The National Lottery (TNL) was being outspent by competitors and Consumer Confidence had dipped. Christmas is a crucial period for TNL and we needed to maintain ticket sales to ensure returns to the good causes TNL funds remained strong, in spite of the increasing competition for wallet spend at the most expensive time of year. Our communications needed to work harder than ever to achieve this - the brand would go big at Christmas for the first time ever.

We needed an idea that would supercharge our emotional power. A campaign that people would notice at the most challenging time for advertising to cut through in the UK - Christmas.

We had to do this in spite of new CAP CODE regulations precluding the use of anything appealing to children - no classic Christmas characters like Santa, no animals, no famous faces and no-one looking under the age of 25.

We wanted to show people that even if they haven’t played the National Lottery, they have played a kind of lottery before, and they have won it: the lottery of love. Both are games of chance, fate, and serendipity, whereby if you win, you win big. This insight led us to a story in which our very normal and relatable characters play the lottery of love, and win at both. So:

When a man and a woman meet on a train home for Christmas, he hurriedly writes his number on the back of his lottery ticket and gives it to her. But when the number is smudged, and then the ticket wins the lottery, she must take her chances on finding him again on New Years Eve…

Christmas is a time for presents, but it's also a time for falling in love.

Festive romcoms feature heavily in Brits’ seasonal traditions and rituals - so we made one of our own.

Winning the lottery made people feel like the luckiest person on earth. But we realised that finding ‘the one’ made them feel just as lucky. This unlocked our story: a young couple, brought together by a winning lottery ticket. A festive romcom. A TNL lottery ticket at the heart of the story. The dual win of love and money.

The British Rom-Com is an iconic category, however, it’s been utterly dominated by white faces, which was something we wanted to change. The story relied on two people with instant chemistry, who were young and undiscovered, but talented enough to work with an Oscar-winning director. Through determination, we found two actors who were perfect for eachother.

Wanting to stay totally authentic to their backgrounds presented many challenges. We were trying to change the systematic problems of representation in the industry, resulting in fewer underrepresented people being portrayed, leading to even fewer wanting to become actors. For this reason, we struggled to cast our lead actress’ family, and ended up casting her actual Mother, and flying her to England for the shoot.

It took dedication to find the perfect people, but ultimately, we contributed to changing the face of Britain’s two most loved categories: Christmas ads and Rom-Coms.

Our campaign changed behaviour. Our big Christmas draws got more people playing than ever and 52% of the population claiming they bought a lottery ticket over the Christmas period.

Our campaign boosted sales. The two largest, daily ticket Lotto sales recorded since game changes/relaunches in 2016 were achieved before the two big Christmas event draws. Total sales across all games saw a sales uplift of £10.6m.

Our campaign was noticed. Claimed ad awareness saw a YoY uplift of +4.3% in November 2022, and +9.9% in December 2022.

Our campaign was engaging. Our TVC achieved a SystemOne star score of 5.8 out of 5.9 (measures long-term impact; emotional engagement is the primary factor).

Our campaign changed attitudes. Brand consideration increased to 75% by the tail end of the campaign, and into 2023.