In Cannes we sat down with Portuguese agency Coming Soon and its client Betclic to find out how they collaborated on a winning strategy.
It was a sweltering afternoon at the Cannes Lions and somehow I managed to conduct an interview on the hottest terrace in town. Fortunately I was among friends – I’ve known Marcelo Lourenco and Pedro Bexiga, the co-founders of Coming Soon, for several years; and they clearly have a chummy relationship with their Betclic clients, Miguel Domingues, Brand Manager, and Ricardo Malaquias, Campaign & Creative Manager. Between mopping our brows, we discussed the agency-client partnership and how it led to an unusual strategy for a betting company. Here’s a lightly edited version of our conversation.
How did the relationship between Coming Soon and Betclic begin?
Marcelo: It started almost eight years ago, when we’d just founded the agency and were prospecting for clients. We tracked Miguel down through LinkedIn and literally sent him a message. And he replied saying: “As it happens, I have a pitch for you.” So we pitched against one other agency and won. After we’d worked on a couple of campaigns, I believe it was Ricardo who told us: “We chose you guys, not only because we knew your work and your careers, but because you were starting your own business. We knew you’d treat each campaign as if it was life or death. Not like a big agency, where we’d just be another client.”
Pedro: One of the things we admired was the product itself. We genuinely believed Betclic had the strongest product in the Portuguese market, so our challenge was finding increasingly creative ways to communicate that. It’s a privilege to work with them.
What makes Betclic different from other sports betting brands?
Miguel: We’re a very product-driven company, and we’re fortunate that both customers and competitors recognise the quality of the product. Each market also has the freedom to develop its own marketing strategy, which means we can create work that's genuinely local rather than simply adapting global campaigns.
Every campaign starts with clear objectives and KPIs, but we rely on Coming Soon to find unexpected creative solutions. We like to challenge conventions, while always knowing where the boundaries are.
Ricardo: In the betting sector, if you look worldwide, every brand is doing pretty much the same thing. But we see creativity as a genuine driver of growth. That’s been our philosophy for the past eight years, not only in Portugal but in other markets as well. Our campaigns aren’t built around winnings or betting mechanics. They're designed to entertain people and build the brand, and that’s what makes them stand out.
We see creativity as a genuine driver of growth.
Tell us about your latest campaign – set at the beginning of an epic battle…
Pedro: The brief was fantastic because we had Pepê Rapazote, one of Portugal's best-known actors, who’s also doing great in Hollywood. We were simply told: “Create something entertaining that lets Pepê do what he does best.” The production period was quite long.
Marcelo: We landed on the movie cliché of the general delivering a pep talk before the battle. But instead of rallying soldiers, he thanks all the people who’ve accidentally given us more free time to enjoy ourselves: delayed flights, late doctors, even the girlfriend who takes forever to dry her hair.
We worried some of the jokes might be too much, but our clients embraced them. We also argued that forty seconds wasn’t enough: we needed a full minute to make the comedy work. Fortunately, they listened.
Miguel: We listened because that’s exactly the sort of thing that differentiates us. Most ads for betting show someone on a sofa looking at their phone. Creativity allows us to tell completely different stories, and that’s one reason we’ve built such a strong market position in Portugal.
One of the strengths of the campaign is that it isn’t tied to a single sporting event. It’s timeless. Was that deliberate?
Ricardo: Absolutely. We obviously create campaigns around events like the World Cup – we sponsor the Portuguese national football team and the domestic league, so that’s part of the job. But campaigns like this are brand campaigns rather than tactical ones. They aren’t about driving bets on a particular tournament; they’re about expressing what Betclic stands for. So they have a much longer lifespan.
Entertainment is at the heart of what we do, not unrealistic promises.
Gambling advertising is heavily regulated. Does that limit your creativity?
Miguel: Portugal has very strict regulations, but we also believe in self-regulation. If we aren’t responsible, we put not only our own brand at risk but the entire industry. That’s why we’ve never based our advertising around people becoming rich or winning huge sums of money. Entertainment is at the heart of what we do, not unrealistic promises.
Ricardo: As market leaders, we believe we have a responsibility to set the tone. We do more than many of our competitors. We want the market to grow sustainably and safely, and that means sometimes holding ourselves to standards that go beyond the legal requirements.
Does working within those constraints ultimately make you more creative?
Marcelo: Definitely. We’re problem-solvers by nature. The bigger the challenge, the harder we work to find a completely unexpected solution.
Pedro: That’s true, we never see constraints as an excuse. It’s more like the opposite: that’s where our best ideas come from. That’s why we’re in this job, to solve issues like that.
Marcelo: And perhaps most importantly, we have fun doing it. If you’re not enjoying the creative process, it’s very difficult to make work that other people will enjoy too!
