You may remember back in March we helped the bookmaker Paddy Power create the world’s largest advertising sign. Well we have done it again.
We were approached a few months back to help create the sign again at this year’s Ryder Cup in Wales. We jumped at the chance to be involved again in what last time became a media storm.
The guerilla marketing technique is not something that Paddy Power misses an opportunity on, so we started work on creating the world’s biggest sign. Again.
Questions were asked if we would be able to succeed. After receiving so much press last time at the Cheltenham racing festival, was everyone ready for it to happen again? The building of the sign was kept top secret until the very last minute. We even took our website offline for a few days so that the delivery truck livery couldn’t be traced back to us. We managed to install all the ground work on the site overlooking the 18th green at the Celtic Resort where the Ryder Cup is being staged this year before any interest was taken, but soon officials from the golf course and the local authority started appearing on site wanting to know what was going on.
As soon as the 50ft high masts were erected, our cover was pretty much blown and the council started working on a warrant to stop us building the sign. Overnight we managed to erect the lettering, ready for the media frenzy in the morning. At 270ft long and just over 50ft tall, the sign could quite clearly be seen from the 18th green, the 1st Tee and the main entrance to the Ryder Cup festival. Nearly every national newspaper ran a story on the sign, the local BBC news kept atop of the story, and this time, most of the publicity was good! Twitter and Facebook exploded with support for the sign with a new group being set up by Paddy power himself and gathering over 100 followers in the first 5 minutes.
Everyone seemed stunned that Paddy Power had managed to get the sign put up again at a 2nd event. Only a few people didn’t want it there, and that was the owner of the golf course and the local council. How unfortunate!
However as we all know, any publicity is good publicity, so its 1-0 to Paddy Power, and of course to the hard work of everyone at Utopium for making it happen. Here’s to the next one, everyone keep an eye open at night, we may appear in a field near you!
