With interest in South Africa’s National Lottery at an all-time low we needed to reposition the brand, reinvigorate the franchise, and get people playing again.

To move the message away from the tired ‘win big, one day’ approach, that had left the public disillusioned, we needed to stop talking about winning, about bling, about the unattainable. So, rather than talking to people at all, we asked them to talk to us.

These interviews reveal the personal – and sometimes weird – stories behind the reasons real South Africans play the Lottery at all: their One Thing.

By uncovering the real dreams that motivate the desire to play, the message moved from one about luck, riches, and the generic prospect of winning, to something personal – about possibility, about achievement – and got people thinking about their own One Thing – that One Thing worth playing for.