Yesterday, 26 October, challenger operator MrQ unveiled a brand relaunch as part of renewed efforts to stand out in what the company suggests is a “homogenised and uninspired” casino market and “a sea of sameness”.

At the heart of the above-the-line strategy are radio, social and out-of-home advertising, spearheaded by a new TV campaign.

Under the new brand slogan, ‘The Casino You Love to Hate’, the 30-second short features characters in various scenarios expressing either their affection or hatred towards different versions of a giant letter Q.

For Adam Ryan, who arrived at the St Albans-based firm as CMO in January, the brand refresh is about “tightening up” the tone of voice and a more clearly defined brand palate, all while staying true to the company’s belief of being honest and upfront with players through its messaging.

As he tells EGR, the brand is “still direct, still self-aware and highly irreverent”. Yet it’s been “sharpened it to be more emotionally intelligent”.

EGR: Why did MrQ undertake a brand relaunch and when did the process start – before or after your arrival as CMO in January?

Adam Ryan (AR): [CEO and founder] Savvas [Fellas] is a marketer at heart, and he’s got a very good feel for brand. Yes, brand is a marketing science, but in order to be a good brand marketer it is a lot about feel – it’s the emotional side. So, in our early conversations we were talking a lot about the brand.

One thing that attracted me to MrQ was it was screaming challenger brand. I love the stuff they were doing already around this kind of ‘no BS’ honesty. It wasn’t just the tone of MrQ; it was the edge. It was what made them different and stand out.

The ‘You Win Some, You Lose Some’ adverts are refreshing in a category that over promises and under delivers across the board. Savvas made it clear he wanted to review the brand and do something new, so I was very interested about coming in and working with the wider team to take it to the next level.

That’s what it’s all about […] the remit for me was to tell the business what it needed to do to grow faster and take market share – to challenge the industry but stay [true] to what made us great in the first place. So, go back to what made MrQ MrQ and why we were so successful in those early days, and bring out those brand truths and double down on them.

Adam Ryan

EGR: How important was it to stick to being honest and upfront with players in the messaging?

AR: MrQ is a challenger brand. The UK didn’t need another casino; it deserved a better one. We’re going after these [operators with] clunky tech, lazy promos and copycat brands. That’s what we’re challenging – that sea of sameness. The brand relaunch is about doubling down on this unique position.  

Our honesty and tone and the story we tell is our edge. It’s what makes us different. That ‘no BS’ honesty has always been our superpower. Saying that quiet part out loud – ‘you win some, you lose some’ – is refreshing in this category. So, yes, the tone of voice has stayed. It’s still direct, still self-aware and highly irreverent. but we’ve sharpened it to be more emotionally intelligent. We want to be famous for telling the truth, but in a fun way that players can relate to.

EGR: What was the thinking behind the tweaks to the brand?

AR: Our visual identity has evolved over time and our brand had become wildly inconsistent. Our brand guidelines were a little bit too flexible and there were far too many colours and brand assets, for example. It meant there were too many things to play with, and everything looked very different.

When you brought a typical customer journey onto a single page, you’d never know it was one brand. The TV ad had no correlation to anything else we were running. These inconsistencies drive inefficiencies in performance. It was about tightening it up and creating a set of ownable, distinct and consistent assets, as well as tightening up the tone of voice.

EGR: What does the new campaign push entail?

AR: We’ve got a new TV ad, but also a broader above-the-line campaign. We have been running TV all year and we’ve also been doing a bit of radio, but we’re now expanding that. We’re going to be including out-of-home [advertising] with a variety of sizes of execution, but it’s a consistent, multi-channel campaign with an honest narrative again, but doubling down on it. The ‘you win some, you lose some’ [message] will be going, and we’ll be telling a simple story […] and going bigger.

EGR: Have the UK advertising rules on what you can and can’t do around gambling hampered you in any way?

AR: The beauty of me coming from outside the industry is that I’m blissfully ignorant. I’m almost deliberately not swotting up on all this stuff because we have an excellent compliance and risk team who make sure I’m not breaking any rules.

We’re trying to create something that is fun, engaging and pushing the boundaries of what this industry’s been doing previously, but the compliance and risk team make sure we are flying straight and not doing anything that’s going to be banned or taken down. But yes, I have been told I can’t do stuff. But I get it – we have got to act responsibly and protect the players and take this very seriously. It’s a fine balance.

EGR: With MrQ being a challenger operator, are you able to act more nimbly than bigger firms and make quick decisions where marketing is concerned?

AR: I’m on the leadership team and that is the room where every decision is made. It stops there. We meet every week for a good two to three hours. We enter that room with a list of issues and off the back of those sessions we leave with our actions.

That’s the decision made. With some of our bigger competitors they would not be able to make decisions that quickly. We can start stuff quickly; we can stop stuff quickly. The ability to pivot to launch new initiatives is unparalleled versus some of our bigger rivals. It is a big advantage for us right now.

EGR: How do you measure the success of this brand relaunch? Is it new signups and customer re-engagement, or is it more than that?

AR: It’s a good question. We have a set of marketing KPIs within a set of broader business KPIs. What you mentioned is pretty much spot on, though. We’ll be looking at short-term FTD (first time deposits), paid active players and revenue per active player.

These are pretty standard industry KPIs. This is a brand tweak and there’s emotional reactions to all this stuff, but you need to balance what’s happening in the short term with why you did it in the first place. Not everyone is going to love it. You need to be wary of that and prepare.

So more broadly, on top of the short-term performance metrics, we’ll be looking at our awareness, both prompted but also spontaneous. We’ll be going out and doing regular brand tracking to understand our target audience and if we are growing our awareness metrics.

Preference and consideration metrics are the longer-term brand health metrics that will signify if we’re doing the right thing for the brand and growing it over time. This will carry us into next year and continue what I would say is a very impressive growth journey.

EGR: What’s on the agenda for 2026?

AR: I’ve talked a lot about our brand strategy, but what I didn’t get into was our company strategy – our product marketing and the value proposition we’re building. We have got to deliver on that ‘no BS’ promise with our product. So, next year is going to be all about building the best product in the market.

We’ve done a lot of investment on the marketing side and getting our marketing shipshape, but next year we’re really going to be doubling down on listening to players and building what they want – as well as a few surprises.

It’s about cutting through that sea of sameness in the industry. Instead of a template casino, we’re trying to push boundaries and create something different and exciting that will ultimately look after the player. Hopefully, they’ll choose MrQ and want to come back to us. So, you get that loyalty and that repeat play. Maybe some of those guys who have tried us before and moved elsewhere will decide they want to come back and give us another go.

The post MrQ’s marketing chief: “No BS honesty has always been our superpower” first appeared on EGR Intel.