MansionBet Parodies Betting Ad Cliches in Tongue-in-Cheek Spot from Treacle 7 and Affixxius

Multi-award winning video production agency Affixxius has launched a new campaign for online sports betting company MansionBet. The account was won through being part of Treacle 7 collective. Entitled 'Betting Made Simple', the humorous campaign proves that placing a bet doesn’t have to be so complicated.

An intentional parody of traditional sports betting adverts, the flippant spot stars comedian and football impressionist Darren Farley, who skillfully supplies the tongue-in-cheek humour of the campaign. In order to create the memorable spot, Affixxius went against the grain and escaped the traditional format of betting ads, which are often filled with complicated statistics and odds. Instead, the video production agency took an unusual approach and bet on comedy.

Directed by David Whayman, the 60 second spot was shot at the White Horse pub in Peckham. The film opens on the dimly lit pub, before the camera dramatically moves down the bar to unveil Darren Farley’s character who, in a thick Cockney accent, asks the audience if they want to bet. He then proceeds to move around the pub, presenting convoluted odds and statistics to bemused patrons - even bursting into the bathroom and embarrassing one of the customers. Before he can continue, however, he is interrupted by one of the pub visitors who says they “don't want all that nonsense,[they] just want to put a bet on”. The spot then cuts to MansionBet’s website, before closing on the campaign’s tagline “Betting made simple”.

The campaign was released ahead of the start of the Euro 2020 Championship on radio and social media, as well as on VOD.

Director David Whayman comments: This was a great project to Direct, having worked on it from the creative inception I had a really clear idea of how I would approach it and get the right look and feel. I’m really happy with how it’s come out and feel it should stand out amongst all the other betting adverts we’ll be bombarded with over the next 5 weeks.

Tim Cabrelli, co-founder and executive producer at Affixxius adds: “The MansionBet brand is very much all about ‘tongue in cheek’ humour so we really wanted to create something engaging and felt the comedic approach would really resonate with people who like to gamble on football. We gave the client a couple of approaches we felt fit the brief perfectly and these ideas really resonated with them. We felt whenever people thought about football betting ads, one particular company very much sprung to mind, so we loved the idea of doing a parody of that but also making use of Darren Farley’s skills to take that to the extreme. We’re really happy with the end result”