The gamble of the betting ad

In a past life I was a movie reviewer for a magazine. Once a month my fairly simple task was to write 500 words on the latest cinema releases. This included covering the European Film Awards and interviewing one-to-one Richard Attenborough, David Puttnam and Max von Sydow (a hero from the movie Hannah and her Sisters).

Anyhoo. Around this time I met a wisened old hack called Iain who used to be a war correspondent. We were in a press screening of Platoon and such was the surround-sound volume of gunfire in a near-empty cinema that he ducked - it was a throwback to a dark time in his life, and the machine gun sound was all too real when he experienced it.

I feel the same when I hear the air of menace in the tones of Ray Winstone in this Bet365 tv ad. When he announces 'Get yer mobiles and laptops aht' I believe him as if he had burst into a bar in a stick-up. Would it kill him to say 'please'? (kidding Ray - don't shout). The ad was the first in a line of live in-play betting ads during live sport, especially football. I'm no betting man but it's a nice advertising development and in its own way, innovative and ground-breaking. Good storytelling of a fashion, nice encouragement and use of second screen and hitting the audience at the right time. Advertising live odds is a gamble that has paid off.