Australia is the largest betting nation on the planet. It also has arguably the most competitive online betting market in the world. And the competition was intensifying with the arrival of 2 large international brands in 2013.

Our challenge was to get everyone in Australia talking about Sportingbet.

To achieve this, we wanted to tap into Australians' mad-keen passion for betting. So we did what Australian punters love to do. We made bets. The kind of silly bets you make with your mates.

We bet Shane Warne, Australia’s greatest living cricketer and professional gambler, to take 50 paintballs at point-blank range. To fight a professional female kickboxer and to face his real fear of spiders.

And, stupidly, Warnie agreed.

These publicity stunts launched with a tease on Instagram showing a bare-chested Shane Warne covered in bruises. Online newspapers in Australia and around the world speculated what caused the bruises. The next day we released the answer with the PR for the ‘Paintball’ stunt. Immediately every major TV news channel in Australia ran stories about it. Social media lit up. Guys in pubs talked about it.

With excitement running high, we followed this up with the ‘Spider’ and ‘Kickboxing’ stunts. Both instantly got huge publicity around Australia, and created huge chatter on social media.

Results:

• 271 million earned media impressions.

• 10.9 million social media impressions (That’s almost half Australia’s population)

• 20% increase in new betters in just 3 months

PR was essential in driving awareness and excitement about the publicity stunts. We used a phased PR approach, with the campaign kicking off with a tease on Instagram. We posted a selfie of Shane Warne bare-chested and covered in bruises, which was calculated to create media interest after Shane had copped widespread criticism for provocative selfies in the past. It created a media storm in online newspapers across Australia and overseas. In the midst of this hype, we released the PR for the ‘Paintball’ stunt that caused the bruising. Immediately The ‘Paintball’ bet was news on every major TV news program in Australia. We followed this with a staggered release of the ‘Spider’ and ‘Kickboxing’ stunts and both featured prominently in the news on major TV channels across Australia. The campaign ran to plan with social strategies and TV ads supporting the PR.

Sportingbet was in the shadows of much bigger betting brands in Australia. It wasn’t a brand being talked about or really considered. But that changed the moment we launched the Bet Ya stunts. Suddenly Sportingbet was being talked about on the evening news, on morning programs, in newspaper, in social media and by blokes in pubs. Bet Ya generated over 271million earned media impression, 10.9 social media impressions (that’s almost half the population of Australia). But people didn’t just talk about the Bet Ya stunts, they acted. In just 3 months, the number of new bettors increased 20%.