This radio spot, ‘A horse called chasing losses,’ is part of GambleAware’s Bet Regret moderation campaign. The campaign prompts self-reflection in regular sports bettors, who don’t yet have a problem, but are starting to exhibit risky behaviour, including betting when drunk, bored, or chasing losses. These bets leave us with a sinking feeling – the moment we make them – this feeling is defined by the campaign as Bet Regret. The objective of this specific activity was to use the combination of the Grand National, the biggest betting event of the year, and April fool’s to create salience of Bet Regret in our audience on TalkSport, an editorial platform they trust.

With Bet Regret as a creative idea we’re looking to:

Bring to life and define the universal feeling of regret we all get the moment we make an ill-considered bet

The key insight which drives this campaign is our audience of regular sports bettors believe they are strategic and considered in their betting behaviour - they study form, talk about sport all week, watch it, keep up with on several platforms (social/news) - however in spite of this, they universally admit to placing bets which are ill-considered. These bets are often in the heat of the moment, when chasing a loss, or drunk, or even just bored at work.

In this execution, we are shining a light on the fallacy of placing a bet when you are chasing a loss, by calling a horse which clearly has no chance ‘Chasing Losses’ – a believable name in the world of racing.

The target audience for the Bet Regret campaign is men between the age of 16 and 34 who bet on average twice a week or more. The overall media strategy reaches the audience with a combination of TV, social, YouTube, digital display, online video and tactical outdoor in pubs and football grounds.

This activity is a bespoke radio partnership with TalkSport, a sport editorial platform known for its punditry, and on which Dean Saunders who features in our Chasing Losses TV ad regularly features. For this execution, we had the live radio segment on Monday 1st April morning (April fool’s) followed by social posts on TalkSport and GambleAware’s channels. The social activity ran throughout the week until just after the Grand National.

The media implementation and execution included:

• A live segment on TalkSport breakfast show, which was filmed by TalkSport

• TalkSport Twitter social posts including the film of the live segment cut down (1.1m organic following)

• TalkSport Twitter social post where Dean Saunders revealed the spot was an April fool’s.

• Multiple variations of social copy on GambleAware, Twitter and Facebook channels during the period 1st April – 7th April. Video lengths varied from 30s up to 2:40s long full story.

The timeline of activity was from the 1st April (April fool’s) to the 7th April (the Monday after the Grand National)

The media investment was a modest £10,000 including TalkSport posts, and social media spend.

GambleAware’s channels during the week achieved over 870,000 impressions and 21,000 completed views, and TalkSport’s 3 posts went out to over 1.1m followers, getting over 71,000 views

TalkSport’s audience for the live segment is estimated as 1,352,000.