Specialist marketing communications agency

Introduction

Both Gala Casinos and Coral are owned by the Gala Coral Group. Gala Casinos wanted to incorporate a Coral betting experience within its existing casinos. The overall offer would include all of the key features of a bookmaker's shop including live sports feeds and live odds on screen, with the ability to bet on a wide range of sports by phone to Coral's Telebet call centre. Coral Lounge would also provide a more up-market environment including a drinks service, lounge sofas and large plasma screens, adding a casino ambience to the sports betting experience.

In America, ‘Sportsbet' offers are very popular. Gaming regulations in the UK have until recently prevented such integration in the UK. With Coral Lounge, Gala Casinos became the first UK casino operator to put a sports gaming opportunity inside a Casino.

Objectives

Kaleidovision was appointed lead agency on the project and tasked with pulling together the creative positioning, branding, marketing communications design, as well as the delivery of the screen-based technical solutions.

A new sub-brand was required to fit into the Gala Casinos brand hierarchy.

As the audience was anticipated to be of a generalist rather than specialist nature, a large piece of technical integration and filtering was envisaged to ensure that only the best betting opportunities were screened in the Casino environment.

Solutions

The ‘Coral Lounge' identity was initially designed by Kaleidovision's creative studio.

The creative proposition was then produced and implemented across print and on-screen media. Key sports were worked into an illustration, which included the image of a telephone. Direct betting calls-to-action were not allowed due to licensing restrictions. The communication was executed on posters, leaflets, banners and sreens.

To fit into the casino environment, it was agreed that the betting information relayed to the screens should have a more sophisticated feel than the ‘teletext' look in betting shops. A range of templates were created for different sports betting opportunities, and subtle but eye-catching motion graphics were then incorporated into the design.

Kaleidovision's technical developers worked as part of a multi-disciplinary project team to plan the technical integration with Coral's own IT information feeds to ensure that the solution provided ran seamlessly with Coral's existing technologies. The idea was to take digital feeds from Coral's network hub in Woking, route the relevant feeds via Kaleidovision's own network centre, from where the relevant sports betting odds are displayed in the various casinos around the UK according to the Coral Lounge operational brief. Kaleidovision fully manage the service, remotely monitoring both incoming feeds and outputs at all sites to ensure the consistency and accuracy of the content.

print design phase 1 - concept sketch:

print design phase 2 - full poster artwork:

betting screens - betting, news and marketing information:

View movie: