Our aim was to become the most talked about brand in the UK during the FIFA World Cup, deliver a lasting positive impact on the LGBT+ community and build a feeling of goodwill towards the brand… so that is exactly what we did. As Russia’s football campaign racked up the goals, we racked up the schadenfreude. Vast media coverage, hugely positive social sentiment and real business objectives were achieved…as well as £170,000 in donations to LGBT+ causes.

Imperative to this campaign’s success was rallying the LGBT+ community to ironically support Russia and key to this was the selection of charity, The Attitude Foundation. Attitude are widely-held as the definitive voice of the LGBT+ foundation and we lent on not just their reach, but their expertise in ensuring our messaging spoke authentically to the LGBT+ community.

When FIFA awarded the World Cup to Russia – a country with an infamously inhospitable attitude towards homosexuality – it felt like a kick in the teeth to the millions of LGBT+ football fans around the world. This was the campaign that kicked back.

Combining the LGBT+ insight with the one-upmanship and humour within football culture, we decided it wasn’t enough just for us to support the LGBT+ community, we’d get the Russians to support them too. So, for every goal the Russian national team scored, we would donate £10,000 to LGBT+ charities. Now Russian success would be directly funding a better future for the LGBT+ community, the LGBT+ community would paradoxically be supporting a country that doesn’t support them, the money would be Coming from Russia with Equal Love.

We kicked off the campaign on the eve of the 2018 World Cup with an Instagram video post from Caitlyn Jenner, announcing her surprise support for Russia. She, along with a number of other high-profile LGBT+ personalities, went on to explain how Paddy Power had turned the home nation into accidental allies of the LGBT+ community.

After scoring 5 goals in their opening game, equating to an immediate donation of £50,000, the campaign really started engaging the media. Russia went on to score a further 3 group stage goals, qualifying for the knockout stage…at which point, we doubled our per-goal donation. We even donated £20,000 when Sergei Ignashevich scored an own-goal against Spain (a match Paddy Power hosted for the LGBT+ community at KU Bar in London’s Soho), proving that every Russian goal mattered!

When their journey finally ended, we projected a ‘thank you’ on the Russian Embassy in London.

The Russians scored more goals than anyone thought possible, even Paddy Power’s number wizards couldn’t have predicted such a result. The LGBT+ social community and traditional media went into overdrive, with the host nations and Paddy Power raising £170,000 for LGBT+ charities.

The campaign’s reach topped 84m social impressions and a media reach of 45m. We even got engagement from big-name stars like Caitlyn Jenner, Louie Spence and Christopher Biggins to share their own videos in support of our campaign.

The impact was exceptional, picking up coverage far and wide, making Paddy Power the most talked about betting brand in the UK, the 4th most talked about brand overall in the UK – beating official FIFA partners Budweiser, McDonald’s and Coca-Cola, and being the 11th most talked about brand in the world during the FIFA 2018 World Cup.