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Leisure, Media & Entertainment

Sponsored by

National Lottery Millionaire RaffleDDFH&B

CoMpaNy pRofiLe

DDFH&B Advertising is now the largest communications group in Ireland. Members of the group include DDFH&B Advertising, MindShare (media), Direction@JWT (PR & Promotions), RMG Target (Direct Marketing) and RMG Digital.

The breadth of these resources puts DDFH&B in a strong position to offer their clients media neutral communication solutions. The majority of our company is owned by the Irish management team, with 27% owned by JWT, one of the leading international networks.

iNtRoduCtioN aNd BaCkgRouNd

An Post National Lottery Company have been operating the National Lottery license in Ireland for more than 20 years now. Over this time as the entertainment needs of the playing public have become ever more sophisticated, the National Lottery have continually adapted and innovated their offerings. Key National Lottery innovations have included adding a midweek Lotto draw, introducing the EuroMillions game and continually devising new themes and designs for their Scratch Card range and their TV game shows. As part of this philosophy of innovation they developed a new product called Millionaire Raffle that launched in May 2008.

Millionaire Raffle is a very different product to other National Lottery Games, and the objective was to achieve sales of €6,000,000 without undue

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cannibalization of sales of other National Lottery games. The Raffle concept was straightforward. There was a limit of 300,000 tickets to be sold over a defined period of 12 weeks. There were two guaranteed top prizes of €1 million and 530 other prizes ranging from €500 to €100,000. The ticket price at €20 was the highest ever marketed by the National Lottery and the draw date was set for August 26th, 2008 .

If successful, Millionaire Raffle could be established as a new National Lottery brand and rolled out a number of times each year. But, to be successful sufficient sales had to be generated to sustain the prize fund and the marketing investment and still generate funds for good causes. So it was imperative to establish a successful template for the future.

A marketing support budget of €600,000 was made available to cover both advertising and promotion to launch the product, and it was decided to utilise this exclusively on advertising.

Marketing Objectives

The business objective for the National Lottery was to establish a new product concept capable of generating incremental sales and therefore incremental funds for beneficiaries around the country. The ‘raffle’ concept was new to the National Lottery and the objective was to launch this

(a) With €6m of ticket sales over a 12 week period(b) As a sustainable and exciting new brand for the future(c) Without reducing sales of core National Lottery brands such as Lotto,

EuroMillions and Scratch Cards.

The marketing of this game faced two obstacles. Firstly, over time the audience for the National Lottery games had become increasingly difficult to impress. In a context where the EuroMillions Jackpot starts at €15million and the Lotto Jackpot had recently topped €18 million, a new way had to be found to excite consumers. Secondly, to be financially viable, tickets for this game had to sell for €20 – a new departure when typical entry levels to other games was significantly less e.g. €1 for Scratch Cards, €2 for EuroMillions and €3 for Lotto.

The marketing objective was to overcome these obstacles presenting Millionaire as a different kind of proposition from the National Lottery, specifically by

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highlighting the guaranteed nature of the two top €1 million prizes. In a context where rollovers of the Jackpot prize for both Lotto and EuroMillions frequently occur, the sense that there would be definite, big winners on a designated date in this game could be a source of new excitement.

The overall communications objective was to launch the Millionaire Raffle product in a way that facilitated a speedy understanding of its distinctive nature – limited ticket sales over a 12 week period and with guaranteed top prizes of €1 million – and would ensure that the high price point would not be seen as an obstacle. In addition, there was the need to do something executionally different from other National Lottery advertising but which at the same time would not alienate existing players. And lastly we needed to create a clear identity for this brand which could potentially become a regular feature of National Lottery Games.

the task

The National Lottery has been extremely successful in Ireland by international standards with 70% of the adult population participating on a regular basis. The current spending on National Lottery games is high in Ireland compared with other developed economies. And with Millionaire Raffle, the National Lottery was looking for incremental growth in a mature market at a time of economic downturn. So, it was a formidable challenge to launch a significant new game in this environment and to generate revenue increases.

A further aspect to the challenge was the limited time frame of 12 weeks. Few product launches of this scale have to succeed in such a limited time frame. Although the high ticket price had the potential to be negatively received, it also meant we only needed 300,000 sales to generate €6 million. So, there was potential to turn the limited number of tickets to our advantage. The bulk of the media spend was concentrated in the first three weeks of the campaign to establish the brand and to explain and differentiate the product. Frontloading the advertising was crucial to create sales momentum and a sense of urgency for people to buy a ticket while stocks lasted. It seems to be part of the Irish mentality to delay purchase to the last minute as last day sign up on SSIA scheme has shown. Lotto and EuroMillions are well established games with years of advertising support, including ‘play early’ campaigns, yet most sales happen on the actual draw date. Critically it was imperative to avoid this and to get sales momentum early in order to achieve success.

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Silver Award - Leisure, Media and EntertainmentNational Lottery Millionaire Raffle DDFH&B

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The STraTegy

Because this was the most significant new game from the National Lottery since EuroMillions, we wanted our launch advertising to reflect this. In particular we wanted to develop a multi-media brand idea which we could bring into all offline and online advertising and which would lend itself to viral activity and POS also.

Consumer research was used to gauge the level of consumer interest in the new product and to measure propensity to purchase. A number of key consumer insights emerged which became central to the creative and media strategy.

The key consumer insight related to ‘certainty’ which the raffle format brought to the prize fund. Consumers are motivated by the larger jackpot prizes that Lotto and EuroMillions offer, but there is no guarantee that the jackpot will be won at the next draw. The certainty that not one, but two million euro prizes were guaranteed with Millionaire Raffle appeared to be very compelling from the research. So, we set out to leverage this unique aspect of the product and put it to the core of the Millionaire Raffle proposition.

The media mix chosen was TV, radio, press and online advertising but the primary medium to be used was television. TV was imperative to develop a unique personality for the new brand, to signal urgency and to explain its unique characteristics. Other media were used in support to convey essential information and to target light TV viewers.

The idea and communicaTion acTiviTy

Creatively we needed an idea which could carry the brand communication into every media channel, which would create an exciting new brand personality and which would facilitate the communication of all of the key information surrounding the launch. The new idea also needed to be rooted in the key consumer insight that the certainty of the prizes could be compelling.

A creative approach was developed around the thought that ‘on August 26th two new millionaires will be born’. The entire campaign was to have a natal theme built around the expectation of the birth of two new millionaires. Thus the concept linked the new game with the idea of a new birth but also conveyed the certainty of the prizes by stating that two new millionaires will be born. The analogy allowed us to create humorous and engaging communications that also explained the mechanic of getting a ticket and waiting for the draw. The idea of being reborn a Millionaire on the draw date, tapped into the

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excitement and expectation of the concept and the benefit of getting your ticket early to prepare for possible new found wealth.

A 40 second TV commercial with a series of cut-downs was developed with a maternity ward theme. The commercial established the sense of expectation. It looked forward to August 26th, the day the new millionaires would be born and set out to convey some sense of the thrill of being a millionaire and the benefits which would follow in a humorous and exaggerated way. The music which was chosen was an old Dr Hook track which contributed to the expectant atmosphere of the commercial but builds to a crescendo with the lyrics ‘I’m a millionaire’ as the visual reveals the birth of a fully grown adult millionaire.

The same newborn theme was carried through press and in store posters using visuals of storks and a graphic style reflecting the look of a birth certificate and allowed us to convey all the detail of the main prizes, cost of tickets and draw dates. The radio carried the theme with a twist on the dreaded ‘where do babies come from?’ question, posing ‘where do Millionaires come from?’ and used the music from the TV as sign off.

The idea of what a new born millionaire could do had so much potential that the digital aspect of the campaign evolved from banners only to a complete new born millionaire micro site for info on the new product called www.newbornmillionaires.ie. The site was constructed continuing the hospital maternity theme and using one of the nurses from the TV ad. At the ‘Ward’ or home page you play the TV ad and read full information on the game while listening to Dr Hook. In a final interactive section you could make yourself a star of the TV ad by posting your photo. You could send this to friends and they could watch the nurses cooing over you as the new born millionaire.

reSulTS

The campaign launched on the 29th of May and the sales results were immediate and dramatic. With only advertising support to drive sales, within ten days after the first airing of the TV advertisement, 23,597 tickets (7.8% of the total) had been sold. And the impact continued to grow – during weeks 3-5 of the campaign, average sales rose to over 47,000 per week. When the advertising went off air in the week commencing 30th of June, the weekly sales dropped to 29,844. All 300,000 tickets were sold by the 6th of August, 20 days before the draw and ten weeks from the launch.

But how much of this is attributable to the advertising. A quantitative market research study, carried out in two phases, in June and July, by Behaviour and

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Attitudes for the National Lottery provide some compelling evidence.

• By June, awareness of the new game had reached 47% of the adult population while awareness of the advertising had reached 48%. This almost identical level of awareness for a product and its advertising is unusual, especially over such a short period of time and strongly suggests a causal link between the two.

• Respondents were asked to rate the new game as “being new and different” on a 10 point scale. 32% of those who had seen the advertising rated it an eight or higher, whereas only 22% of those who had not seen the advertising gave it a similar rating.

• Respondents were also asked to rate the new game “as a good idea” for a game. Once again those who had seen the advertising were more positive - 32% gave it an eight or higher rating versus only 15% of those who had not seen the advertising.

• The effect of the advertising was also evident in both actual purchase behaviour and intent. With regard to the former, 17% of those who had seen the ads bought a ticket compared to only 3% who had not seen the ads. With regard to the latter, 34% of those who had seen the advertising said that “they would probably or definitely” buy a ticket compared to only 18% who had not seen the advertising.

• The newbornmillionaires.ie web site attracted very significant attention attracting over 66,000 visitors in the first ten weeks of its existence. Moreover, the interactive element of the site i.e. where one could make oneself the “star” of the ad went global and had hits in Canada, America, Australia, Brazil, China, New Zealand, as well as Ireland.

Payback or roI

Overall the advertising campaign cost a little over €600,000. This included a significant sum to develop the creative materials and which can be used again in the future. The campaign achieved the target sales figure of €6 million. We could not sell any more as the tickets were limited in number. Allowing for €3.6 million in prizes, advertising costs and agents commissions a profit of over €1.5 million was achieved. This will be distributed to good causes around the country which is the core function of the National Lottery Company.

There will also be more long term returns on the investment. The successful launch of Millionaire Raffle had added a new element to the portfolio of the National Lottery products and an additional source of revenue. Importantly, this new product did not succeed at the expense of other products in that portfolio – sales for both the Lotto and EuroMillions remained constant throughout the period.

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In addition, the fact that the tickets sold out three weeks ahead of the draw meant that demand exceeded supply – the National Lottery have already been receiving requests about the next Raffle date – so the groundwork for the evolution of this new brand had been laid.

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