OPINION: Paddy Power ad an insult to Nelson Mandela

OPINION: Live Odds and Scores` Richard Hutchinson castigates Paddy Power for their lastest advertising campaign which features Nelson Mandela.

I am a great admirer of Paddy Power as an online gambling company. They have been innovative and nimble footed in a market where it takes a great deal of ingenuity to stay ahead of the game. They are masters of self publicity, from their sending a spokesman to the Vatican to front their Papal betting markets to their bets on which volcano will erupt next.

But sometimes they go too far and their latest campaign is one such case. In a full page advertisment in the Racing Post there is a huge picture of a smiling Nelson Mandela and the headline "Guess who Nelson bets with". The ad goes on to say "Paddy Power refunded over £500,000 on the World Cup Final. Tens of thousands of Paddy Power customers have a smile on their face - just like Nelson."

Now unless I am much mistaken, Nelson Mandela has not started endorsing products, let alone an Irish bookmaker.

What Paddy Power has done is simply exploitative. At 91 Nelson Mandela is unlikely to pursue them through the courts for mis-use of his image, although it would be delightful to see what would happen if he did. Mandela is, unlike almost everyone else in the world, someone that should not be exploited for commercial gain, especially at a time when it is well known that his whole family is in mourning for his dead great granddaughter, killed in a car crash on the eve of the World Cup.

I could spend a lot of time writing about all the ways it is wrong for any company to mis-use Mandela`s image but pretty much everyone knows the scale of his achievements and why this sort of behaviour is wrong.

I am sure Paddy Power, the eponymous spokesman for the betting firm, will be wheeled out to explain their actions and explain in his loveable Irish brogue how no insult was meant and that it was merely a cheeky way of drawing attention to the money the firm refund on the South African World Cup. No doubt the firm are hoping that there will be an almighty fuss about the ad, meaning that one page of advertising in the trade press (albeit a national newspaper) will end up generating tens of thousands of pounds worth of free publicity. By writing this opinion piece I am contributing to that possibility. But I also hope that the publicity will damage Paddy Power and make people less likely to bet with them because sometimes companies need to be harmed by their irresponsible actions. Someone senior at Paddy Power needs to learn the line between amusing frivolity and stupid exploitation - the latter is undoubtedly what this advertising was.