Leveraging its Australian Open official partner status, the bookmaker has launched a new, multi-platform brand campaign and rolls out a new iteration of its tournament-specific ‘Chase The Ace’ promotion.
The brief for the brand campaign was to ‘create something big and bold’ that strengthened William Hill’s association with ‘faster betting’, so the campaign emerged from the simple idea of sending a tennis ball flying at warp speed from the outback across the country to the Australian Open.
Developed with the bookie’s marketing team, agency Fenton Stephens and The Sweet Shop, the bookie’s marketing team began rolling out the campaign on 4 January with a hero TV commercial directed by John S Park.
The spearhead ad opens in Western Australia’s iconic Pinnacles Desert and features ‘the punter’ (played by Axle Whitehead) announcing that ‘fast betting is on its way to the Australian Open’ before wielding a lightsaber-like tennis racquet to hit a tennis ball (a metaphor for ‘fast betting’) right across Australia to the tournament in Melbourne.
The spot – which involved Cadre Pictures VFX and animation and post-production by Method Studios Melbourne and sound by Production Alley with Kanye West’s track ‘Power’ – uses the Australian Open as a platform to bring ‘speed’, ‘excitement’ and ‘scale’ to the Australian betting category.
The commercial is amplified across the brand’s digital platforms and social channels.
‘From strategy through to execution, this is up there with the best work we have ever produced,’ claims William Hill CMO Warren Hebard.
While Fenton Stephens creative director Alex Fenton adds: ‘As official betting partner of the Australian Open, William Hill had to make sure they presented themselves as the home of dynamic and exciting online betting. Faster betting is what punters are after, and with territory so difficult to own in such a crowded segment we had to deliver in spades’
Plus, running parallel to the brand campaign, William Hill and the same agency teams also brings back its Australian Open specific ‘Chase The Ace’ promotion,
Led by another spot fronted by Whitehead wielding a fully functioning, air-compressed golden tennis ball cannon.,
this bet-based promotion evolves through the tournament and is also promoted by real-time, action-related social media pieces.
https://twitter.com/WillHillAus/status/820754946152800256
To play #ChaseTheAce on your mobile, you need to have the most up-to-date version of the William Hill iOS and Android app. #AusOpen pic.twitter.com/lLZqKDDulK
— William Hill Aus (@WillHillAus) January 15, 2017
Full #ChaseTheAce competition T&Cs https://t.co/0UhleTfg2I
— William Hill Aus (@WillHillAus) January 16, 2017
The first 5 people to comment with the correct number of aces in the Kyrgios vs Gastao game tonight will win a share of $500 cash #AusOpen pic.twitter.com/MgCxHuHBy4
— William Hill Aus (@WillHillAus) January 16, 2017
An even 20 aces for Jo-Wilfried Tsonga and that means over $90,000 worth of bonus bets to #ChaseTheAce punters. #AusOpen pic.twitter.com/fZ7Zj4usCY
— William Hill Aus (@WillHillAus) January 16, 2017
The brand’s Australian Open activation also includes a ticket giveaway contest,
The first person to Retweet and correctly answer this question wins three Ground Passes to Day 2 of the #AusOpen.#ChaseTheAce pic.twitter.com/O7eVZKxwIz
— William Hill Aus (@WillHillAus) January 12, 2017
as well as a wide range of odds offers, incentives and news bulletin style market updates,
The #AusOpen is underway. Here is our morning market update courtesy of @sarshac pic.twitter.com/TDdyjxljXp
— William Hill Aus (@WillHillAus) January 16, 2017
plus a retail offer campaign.
Both the brand and the promotion activation phases are further supported by the usual flow of largely generic, low latency, tournament-related social media bookie content assets that reference specific tournament action or matches and specific bets.
90 minutes until play starts in the 2017 #AusOpen – are you ready? pic.twitter.com/xZDP08gO0m
— William Hill Aus (@WillHillAus) January 15, 2017
When you have Stan Wawrinka (21 aces) at $10 bonus bet per ace and his match goes the full five sets! #AusOpen #ChaseTheAce pic.twitter.com/yHlwNvv8yH
— William Hill Aus (@WillHillAus) January 16, 2017
Comment:
Following on from its blockbuster 2016 Australian Open campaign – an initiative that was spearheaded by a competitor reference commercial called ‘Green With Envy’ (see case study), this year’s work remains consistent with its previous activation and with the betting brands umbrella approach to event campaigns and ongoing marketing.
However there are some notable changes to its activation this year.
Perhaps the most visible is that William Hill no longer has any courtside exposure at the 2017 tournament
The booking brand made a little bit of history in October 2015 when it signed its sponsorship agreement with the tournament and Tennis Australia: penning the first-ever gambling company to secure a sponsorship deal for a Grand Slam tournament (reported to be worth as much as A$5m to the country’s tennis governing body).
Financially the partnership certainly proved to successful for the bookmaker as William Hill registered a major market share increase and a surge in online in-play betting turnover around the 2016 tournament that resulted in a 200% increase in tennis betting turnover and 14,000 new customer registrations in a tournament fortnight.
But the deal also came with plenty of controversy and the move to axe the bookie’s courtside presence at the 2017 Australian Open comes in response to criticism – particularly from anti-gambling organisations who argued that the extensive brand visibility around the tennis itself encouraged bettors into excessive gambling.
Plus, the agreement came under even more scrutiny when the BBC and BuzzFeed unearthed evidence of match-fixing practices during the Grand Slam tournament based on ‘increased betting activity in rather questionable patterns’.
Furthermore, the William Hill Australian Open campaign roll out coincides with the 18 January decision by the International Tennis Federation to end its controversial three-year sponsorship deal with Betway.
Betway first became an ‘international sponsor’ of the ITC’s Davis Cup and Fed Cup national team events during the 2016 campaign and with the deal came on-court branding at all World Group ties.
The ITF said of the end of the partnership: ‘The ITF took the decision to end the Betway partnership early as part of a policy decision to cease having betting sponsors.’
Links:
William Hill
https://www.williamhill.com.au
https://twitter.com/WillHillAus
https://www.facebook.com/William-Hill-Australia-639888359491638/
Fenton Stephens:
http://www.fentonstephens.com.au/
The Sweet Shop
http://www.thesweetshop.tv/gb/
Australian Open
https://twitter.com/australianopen
https://www.instagram.com/australianopen/
https://www.facebook.com/AustralianOpen
http://sports.sina.com.cn/tennis/ausopen17/index.shtml
