With the World Cup coming to Brazil, Paddy Power saw the chance to create some mischief – and do some good at the same time.

We faked a set of photos, which suggested that the bookmaker had chopped down some of the Amazon rainforest, to create a message to the England team. We then leaked these pictures over the “dark web”, so that they couldn't be traced. When the story eventually filtered through, social media went nuts. But instead of reassuring people, we deliberately fanned the flames. It was only after a day and a half of self-inflicted mayhem, that we admitted that “We didn’t give the Amazon a Brazilian” and that we’d been working with environmental charities all along. Now sentiment swung in completely the opposite direction.

The weekend before the planet’s biggest sporting event, we were the most talked-about brand on social media, with 35 Million Twitter impressions, 836K Reddit views and 183K blog views. And thousands of people followed our advice to visit Greenpeace’s website. C’mon England!

Retouchers spent weeks researching the geography of the rainforest and remodelled an area in 3D that actually existed. And then cut " C'mon England into it". To help further sell it, 3 images were released- all supposedly taken from different angles. These were then seeded on the “dark web”, to be discovered organically by browsers. This coupled with well timed deliberate Twitter posts and PR responses further convinced people that this was no joke.

The weekend before the World Cup, Paddy Power were the most talked about brand in the UK and Ireland, with 35M Twitter impressions, 836K Reddit views and 183K blog views. 3 pieces of UK print and 41 UK online reports including the Mirror, Sun, Independent, Metro and Daily Mail and it got pick up in 20+ foreign countries as well. And all this during the height of World cup fever. There were calls for us to be given promotions, pay raises and knighthoods. And most importantly, thousands of people followed our advice to visit Greenpeace’s website.