Brand, ambassadors and World Cup planning in regulated betting, with STS CMO Dawid Pożoga

Dawid Pożoga is CMO and marketing director at STS, and he joined iGaming from retail, FMCG and media. In this episode of iGaming Accent, recorded during the World Cup, host Vakho Mdivani asks how marketing works under regulation, what makes brand storytelling stick and how a team prepares for a major tournament.

In this episode

• Coming from other industries, Pożoga says the first thing he noticed was regulation: marketing must stay close to legal. When legal raises a concern, his team grades the business risk, from a threat to the licence to a fine (4:31, 31:31).

• He argues a brand needs a clear backbone, meaning who it is, who it talks to and which stories it tells, and compares a brand without one to "a tomato soup" (7:01, 7:30).

• On ambassadors, he says a famous face only helps if it supports the brand's positioning; the biggest reach does not automatically sell the most (9:30, 10:01, 11:30).

• Marketing 360 does not mean every channel: he puts the brand at the centre, picks channels matching audience and KPIs, and urges "healthy paranoia" about competitors (14:32, 15:00, 20:00).

• He treats brand and performance marketing as one organism: the stronger the brand, the cheaper performance marketing becomes, and even hard-sell creatives should follow the same positioning (26:31, 27:30, 29:31).

• For big sports events he advises planning early, preparing scenarios and focusing on a few offers; during the World Cup, he says, a betting brand is not competing with other operators but with the likes of Coca-Cola (45:30, 46:00, 47:01).

Interview from iGaming Accent by SBC Eurasia, published on YouTube.