Cheltenham is a social event. Being at the track is immense. Watching it with mates in the pub is great craic and even watching it at home, or in the office (as we do in Flutter), is a treat. The only way to improve on that is to add Paddy Power to the mix. How the brand shows up in advertising, social and mischief combined with our product and great offers means that Cheltenham is better with Paddy. And that’s what our strategy was for 2026.
From here we built our creative around an approach that leaned into social media and internet culture. We wanted to use selfie-style photography, online language, social media trends and native-style content as we felt this would resonate with our audience and allow us to feel embedded in the event and the conversation around it.
We produced a variety of video pieces using our epic line-up of ambassadors. Some of these played on content trends such as GRWM, while others were short vignettes linked to our offers. We produced variations of these in different aspects ratios and durations with a selection included below.
Producing this amount of bespoke online and social video was unusual for the brand. Usually this content is shot alongside a TVC so it was exciting to have the ability to use our talent for a full day and create a cmapaign that was channel focused.
Some of these videos were also repurposed into a new suite of idents used on ITV across the Cheltenham festival.
We shot our key visuals in a group selfie style to make it feel like you were really getting a close look at the craic our ambassadors were having at the event. Shooting them together also gave us an energy and interaction that we couldn’t have got by shooting them separately and comping them together.
We also shot a series of individual poses of each ambassador, which gave us the flexibility to use them across the hundreds of touchpoints Paddy Power has during an event like this. These range from our retail stores to our app, on course branding, our fanzones, OOH in places like Dublin T2 and Skybridge, CRM, social, onsite banners, homepage takeovers and countless others.
Thanks to everyone who was involved in this campaign. It was a massive undertaking across lots of teams and external resources but they all contributed to Paddy Power’s biggest Cheltenham ever.
Daniel Flynn - Creative 