Ireland and England have a bit of a history. For now, let’s focus on their rugby history - bitter rivals from across the Irish Sea, and relatively evenly matched. Rugby fans from both countries gear up every spring when the rivals face off in the annual Six Nations tournament. With Ireland vs England kicking off the first week of the tournament in Dublin, the Irish Bookmaker, Paddy Power saw a golden opportunity to bring their classic 'Mischief' to the fore. The brief? Let’s do something that makes us the biggest talking point of the event. The objective was simple: let’s achieve some true cultural cut-through and get talked about more than the official Six Nations sponsors.

Hit the English where it hurts. Brexit.

An integrated campaign of Brexit-themed taunts were put up all over Dublin before the English fans arrived. A pointed press ad took aim at England’s historical occupation of Ireland, while an entire Paddy Power shop was transformed into a Brexit Passport Office, in response to the huge increase in English citizens looking to secure Irish (EU) passports. We surrounded the event with headline-driven outdoor executions featuring playful jabs like “Just try putting a tariff on this Irish beef” “No stopping this backstop”, and “Odds on an ‘Edxit’ this year – 1/2”. Even more messages played out on social, including real-time taunts in response to the score as the game unfolded.

Paddy Power’s core target audience is 18-34 year old sports fans, but the brand are seeking opportunities to engage a broader audience. So we needed to move beyond a one-dimensional sports conversation. Our strategic approach was to take inspiration, and advantage, of a very topical issue. The national conversation in Ireland was dominated by the ongoing painstaking Brexit negotiations. How could Paddy Power tap into this to hijack the conversation around the Ireland Vs England match, and achieve the holy grail of ‘cultural relevance’.

Brexit had served itself up on a platter, giving Paddy Power the perfect opportunity to back the boys in green. But our approach had to be clever, playful, and unexpected. It needed to be discussed in coffee shops, taxi cabs, and Whatsapp groups. A concerted effort was made to surround the stadium, with special builds going up on pubs and shopfronts near Dublin’s Aviva stadium.

With multiple Brexit-toned digs in the form of a fully integrated campaign – OOH, Press, Social, we hijacked the rugby conversation. This even extended to a ‘Paddy Power Passport Office’ - an experiential pop up created to poke fun at the record-breaking Irish passport applications from the UK in the light of Brexit. This special build took an existing PaddyPower shop and redressed it for the few days on the run up to the big game in an official (but clearly satirical) government office. Large-format posters were placed in prominent positions near the Aviva Stadium - headline-driven executions featuring playful jabs like “No stopping this backstop”, “Beating you at your own game (Literally)” and “Odd’s on an ‘Edxit’ this year – 1/2” The overall suite was a set of provocative and playful executions, jabbing the English fans whilst giving the Irish fans a glorious sense of pride.

This 2 day campaign generated over 50,000 engagements - and Paddy Power had more mentions across social media platforms than Guinness, an official 6 Nations sponsor.

Earned media coverage included The Sun, The Irish Post, The Irish Times, Joe.ie, Joe.co.uk, The Daily Mail and Irish Central in the USA.

On social it was the most talked about campaign in Ireland and the idea infiltrated WhatsApp which is one of the most difficult social platforms to get onto.