Those banteriffic rascals at Paddy Power have lifted the lid on their PR stunt by unveiling the real Huddersfield Town 2019/20 home and away shirts in partnership with Umbro. Yeah, yeah, the old full length 'sash' sponsor was a fake. Shock. But what's left underneath the dirt of the PR machine is a smart couple of kits for the Terriers.
Paddy Power have a knack of producing reactive and humorous PR content and while most people saw through the novelty of the fake shirts and applauded the stunt, it was surprising to see how many keyboard warriors were triggered by the whole circus. Yeah, there's a touch of contradiction about Paddy Power taking the moral high ground with their #SaveOurShirt campaign after doing the whole 'look at us' roll out, but whatever you think of it, you can bet the PR team are having a few Guinness's this weekend. It worked.
Just in case we're not clear... Huddersfield will play in sponsor-less shirts for the 2019/20 season. Paddy Power have made huge noise (more noise than they would have had they just sponsored the shirts in a traditional sense), Huddersfield have got themselves a kit which will no doubt be one of their best selling designs of all time, and Umbro have done what they do best: made a stunning football kit. It's win-win for all parties.
The sash design was a non-starter in that it didn't conform to FA guidelines and the FA would have blocked it for competitive games, however the club and Paddy Power found their loop-hole in the form of friendlies and added backing to their campaign by wearing the sash-design in their glamour friendly win over Rochdale on Wednesday night. Clever stuff, slightly controversial, big reach. Paddy Power's marketing tactics in a nutshell.
Weird thing is, we were starting to dig the sash...
