The Euro 2024 campaign by Paddy Power won Gold in Culture or Leisure and Gold in Entertainment at The Drum Awards for Marketing. This campaign aimed to make Paddy Power the most talked-about brand during the tournament, even against official global sponsors like Adidas and Coca-Cola.
It’s summer 2024, and football is back where it belongs—no winter World Cup nonsense. Europe’s top teams are in Germany, vying for the Final, and Paddy Power is along for the ride. With a Hefeweizen in hand, Lederhosen on, and a shout of “Guten Tag Deutschland,” we’re all in.
As a brand, we consider ourselves the supporters’ staunchest supporter, and for this tournament, we were ready to become England’s cheerleader-in-chief. Yes, we know Paddy Power is an Irish company, but our national team didn’t qualify, and we're football’s foremost fan no matter the team.
For us, EURO 2024 was all about one goal: Ensuring Paddy was the most talked about brand during the tournament, even when going up against the official global sponsors including adidas and Coca-Cola.
When it came to developing our strategy, the focus of our squad during planning was stronger than any German penalty-taker.
Casual footie fans, mainly 18-44 males, were our key target audience when it came to the overall campaign, but there was a level of mass appeal needed too.
Tonally, as always when it comes to Paddy’s mischief, this meant being tongue-in-cheek with a solid defensive wall of LOLs – but being an Irish brand, our activity had to resonate with the whole of England.
The measures of success for our KPIs may look small, but just like football, a win can come down to the slimmest of margins.
With our strategy, tactics, and management philosophy firmly in place, we were ready to kick off a festival of footie with the sort of mayhem only Paddy can pull off.
We understood from our internal data that England matches always see twice the stakes placed vs the regular tournament ones. England were also seen as the favourites. Yep, we struggled to believe it too.
So, to ensure we captured English hearts and minds while they were in with a shot, we needed a moment to live long in the nation’s memory; it would have to be a moment akin to Stuart Pearce’s penalty miss in the World Cup Semi-Final against Germany in 1990.
What was also clear to us though was that England’s reputation – both country and its fans – has not always been great on the continent, especially since Brexit. And being Irish, we could understand why that tension existed.
But rather than ignore it, we decided to lean into it, using our ‘neutral’ position to help European football fans express what they were thinking about the English fans – all packaged up in our light-hearted joke-filled flagship 60-second TV advert for EURO 2024 [made with BBH].
To ensure relevance for England fans, we signed up one of their own, cheeky Cockney chappie and former EastEnder Danny Dyer, to appear in the ad alongside ex-England striker turned pundit Peter Crouch.
Now all we had to do was flip the script as people from across Europe rushed to state “Europe’s favourite” thing (in a very ironic way) about the English:
Our TV ad was certainly the hero asset for EURO 2024 campaign’s, but it wasn’t the only winning tactic. Other executions included:
Across commercial, advertising, and marketing metrics, our EURO 2024 activity was the most successful campaign we have EVER delivered - driving more active customers than the last 3 tournaments.
We smashed our objectives, not least becoming the most talked about brand according to data from YouGov, beating adidas on talkability:
And then there was that iconic TV advert – still the most searched for on Paddy Power’s YouTube channel and our most successful TV ad in the last eight years.
When you consider sports-related advertising typically receives 2.4 stars on System1 rankings, EURO 2024 took top spot with a maximum 5.9, typically achieved by just 1% of all ads.
The trade press loved it, David Reviews gave us 5stars, and Kantar had us in the top 17% of ads in their database. The ad ranked #1 on YouGov Buzz and made us the most talked about brand on X – even beating Jude Bellingham on mentions!
And football fans from across England and further afield took to social media to laud it. “The Oscar for tv adverts is goin to Paddy Power” said one, while another added “Paddy Power’s video content round the Euros has been exceptional. Genius marketing”.
Across our social content, we were able to drive fresh conversations that continually connected us to fans of the tournament. Standout success here included:
In print/online news media we scored 32 pieces of national coverage – including Campaign, the Daily Mail, the Mirror, and LadBible, with a total reach of 128m.