How Paddy Power turned Danny Dyer into a cockney casino king

In the run-up to Christmas, cutting through the mass of festive ads that are about to hit screens was another challenge. The team knew they needed something big and bold. “We wanted to go all-out on it,” says Spears, “which I think you can probably see.”

In the hero spot, viewers see Dyer strut through his surreal palace, exuding his natural wit while tapping into fun cultural references. There’s a nod to the viral TikTok ‘Man in Finance’ song, while a cheeky take on pilates princesses and men who have just had hair transplants shows off his one-liners. And then there are the unexpected cuts to reality star and businessperson Gemma Collins, or ‘The GC’ as she’s affectionately known. “I’m claustrophobic, Darren,” she shouts, nodding to her famous Big Brother line. In a real twist, we see a text pop-up on screen from Coleen Rooney to Dyer. “It’s… Gemma Collins,” it reads, alluding to her famous sleuthing skills.

“Using those iconic moments really felt great,” said Ed Ryder, creative director at BBH. The ad’s cultural mash-up is pure Paddy mischief and also a flex of BBH’s storytelling muscle. “We were writing and rewriting right up until the eleventh hour,” Ryder continues. “You have to be open when you’re working with such great personalities.”

Dyer in the role of a cockney casino don was a “role he was born to play,” the team explains, and watching him work was “a highlight.”

“Even before we got to meet Danny, sitting down trying to write in his tone of voice was just such fun,” recalls creative director Joe Craig. “We were just doing stupid impressions of how he would say things,” he admits, adding that Dyer even said that most of the writing the team did in his voice was pretty spot on. Spears jokes that the creative duo now talk like Dyer to each other.

“Danny’s quite self-deprecating. He brings the fun, he brings the energy,” adds Spears. “He’s a master of his craft, but he doesn’t take himself seriously. He does, however, take our industry incredibly seriously.”

The team shares how Dyer has a real passion for TV and film, while Ryder tells us how the actor particularly got “stuck in” when recording the final scene. “We had Danny in the bath at the end. He’s a great sport for doing that, but we had a body double on set who we shot in the bath first. Then, when Danny came to set, he saw this guy hopping out of the bathtub.”

Instead of acting like a diva over the secondhand bathwater, Ryder says Dyer took it on the chin, aimed a cheeky comment in their direction and hopped straight in.

New brand ambassadors Gemma Collins and Coleen Rooney have joined the roster to “attract new audiences,” but also because they just “fit,” says Spears, who adds that the brand had worked with Collins before at Cheltenham racing, so knew she would be a winner. “Gemma’s bold and unapologetic, the same as we are. Women and men love her. She went down brilliantly with our audiences.”

Rooney was a late addition to the ad. “We’d worked with her before and thought, ‘She’s brilliant.’ The lads had to do a major pivot to fit her in,” adds Spears. The creative team had everything set in stone months before, then had to figure out how they wanted to write in Rooney.

Carefully engineered irreverence

To capture that glitzy-gritty “casino dreamland,” production company MindsEye found an old art deco theater and filled it with slot machines and sequins. “You can’t cheat that stuff,” says Craig. “The detail in the roof, the stairwells, the carpet... it adds authenticity and scale.”

The music, though, took some serious digging. “We started in the obvious places – Tarantino, your classics – but it felt too on the nose,” he continues. “Then Leah said, ‘Find me a 90s banger.’ We went through thousands of tracks and landed on this one [The Bad Touch by Bloodhound Gang], a 2am ‘Hail Mary’ from the producer.”

“It’s got something kind of ironic about it,” Ryder adds. “It helps the humor, it hits all the notes and it hadn’t been used in an ad before.”

Despite the chaos onscreen, the brand’s irreverence is carefully engineered. “People think we just turn up and have a brilliant laugh, which we do,” Spears jokes. “But we’re also up all night thinking about where the line is. How far do we go? What do we offset? What are the risks?”

Her background in risk management surprisingly comes in handy: “We go in holding hands, knowing the risks and how to mitigate them. If we can’t, we don’t do it. We’re here to have fun, not to offend.”

The tagline ‘Come Out and Play’ sets the tone for what’s next. “It’s not a new direction,” Spears says. “It’s still got that trademark Paddy mischief, just dialed up to 11. We’re known for showing up in surprising places and we’ll continue to do so.”

With the World Cup around the corner, expect more mischief from Dyer and co. “Watch this space,” Spears teases. “Everyone’s going to come out and play.”