3 Christmas Lottery Advertising Campaigns That Will Move You to Tears

As we draw closer to the season of goodwill, many will play the lottery more often in the hope of winning money to share with the people they love. Advertisers are keen to highlight this, and with that in mind, here are 3 of the best Christmas Lottery Advertising Campaigns of recent years.

And prepare your handkerchiefs…

2017

“The greatest reward is to share”, so says the slogan of the Spanish Christmas Lottery, taking place on 22nd December this year. The 2017 advert, which has been directed by Alejandro Amenabar features the story of “Danielle and Daniel”

Danielle is a young girl who arrives on planet earth from outer space – and finds herself in Madrid. She walks through the streets of the city with her dog at Christmas time – and finds it alive with hope, excitement and magic and love. She smells the rich scents from chestnut trees, coal and sees how alive the city is.

She decides to buy a lottery ticket and while she is doing so, she meets Daniel – and they go to a bar together for the evening. Daniel is a dreamer and looking for love and the two walk through the Sabatini Gardens and the Royal Palace together. Daniel decides to teach Danielle to say his name.

At the end of the evening they go back to his flat together and it is clear they are falling in love and meant to be together. They spend the Christmas season with each other and Daniel finally gets the kiss that he has longed for and one which makes the rest of his life bearable.

One night, Danielle gets lost and fails to return to Daniel’s home. He fears she is gone forever and becomes melancholy. He decides to go and play the lottery game, to try and “bring her back”. Finally, while Daniel is at work sees on television that in the place he bought his ticket someone has won and people are celebrating. He seizes the chance to go and look for Danielle, but misses her!

Daniella is also looking for Daniel in the same place as she is missing him too – but their paths finally cross and the story ends with them rediscovering each other and finding love on the lottery of life.

The President of the Lotteries and State Betting Company of Spain has commented that the advert “Is a unique moment in the year in which the joy of contemplating, sharing and enjoying the happiness is latent in every corner”.

2016

Last year’s Spanish Christmas Lottery was another especially emotional affair. The main character from the short film called Carmina is listening to her numbers drawn on TV. She thinks that she has won the lottery, but it is in fact the wrong night for the draw – and in fact she’s looking at the winning numbers from the previous year. Everyone in the town comes together to keep her illusions alive and the end of the piece shows that the real joy of winning the lottery is being able to share it with everyone around you. Carmina eventually gives away her winnings to her family.

The short film from last year was also noted for the fact it was interactive and people watching the advert were given the opportunity to use an app on their mobile phones to interact with the characters in the piece – something which hadn’t really even been done before for this type of campaign. As well as being beautifully thought provoking, it was a genuinely innovative idea for a lottery draw.

2015

The Christmas Lottery 2015 from Spain was also another huge departure for the team behind its creation, for this advert was one of the few lottery adverts to be created as an animation rather than featuring flesh and blood actors. However, the story behind the creation was just as human as the ones we’ve seen previously.

Justin is a night watchman at a mannequin factory. He doesn’t get on with many of his co-workers yet still tries to make them smile and laugh as much as he can, by leaving them messages and jokes to find. There were similarities drawn between Justin and the character from the previous year’s advert, Manuel and the advertising agency in charge of creating these promotions explains that this was deliberate – that they wanted to remind people watching that the joy of the lottery is about sharing and giving on many levels – and how it can make you feel good about yourself. Justin, even though he doesn’t care for his work colleagues much, proves that it is still possible to care, and not forget about people.

Ultimately “good people who always think of others and the best prize of all is to share this love.”

According to Juan García-Escudero and Jesús Lada, from the advertising agency Leo Burnett, the goal with this advert and this character was to find a human who had a longing and a desire to do good things, so they created Justin, a man who still finds time to make people happy even when he feels he has no time.

The musical score for the advert was created by noted composer Ludovico Einaudi, known for his often introspective and meditative pieces, and it fits perfectly with the themes brought forward into the advert itself.

Viewers were also able to follow Justin’s story through a range of social media accounts, including ones on Instagram and Facebook. This added to the sense of fun and enjoyment for the year’s campaign and also gave the opportunity for everyone watching to become more deeply involved in Justin’s world and to find out more about his character and his life. Again, this brought to the core the feeling of “sharing is caring” and appealed to the emotional aspects of winning the lottery – that whatever you win, it’s about giving to the people closest to you, whether they’re friends, family or other loved ones.

The last three year’s Christmas Lottery Campaigns for Spain have been extremely beautifully thought out and put together. 2018 will definitely have a lot to live up to – watch this space to see what they come up with!