Situation: Paddy Power was sponsoring the WDC for the first time and introduced PCUK, to create the biggest ever sports charity partnership.

Brief: Generate a new idea that would drive awareness of our WDC sponsorship & amplify our PCUK partnership. Get the UK’s media invested in the success of this campaign, exciting editors to create PR spikes before, during and after the tournament.

Objective:

Ignite nationwide awareness & encourage 100,000 men to use PCUK’s Online Risk Checker.

Leverage all means possible to engage the media in helping us on our mission, while becoming the UKs most talked about brand.

Increase trust in our business by driving authentic communications to anyone at risk of developing prostate cancer.

We knew The Big 180 would be the most important campaign we have ever engaged in. We had one chance to hit people in the bullseye. Missing this target was not an option.

Make every 180 thrown in the WDC lifesaving! With 900+ thrown on average, that was 900 thrilling opportunities to highlight the cause to the very audience PCUK needed to target.

1.Green Treble: At the televised WDC launch, we convinced the media we were turning the, traditionally red Treble20, green – our brand colour. Interfering with a British institution weeks from the tournament was unpopular- media, fans and players were outraged.

2.Reveal: 3 days later we confessed that we weren’t actually changing the board but were in fact partnering with PCUK to raise awareness of the online risk checker and donate £1,000 for every 180 thrown.

3.Maintain: Maintaining interest required something big, introducing the Ballon d’Art, a 16kg trophy. Awarded to the player scoring the most Treble 20s, boasting the glory of raising the most money for PCUK. Unashamedly mimicking the Ballon d’Or, extending reach to football fans, creating further awareness.

Insight: The UKs most common male cancer, Prostate Cancer, takes a life every 45 minutes. Its victims are possibly the most difficult to reach cohort in the country, leading to a stigma and lack of awareness around this treatable disease.

Key Message: Use Prostate Cancer UK’s online risk checker tool & take back control.

Target Audience: Men

Green Treble: On Live TV, PDC’s CEO, unveiled a distinctly different board for the WDC, images circulated to major titles. Photos of famous players using the new board, with some confusion, quickly spread.

Reveal: Throughout social channels we told our audience the secret - we’re not messing with the board; we’re tackling prostate cancer with PCUK. Followed-up with media who turned the headlines from shock to support.

Maintain: The Ballon d’Art was taken on tour of major media houses. Reaction film featuring darts biggest names was posted. Influencers & media received Paddy's dartboards.

Garnering positive PR, with cynical media, is difficult for any commercial brand but gambling brands find it nearly impossible. Our strategy was to create an unrivalled headline-grabbing machine by uniting the Paddy Power, PDC and PCUK PR team in a mission to explode the campaign, raise mass Prostate cancer awareness and get men to check their risk.

The televised launch gave us a nationwide captive audience and press quickly took interest. Given the cause they also helped turn the nations outrage to praise following the reveal. We maintained interest with press releases throughout the tournament leveraging big names, like Stephen Fry, to create continuous streams of publicity throughout the duration of the campaign from the 18th of November to the 4th of January, landing key TV coverage.

By February 39% of UK adults were aware of the campaign directly citing PR, even PM Rishi Sunak publicly praised the campaign.

The 2023 the World Darts Championship final saw 3.5M people tuning in, a 143% YOY increase. The WDC had never held a such a huge profile, Paddy Power & PCUKs partnership helped draw in record numbers & capture engagement throughout with the Big 180 Campaign.

Media

5x more earned media coverage than any Paddy Power campaign, with 70M+ impressions and a media value of £12M.

News & social coverage spots on prime-time TV – an impossible task for a Gambling brand.

1730 PR articles generated included the phrase “prostate cancer”.

NFP research showed 57% of men in the UK under 50 had heard of the PP x PCUK campaign.

YouGov reported Paddy Power hit #1 in brand sentiment as a result of the campaign.

The 2023 PP WDC was particularly special for winner Luke Humphries, his father-in-law had been diagnosed with prostate cancer, so winning the Ballon d'Art trophy was meaningful. At the final he announced his intention to donate some of his winnings to PCUK garnering more powerful coverage.

Target Audience

Smashing our 100k target we saw 136K men checking their risk– a 400% lift YoY for PCUK making this their most effective campaign ever.

Crucially, 71% of these men found they were at ‘high-risk’ of developing the disease and got directed to their GP.

Commercially we smashed KPIs:

£1.035M raised for PCUK.

New customer sign-ups were 45% over our target with 9,000 acquired.

A 37% uplift in onsite darts activity.

35% increase in brand trust!