We worked with Paddy Power to create a stunt that would capture people’s imagination and inspire the European team at the 2012 Ryder Cup.
Paddy Power Ryder Cup Sky Tweets
Project Overview
We were challenged to invent a way of connecting social media to skywriting in real time, allowing fans anywhere to tweet a message and have that skywritten directly above the course while the tournament was happening. The messages would be turned around within minutes of being posted and designed to support the European Ryder cup team. The idea centred around the most ambitious objective ever set in sports marketing, make fans feel Paddy Power helped Europe win the most famous golf tournament in the world on American soil.
The skytweets began at 7am on Saturday morning at a time when the European team were all but out of the tournament.
Outcome
Within 10 seconds Sky Sports covered the first “Do it for Seve” tweet showing our launch message to 8 million people globally. On the course, 50,000 fans witnessed the spectacle immediately and NBC captured Olazabal (the European Ryder Cup captain burst into tears of joy on camera looking up into the Sky).
Within 2 minutes and the end of our second message the BBC captured the worlds number 1 golfer on the course stopping play and asking his caddy to grab his phone from his golf bag to photograph the astonishing scene directly above them. A video that has now been seen by over a million fans.
The 40 messages skywritten over 2 days received global coverage in over 500 publications and were syndicated in highlight reels of each day by every major broadcaster showing the tournament. Every player on course was captured live reacting to the skytweets and the captive TV audience exposed to the campaign topped 100 million.
Whilst simultaneously winning a Guinness World Record for the largest piece of skywriting ever attempted, the Paddy Power skytweeting campaign coincided exactly with the revival of the European team and the most famous golfing comeback in the history of sport.
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