Lotto looks to build ‘bigger personality’ with star-studded campaign
Camelot is launching a campaign for its Lotto brand starring Piers Morgan and Katie Price in an effort to build a ‘bigger personality’ and cut through the ‘bombardment’ of messages from other brands.
The campaign features a series of behind-the-scenes style mini-films in an effort to convince the nation to buy tickets to make sure the celebrities don’t win due to the outrageous things they plan to do with the money.
Piers Morgan’s film, which shows him planning the construction of a seaside pier called Piers’ Pier, rolled out on TV last night (5 July). Price’s plans to launch a 24-hour TV channel called “Katie TV” will be showcased in a video launching this weekend, while a third celebrity will join the campaign in mid-July.
The campaign, created by AMV BBDO, Vizeum and Camelot’s in-house creative service team, will also be promoted with POS, online, social, print, OOH and radio activity.
Sally Cowdry, Camelot’s marketing and consumer director, told Marketing Week that the campaign is an effort to bring the anticipation of buying a Lotto ticket to life “rather than simply announce jackpots”.
“We wanted to give Lotto a bigger personality and ultimately get talked about,” she said. “We’re all bombarded with so many different messages from so many different brands so we wanted to do something different.”
She added that as Lotto is the number one consumer brand for the company, it was important “to treat it as a premium product in the range and have a strong campaign for it”.
The campaign is also the first to showcase the National Lottery’s new “crossed fingers” logo as part of the brand identity it launched in April. (https://www.marketingweek.com/2015/04/14/national-lottery-to-launch-new-brand-identity-following-record-year-of-sales/)
The refresh, which is part of the “Life Changing” strategy introduced 18 months ago, is set to roll out elsewhere on digital from the middle of July, according to Cowdry.
“It’s all to make sure we have a modern, vibrant, relevant and engaging look and feel of the product range in keeping with 2015 and the digital era we’re in,” she added.
In April Camelot credited the launch of new online and mobile platforms for record UK National Lottery ticket sales in its 2014/15 financial year – sales hit £7.3bn, up by 8.1% year on year.
Speaking on the company’s financial success, Cowdry said: “It’s about game development. We have also been innovating in our instant category and increasing the ways the nation can play.”
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