William Hill sets 245.9 million euro World Cup revenue target

The campaign, which includes a series of television adverts by the Creature of London agency, focuses on the punters that make up the William Hill community. The first advert was due to be broadcast yesterday night during England’s friendly match with Ecuador.

If the bookmaker is successful in achieving its 245.9 million euro target, this would eclipse the previous record of 123 million euro that was set during the last World Cup in 2010.

Alex O'Shaughnessy, director of marketing for William Hill Online, told TheDrum.com: “We are focusing a lot of our communications now specifically around our customers – talking much more distinctly about product benefits, but doing it in a way that can occupy much more of an emotional space, while historically we have been very rational and serious.

“As we look at the emergence of social media in particular – we are moving into a sphere now where we have to be more invitational than directional.

“We operate in a very competitive market, particularly online with the emergence of mobile, and must work harder to ensure we are creating an experience that our customers enjoy and through that enjoyment we can retain as many of them as possible.”

O'Shaughnessy also revealed that William Hill is investigating iBeacons as an alternative distribution channel, given that Google Play excludes all betting brands.

In addition, O'Shaughnessy said the bookmaker is also considering the use of wearable technology, such as Apple’s iWatch, as a potentially useful tool. “We are starting to form our thoughts around things like iWatch and what that might mean for us,” he said.

“The key thing is that ultimately it’s about the overall experience, so if we can put a certain amount of the most important information, whether that be live scores that will influence a bet, or a notification that a team or a striker or a horse that you bet on previously is about to run, and you can make that information through a more accessible device like an iWatch then it certainly becomes of interest to us,” he concluded.