Can you tell me about the early days of influencer marketing at Mecca Bingo; what did it look like and what did you learn?
Mecca Bingo has a fairly extensive history of working with celebrities and performers – whether in our marketing, appearing in our venues or via live streams on our website. But it’s comparatively recently that we’ve started working with social media influencers and creators… it still feels like relatively early days for us!
With anything new there’s an element of testing and learning. We learnt quickly to be really clear in our minds and with our stakeholders about what we want our influencer work to achieve. On occasion, we might try and use an influencer to help us deliver a promotional campaign message, but more typically, we prefer to take a broader perspective… it’s all about building our brand. To attract new people into our brand, particularly into our clubs, means we need to drive consideration and get bingo on their radar as a viable option for a fun, affordable and entertaining activity. I’m a big believer that show beats tell, so showing influencers doing just that felt really cogent for us.
We learnt quite quickly not to just focus on using the most recognisable influencers or assessing by follower counts. We’re becoming much better at being guided by engagement – who will help us deliver impactful work that entertains and amuses, is sharable and fun while also dismantling the misconceptions around our brand. We also learnt to do our diligence and ensure we partner with capable, professional creators who understand branded content, know their audience, take our brief on board and deliver quality content.
When it comes to reaching out to influencers, what is the selection and vetting process like?
At its heart, our brand is all about entertainment, friendship and fun – so we look for influencers who feel coherent with this.
It might vary slightly on a case-by-case basis but broadly we look to find people who make entertaining content, who have a fun tone of voice or a playful sense of humour. We look for people with engaged audiences and we assess their previous content to check it’s of a great standard and feels tonally suitable.
There are of course the regulatory requirements that we layer into the selection process too – elements like their age, their overall appeal to young people and the age demographics of their audience. While influencer marketing is never a wholly authentic exercise, we do try to avoid our work seeming overly transactional… we’ll often partner with known fans of bingo, people we’ve used previously or people that have a real affection for the game – so the enjoyment conveyed in the resulting content is as genuine and sincere as possible.
Mecca Bingo has worked with influencers ranging from drag queens to writers to Youtubers. How does working with a diverse range of individuals reflect and benefit the Mecca Bingo brand?
In most cases, the influencer work we do plays a top-of-funnel role for us – we want to drive salience and consideration for Mecca among UK adults, so it feels really logical to work with a diverse range of influencers. Getting our brand in front of varied influencers means we’re reaching diverse audiences who may not otherwise see our communication efforts in other channels.
And despite the fairly deeply ingrained stereotypes around bingo, we know our brand does appeal to an increasingly broad range of people… we see that clearly in the demographics of those playing in our venues or on our website. So, naturally we’re keen to reflect that in the range of influencers we work with.
Mecca Bingo has been around for a long time; over 60 years. What are some common mistakes you have noticed being made by pre-internet operators advertising in the social media age?
It’s fair to say our venues business has been around for a while – but in principle we are now as much a digital business as a retail one, so I think that perhaps helps us avoid some of the more common pitfalls.
That being said, we are acutely aware of the specific risks around treating social media like any other marketing channel. We don’t always get it right – but I think we are getting better at focusing on developing content that’s native to the platform, prioritising engagement over reach and looking for opportunities to make our content as culturally relevant and distinctive as possible. Of course, that extends to using influencers with real expertise on their platforms to help us.
What are the pros and cons of influencer marketing as a
legacy brand?
As is often the case with legacy brands, perceptions (and misconceptions) can become hard to shake. So it becomes increasingly difficult to be perceived as relevant and contemporary, which leads to a steady decline in consideration over time.
We know there’s all sorts of stereotypes around our sector, so one of the clearest pros of influencer marketing is that we can try and tackle some of those head on. Celebrating our brand, showcasing our proposition and demonstrating people of all ages having a great time playing bingo can only help drive reappraisal of what we are and what we offer. There’s more to Mecca than bingo: our venues offer an excellent range of drinks, a wide selection of slots, lively events and great food – so influencers are a great way to convey the full breadth of our offering.
There are one or two cons – we know there’s a debate around authenticity and some consumers are becoming more discerning where they see #ad. Internally, direct attribution to the short-term metrics can be tricky. And it does require consistent investment to drive meaningful longer-term impact.
In terms of regulation, how is gambling advertising on social media with influencers different to advertising through traditional means like posters and TV adverts? The regulations around gambling advertising can be tricky to navigate, but we understand how important they are and we take our commitment to responsible marketing seriously. It helps that we have a supportive, collaborative Compliance department who help us take a rigorous, methodical approach to assessing potential influencers.
Some elements of the regulation do feel a little open to interpretation and potentially pretty subjective, which can be problematic – but we try to approach this as responsibly as we can, and engage with the spirit and intent of the regulation. As much as we’re hoping to drive reappraisal and consideration of bingo with new audiences, we certainly wouldn’t work with any influencers who could be perceived as having appeal to young people – and we wouldn’t work with any who are, or even appear to be, under 25 years of age. We’re also careful with how gameplay is depicted and the language they use when describing their experience at the bingo.
Beyond that, the regulations around influencer marketing do have similarities to more traditional formats – we include similar wording in terms of the safer gambling message and we endeavour to ensure no more than 25% of the likely audience is comprised of those in the protected age category (under 18). In fact, even if it’s under 25%, we’ll seek to avoid any scenarios where a significant quantity of that age category could be reached. Most social platforms now offer decent visibility of audience age demographics and we’ve found prospective influencers tend to be generally agreeable to sharing these – so perhaps adherence to the regulation can be more demonstrably achieved with influencers than is possible with some other advertising formats.
