 16,000 acquisitions in less than three weeks. Registrants also showed an incredible level of participation, with 86% collecting 4 or more keys.

What was next…
The Treasure Hunt promotional mechanic was intentionally developed to be highly flexible, and we have since adapted it for other clients – most notably for The Carphone Warehouse as part of their high profile sponsorship of ITV’s The X Factor.