Betway, the global online betting company, is launching two new episodes under its “For the Love of the Game” platform, taking inspiration from the golden age of cinema. Created by Above+Beyond, the campaign broke on 6th August in the UK and Germany, and will roll out across TV, online, digital, out-of-home and press. Two new storylines have been created, “Temple” and “Lair,” each dramatising the “For the Love of the Game” campaign message, that when the game’s on everything else is a mere distraction. Or, to quote the late great Bill Shankly, “Football’s not a matter of life and death. It’s far more serious than that.”
Both episodes were produced using Above+Beyond’s Modular approach. With Modular, multiple storyline variants are tightly plotted and shot to create a highly flexible, rapidly deployable toolkit that can be combined to create a large number of distinct narratives and different communication needs throughout a campaign's lifecycle. The technique also allows the brand to work at the cutting edge of real time advertising and collaborate with broadcasters to display real time betting odds.
The campaign was delivered by some of the leading talents in the filmmaking world. The director, Hanna Maria Heidrich from Believe Media, is one of the hottest directors currently breaking into the UK, following her work on acclaimed campaigns for Trivago and Stella Artois. Tim Maurice-Jones, the director of photography, meanwhile, was Guy Ritchie’s DOP on films including Sherlock Holmes and Snatch, as well as Kick-Ass 2 and The Woman In Black. Marketa Korinkova, the set designer on Casino Royale and The Chronicles of Narnia among others, used techniques honed on Hollywood sets to create the Temple and Lair interiors in the Betway films. Continuing the “golden age of Hollywood" theme, the adverts’ special effects were largely shot “in camera” rather than relying on computer graphics, to give scale and physicality to the action.
Anthony Werkman, Marketing and Operations Director at Betway, said: “After a very successful campaign with For the Love of the Game, it’s great to be continuing our work with Above+Beyond and our latest ad is very exciting We’ve brought in an extremely talented and very select group of individuals to work on this latest campaign and we’re delighted with the outcome.”
David Billing, Executive Creative Director at Above+Beyond, added: “For this second year of For The Love Of The Game, it really feels like the dream team has come together. We were hugely lucky to happen on Hanna Maria just as she’s landing some big projects in the UK. And we were blessed with the quality of the team around her. We’ve had another year to live with the characters and explore the cinematic worlds they can inhabit, and it feels like it’s paid off with the most visually ambitious, funny and engaging campaign we’ve created for Betway yet.”
Media planning and buying on the campaign was by Starcom Mediavest and post production work on the films was through Nice Biscuits.
