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Watch some adorable Micro Pigs bring home the bacon

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The great debate that rages inside me like a vengeful demon every Sunday morning is a simple one, but one that I'm sure I'm not alone in suffering. Pigs or Bacon? The thing is. I love bacon, more so perhaps than any other meat product, but conversely I bloody love pigs! They're deceptively intelligent, bursting with character and just damn adorable, and this campaign from Space for Coral's presence at this year's Cheltenham Festival, has almost made me never want to pick up a bacon sandwich again! Almost.

The CheltenHAM Gold Cup

The result was the cheekily named CheltenHAM Festival campaign, which was built around a mini-festival of tongue-in-cheek micro-pig races that coincided with each of the major races in the four-day event, which took place in March. Space, Coral's agency of record, created a surreal tribute to the festival with viral appeal, that give Coral an increased share of voice and made minor celebrities out of the 8 adorable micro pigs. Space built a specially designed course for the pigs, who wore the silks of the runners from a key race each day. The races included miniature jumps, including a water jump, a viewing area for spectators, a parade ring and a winner’s enclosure. It proved to be immensely successful for Coral, with the bookmakers not only outstripping its rivals, but doing so at a cost per follower 11% lower than its competitors. The cost per video view was also 23% lower than competitors, and there were more than seven million impressions across Twitter thanks to the cuddly piggies and their not-so action-packed racing shenanigans.

The CheltenHAM World Hurdle

Races were filmed and edited into a variety of long and short format (vines) films, including shots from a pig mounted ‘Ham Cam’ and expert racing commentary to create more drama. The resulting films were released at the start of each day’s racing and seeded across Coral’s social channels using the hashtag #CheltenHAM, supported by posts and photo content to build campaign presence. It was made more interactive by offering the community the opportunity to win free bets every day by guessing the winner of the race. Despite the competition from other bookmakers #CheltenHAM achieved the highest share of voice among bookmakers. According to social media analyst Crimson Hexagon, Coral brought home the bacon with a 28% share of voice, compared to the next best brand Betfair, which only had 16%.

The CheltenHAM Coral Cup

The betting market is highly competitive around the Cheltenham Festival, which is one of the highlights of the jump racing calendar. As such, the festival generally sees a focus for intense activity from bookmakers trying to get a slice of the action, with all of the bookies fighting for a share of punter’s wallets with large advertising spends. Increasingly, however, winning the battle on social media has become integral to achieving a share of voice amongst a wider betting audience who almost certainly do the lion's share of their gambling online. So rather than bludgeon its way into the scene, Coral took the novel approach (for the notoriously traditional market of bookmakers) of engaging an online audience during the festival with sharable, fun content that would get people talking, sharing and betting.

The CheltenHAM Champion Hurdle

Tania Seif, head of Coral social marketing said of the work: “This is the third year that the Coral social media team has worked on the Cheltenham Festival and it’s been our most successful on social media yet. We set out with the objective of creating content that would drive conversation among our target audience of males interested in horse racing and football. We are delighted with the results.” All well and good, Tania, but I'm not sure if my full english will ever feel the same!

Benjamin Hiorns is a freelance writer and musician from Kidderminster in the UK.

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