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The cheapest advert Paddy Power ever ran was a new sign.
May 2011. Barack Obama was coming to Ireland, with a stop in Moneygall, the small Offaly village his family came from. For a week the country talked about almost nothing else. Every news van in Ireland had its satnav set to one pub.
So Paddy Power changed one word.
Thirteen of its shops went up as “O’Bama Power”. Same green shopfront, new name over the door, and a betting market on which pub the President would drink his Guinness in. A bookmaker taking bets on a head of state’s bar visit is the kind of idea that should have died in a meeting. It did not.
On 23 May he walked into Ollie Hayes’ pub in Moneygall and had the pint. The cameras were there for him. The joke rode along for free.
Here is the part worth stealing.
Paddy Power did not buy that attention. It did not build a stage or hire a crowd. The parade was already coming down the high street, and it simply hung a flag out of the window. The whole media plan was a signwriter and good timing.
They did it again a year later. Two days before the 2012 election they paid out early on Obama winning, about 650,000 dollars by their own figures, and the headlines came round for a second lap.
Now look at how most small businesses chase attention. They try to build their own parade from scratch. A launch, a campaign, a big push nobody asked for, marching down an empty street behind a brass band they are paying by the hour.
Meanwhile the real parade goes past the window every week. The derby. The road closure. The first proper heatwave. The local story everyone in the bakery queue is already chewing over. One sign, one post, one line in the window, and you are in it.
There are two catches.
It has to be quick. A moment like this lasts days, and three rounds of sign-off will see the parade turn the corner before the sign is printed.
And it has to sound like you. Paddy Power got away with cheeky because cheeky was already the brand. A solicitor trying the same stunt would read like a ransom note.
Attention is not something you have to manufacture. It is a parade already walking past your door, and most businesses keep the curtains shut.
Sources: Christian Science Monitor, 6 November 2012, "Obama victory a sure thing? A top Irish bookmaker thinks so". Photos via Wikimedia Commons: shopfronts by William Murphy (CC BY-SA 2.0), Moneygall and pub by the White House photo office (public domain).