What happens when a top crypto casino masters social media? Stake’s latest guerrilla marketing stunts, from Drake’s drone drama to X.com’s stealth branding, are setting new standards. Here’s how they’re winning the viral game.
Any savvy business owner aims to get as many people to see and talk about their brand as possible at the lowest possible price point. Over the years, this has resulted in many spectacular guerilla marketing campaigns, also known as stealth marketing.
In 2010, the Gold Toe sock company brought attention to their new range of shirts and underwear by dressing the Wall Street Bull in a giant pair of “tighty whities”.
In 2017, to promote the upcoming release of the horror film IT, a marketing company in Sydney, Australia, simply began tying red balloons to sewer drains. This simple, low-cost campaign drove incredible attention to the film, even grabbing mainstream headlines at local news outlets.
Online casinos need to stay ahead of their competitors by attracting new player sign-ups and giving existing players a reason to return and play again. Therefore, guerilla marketing campaigns are always in high demand. The challenge is how to do them effectively.
Canadian singer-songwriter Drake is well known as an avid online gambler, and his partnership with leading crypto casino Stake is just as well documented. The duo have collaborated in live streams and social media giveaways over the years. Drake even created a list of his favourite casino games and sports betting markets, allowing punters to immerse themselves in “Drizzy’s playstyle”.
However, their most recent stealth marketing campaign didn’t focus on his partnership with the Bitcoin casino but on a popular celebrity pain point: a lack of privacy.
The viral video is being shared on social media platforms with captions such as "Drone finds Drake’s Sydney apartment” or “Drake caught gambling by mystery drone operator.”
The drone video begins with a clear shot of Drake's laptop open on the games page of Stake Casino. He enters the scene and is "shocked" to discover this invasion of his privacy; running inside and, like your grandma, whips his bright orange slide at the drone, causing it to fly off, giving us an incredible aerial closing shot of Syndey.
Showing their keen understanding of what it means to divide and conquer, this is not the only Stake stealth marketing campaign currently in operation. While a massive headline-grabbing promotion like the Drake one is great it’s also usually pretty pricey, while the whole point of these campaigns is to be economical as well as effective.
Recently, a wide range of posts on X.com, formerly Twitter, began being community-noted for promoting online gambling, notably Stake Casino. At first glance, this caused some mild confusion as the posts covered topics ranging from meal ideas to 1980s apartheid protests in South Africa.
Upon closer inspection, the trigger for these notes became apparent; each post had an image with the Stake logo embedded in it. There was no clickable link, welcome bonus offer, or any incentive to visit the casino - it is a a campaign aimed at expanding the company's brand recognition.
While other marketing teams might dismiss smaller content creators as insignificant, Stake recognised the value of meme posts, celebrity posts, and even discussions around contentious topics. Each of these categories can yield tens of thousands of views and generate remarkable likes and shares while expanding brand reach—and for a fraction of the cost of high-profile celebrity campaigns.
But Stake’s insight into the social media space might be even more profound than we give them credit for.
X.com user Paula (@paularambles) made an insightful comment:
“Is it just me, or do the Community Notes about the undisclosed Stake ads actually do a better job at promoting Stake the original pics.”
They are absolutely correct, while the original image had an almost unnoticeable casino logo, it is the Community Note that names the site and explains its offering. Have they learned how to game the system?
While we applaud Stake for the clever way they are leveraging their celebrity partnerships and how they have learned to game X.com’s Community Note system, we felt it was only fair to remember that ingenuity and gambling have always gone hand-in-hand.
Here is a look back at three exceptional guerrilla marketing campaigns that took the online gambling space by storm in their day.
Before the idea of social media being a part of the world’s daily life, guerilla marketers had to think outside of the box. In 2004, this out-of-the-box thinking saw GoldenPalace get into a public bidding war for a 10-year-old toasted cheese sandwich that showed the face of the Virgin Mary.
The owner of the grilled cheese sandwich, Diana Duyser, claimed to have noticed the likeness of the religious figure as she took her first bite - back in 1994. She then put it in a sealed container and kept it as a lucky charm and ward against evil until deciding to auction it on eBay a decade later.
GoldenPalace paid a hefty $28,000 for this unique sandwich, but the media reach it bought was priceless.
In 2006, PokerShare decided to take the use of its chimpanzee mascot to a whole new level by not just having Mikey present at the World Series of Poker (WSOP) but having play in it.
The campaign, " Chimp vs. Chump," was designed to appeal to new players who were concerned about the game's complexity and being taken advantage of by high-level players known as Sharks.
With a $90 million purse, WSOP drew incredible eyeballs already, but with the announcement that the online poker room was sponsoring a live monkey to play in the event, the media whirlwind around that year's event was a game-changer.
In 2012, an online casino and bingo room launched its “Jackpotjoy FUNdation” campaign. The campaign was novel. The company set aside £250,000 to fund playing and out-of-the-box ideas.
To draw attention to the launch of their FUNdation, they delivered one of the most eye-catching guerilla marketing campaigns you can think of. They floated a 50-foot-tall rubber ducky down the River Thames!
The gargantuan inflatable duck weighed an astonishing 500kg and measured 60 feet wide around the midsection.
It was so tall that it required the bridges to be raised in order for it to meander its way down the Thames. A truly once-in-a-lifetime spectacle and one that brought many smiles to young and old.
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