Chris Norton: 1:57

Okay, so this show is all about fuck-ups and marketing fuck-ups, and you've shared some great stuff there, but you mentioned one a minute ago which we've got to get into which, before the show, we've got some notes about you throwing a party for Kim Jong-un his 30th birthday party with Paddy Power.

Ken Robertson: 2:17

I mean, I just want to hear how that got signed off.

Chris Norton: 2:20

I'd love to know. So can you tell us a bit more about that? What happened?

Ken Robertson: 2:25

That had a very unlikely genesis or beginning. So this was 2014, I think, and for the first time in 600 years, a Pope had retired Pope Ratzinger had retired pope ratsinger and had retired and 10 years earlier when, when you know, john paul, the pope at the time, had died, we spotted an opportunity in the mischief team to generate a bit of publicity. So we sent a team, including myself, over to saint peter's square with a betting pitch and we were essentially taking bets on who the next Pope would be, because the process to elect a Pope is quite strange in a way. It's called a conclave and all the cardinals assemble from all over the world into Rome, into Vatican City. It's a bit like a Catholic Avengers assemble, in a way. So they, they all arrive into vatican city and and they're essentially locked into the sistine chapel and they're not allowed to come back out until they elect a new pope. Right now, this could take hours, this could take days, this could take weeks, but what happens is the entire world's media is gathered around saint peter square with nothing to report on, until white smoke comes out of the chimney of the Sistine Chapel. So there's a lot of very expensive media talent there literally doing nothing, and they have to, you know, file the reports every hour back to you know, whether it's CNN or Reuters or Sky News or BBC. They're all there and they've got nothing to say, apart from these two idiot Irish people with a betting board shouting the odds on the next pope. So we managed to get ourselves kind of an hourly slot on Sky News with the latest market movers and who the money was coming from and which cardinal was. So we did this in 2007.

Ken Robertson: 4:17

Then, when Ratzinger decided to resign there, there was another conclave in 2014. So we dispatched the team back over to St Peter's Square. I didn't go this time and I was back in Paddy Power HQ in Dublin. I was watching Sky News because there was a piece about Paddy Power team shouting the odds in St Peter's Square. They were being interviewed on Sky News and the story immediately after that was a story about Dennis Rodman being in Pyongyang with the Harlem Globetrotters playing an exhibition match for Kim Jong-un, and I said, god, that's extraordinary.

Ken Robertson: 4:57

And, by complete fluke, it looked like we were going to have our first ever black pope elected. There was a I think he was from Ghana, if I'm not mistaken, cardinal Turkson. He was the favorite in our betting to be elected next pope that particular year. So we had this money back specials money back specials for Paddy Power, where a little kind of promotion that we use and if something happened in a particular event that was of note, we would refund all the losing bets. So we said, to celebrate the likelihood of the first ever black pope, we'd refund all the losing bets to, to people who didn't bet on the black pope. So, um, we had this headline money back if the pope is black and we were thinking about ways to promote it. So, robman, rome, all this type of stuff. There was a map of the world on on the wall and paddy parren I just noticed that literally halfway between poniang and chicago, which robman was flying back to the following day, was literally Rome, literally halfway Couldn't believe it.

Ken Robertson: 6:04

So we got in touch with Robman's agent and very quickly we hatched this plan to dispatch Dennis Robman to Rome, pick him up in a Popemobile wearing a t-shirt saying money back if the Pope is black, and drive him up to St Peter's Square where he would meet up with the Paddy Power marketing team. So we did this in a very unlikely kind of way and this all happened really fast huge media blitz, tons of publicity for Paddy Power, and the guys ended up kind of celebrating the success with Rodman and Rome that night. You could imagine how that turned out. But along the way Rodman explained what he was up to in North Korea and, anyway, quite quickly we realized there's a very big idea here. So Rodman flew back back, we flew over, we met him and his team a couple of weeks later in chicago and we hatched a plan.

Ken Robertson: 6:58

Apparently kim jong-un wasn't a big fan of the harlem globetrotters. He thought it was not authentic basketball. He was a bit disappointed with it. So we came up with this idea jointly with Dennis Rodman, to actually bring a US team to play a North Korean team. It would happen the following January in Pyongyang, which tied in with Kim Jong-un's 30th birthday, and Paddy Power would sponsor it. Paddy Power would bankroll it, and big press conference in New York in September that year. And everything was on course for this to happen. We had put together, or Robin had selected, a US team. Everything was on course until December the same year.

Ken Robertson: 7:43

So the month before the event was supposed to happen, kim Jong-un just went on a very unexpected purge of his government.

Ken Robertson: 7:53

Now, usually a purge ends up in people losing their jobs. Unfortunately, in North Korea, a purge means people lose their lives, and he essentially killed half his government cabinet. This was reported around the world and suddenly there was a big spotlight on paddy power supporting this regime, in which multiple, multiple people have been killed in the government, and big questions were asked. The un got involved. We were became under massive pressure to withdraw our sponsorship, which we had to do literally the week before the event was due to happen, and, but the event still happened. We just took our branding off to jerseys, and, but the event still went ahead was a huge success. The match actually ended up legitimately being a draw, which was quite fitting, and, and you know, six months later, a couple of american hostages who had been imprisoned in North Korea were released. So, in a very unlikely set of circumstances, I would like to think that Paddy Power in some way set in motion a chain of events that actually led to something quite good and quite positive in terms of prisoner release.

Chris Norton: 9:08

So the UN? I mean, is there a stage in a campaign like that when you think, shit, this has got out of control? And you know? I mean, is there a stage in a campaign like that when you think, shit, this has got out of control? And you know, I mean, were you worried? You know the UN getting involved, are you thinking we have gone too far now?

Ken Robertson: 9:19

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That was one of the few that I literally lost a lot of sleep over because you know we were being asked some pretty serious questions. You know, paddy Power at that time was a very big business. It had IPO'd, it was listed on the Irish and the UK so London Stock Exchange. We had big institutional investors who had kind of codes of ethics themselves, and we were being asked questions by these big institutional investors in terms of what the fuck are you doing in North Korea, guys? This doesn't look good. So, yeah, yeah, we were that. Yeah, that was. That was a tough one.

Chris Norton: 10:08

For me. You do things that are provocative and controversial and you're wanting to get coverage. You obviously got lots of negative coverage about that. Yeah, was like North Korea in general. I mean it's probably the one place I mean that provocative.

Ken Robertson: 10:23

It's the one place in the world that you probably wouldn't want to be or go what kind of really pulled us into this was robman, and and he he's a very he's an extraordinary individual, right, he's a very colorful guy and in in so many different ways, this is the guy who who married madonna. This is a guy who likes dressing up as women. This is a guy who's six foot six tall and covered in tattoos and, you know, generally kind of, you know shouts at people a lot of the time, but what he did genuinely believe was that by having this basketball match, it will bring the two countries together. Yeah, it would open potential back channel dialogue between the US government and the North Korean regime, which it did.

Ken Robertson: 11:09

There was precedence for this back in the early 70s, what became known as ping pong diplomacy, when a group of American table tennis players went over to Beijing, I think at the time, and this was real Iron Curtain time to Beijing, I think at the time, and this was real Iron Curtain time, and it was the first time a delegation of US citizens were allowed behind the Iron Curtain and into very communist China at the time, and that actually led to a toying of kind of relationships between the two countries and opened the door to Carter having talks directly with the Chinese regime. So there was kind of precedence for this, and so we went into a potentially somewhat naively thinking you know this, this, some good could come out of this.