The Background
In 2021, the National Lottery’s Lotto game rolled for 63 consecutive draws, hitting its highest ever jackpot leading to a mustbe-won draw in January 2022. The long roll sequence and high jackpot attracted high levels of media attention, but led to backlash and criticism around game winability.
This campaign was shortlisted in the Best tactical Use of TV category at the TAMI Awards 2023
The Challenge
With Lotto having not been won for over 6 months, suddenly, over 60% of the country were agreeing with the statement that ‘the National Lottery are greedy’. Brand sentiment (BRI) fell dramatically in a matter of weeks. Brand image statements also dropped by 10% and more worryingly, 40% of the country doubted that the Lotto draw could even be won. The entire concept of a lottery is based on the trust that even if you don’t win – you believe you could, and you certainly believe that somebody will. We know that this ‘win belief’ is critical to play numbers, and it had been seriously harmed by a roll anomaly which defied all odds. Over the last number of years National Lottery communications had been structured around ‘Win Belief’, ‘Good Causes’ and ‘Jackpots’, however in this unprecedented situation, where Lotto’s draw structure and integrity was being debated by politicians and news commentators weekly,Starcom needed to take a ‘Day One’ approach to how change perceptions
The Strategy
National Lottery needed to build trust back up with the public. Whilst communication of National Lottery’s funding has traditionally helped to improve perceptions of brand greed, Starcom knew that they needed to do something more direct considering how much of an impact the long roll series had on brand scores. The route into this was to educate the public that 90% of all revenue generated by the National Lottery goes back to the Irish community. They had a breakthrough moment during a customer focus group. When one man was told that 90% goes back to the community, he gasped and said that it was unbelievable. This lead to our “Unbelievable but true” creative concept which was developed into a highly integrated “90% back to the community” advertising campaign.
Anybody that has worked in advertising can testify to how difficult it is to get people to remember facts and figures. So the challenge was how to get people to notice and remember this 90% figure. It needed to be stand out, and it needed to be entertaining to cut through
The Plan
As the weeks rolled by, more and more people questioned where their money was going – since the jackpot was growing and nobody was winning it. When asked, customers thought that only 29% of ticket sales went back to prize, Good Causes and the retailers. They did not realise that in fact 90% leaves the business and goes directly back into the community.
Starcom didn’t have much time to turn this around, and so started out with an audio and social campaign while the video assets were being built. As we knew the stat alone wouldn’t resonate with consumers, the campaign leaned into the cast of previous ads and built a humorous scene around their disbelief of the statistic. To communicate this messaging properly, they needed that character interaction and therefore the media plan was predominently AV, with 71% of the overall investment directed at TV,, VOD and Cinema.
TV was the lead channel, using 60″, 40″ and 20″ copy kicking off in Mid-June 22 running to the end of August, targeting Ads 25- 44. Given the time of year a strong mix of RTE for the Live GAA and VMS for Love Island was going to be important to maximise 1+ coverage while also using Sky and C4D for frequency.
To continue building reach with our video led strategy we devised an optimal VOD plan to ensure we were reaching and capturing additional audiences across YouTube, Virgin Media, C4 and SKY.
The Results
From a brand perspective the ‘90% Back to Communities’ advertising campaign was a huge success, smashing all targets.
Brand Sentiment (BRI) had plummeted to -12 in December 2021 and was showing no sign of recovery. After this campaign, it shot back up to +16 by July, beating even the most optimistic expectations.
The ongoing fake-news about Lotto being unwinnable had a detrimental impact on the brand. All brand image statements were down by a minimum of 10% by end of
2021. The 90% to community campaign had an immediate impact, returning the brand health back to the highs seen prefake news.
In March 2022, nobody knew that 90% went back to the community. The target was that a third of all adults would know this by the end of the campaign. By July,37% of the country could spontaneously quote that 90% of National Lottery money goes back to the community. Not only did they know, but 60% of players said that knowing this made them feel better about playing national Lottery games.
“Well done everybody. The positive results for the 90% campaign is the cumulative impact of a whole range of things you and our colleagues have been consistently been doing with our direct work the Good Causes, our PR, advertising, social media, direct comms, website, app etc. Since Sept 2017, every month we’ve been asking people if they’ve recently seen or heard about contributions to Good Causes. For 3 years, this figure was pretty steady – about 45% of people said they had recently heard something. From August 2020, this metric started to climb. As of this month – 68% of the country said they’ve seen or heard about contributions. Our players knowing that some of their money goes back into the community makes them feel better about playing and more open to playing when they get the urge to play. And the general public knowing this is really important, given the tough few months the brand had at the end of last year. ”
Paul Dervan, Chief Marketing Officer, National Lottery
Credits
Brand:
National Lottery
Media Agency:
Starcom
Supporting agencies/teams:
Core
Award:
Shortlisted in the Best tactical Use of TV category at the TAMI Awards 2023