The National
Lottery,
2020 to 2022
I walked into The National Lottery as CMO in January 2020. The business had flattened. The brand had drifted. Two years later we were at €1 billion for the first time.
Source: my Marketer of the Year submission, 2022
A vision before
any of the work.
On a cold, damp January morning in 2020, I gathered my new team together to sell them my vision. The previous few years had been difficult for the business. The marketing team had suffered. So had the brand. But I was optimistic. I had spent my first four weeks listening. To the team, to colleagues, to customers. There was a lot to like.
I summarised the vision in three sentences. It went on the wall. It opened every important meeting. Our agencies signed up to it too.
The National Lottery would regain its status as an Irish iconic brand.
We'd make this happen by becoming Ireland's most effective marketers.
We'd become this if we were willing to commit to six specific behaviours.
Three barriers
to growth.
Good strategy must simplify things so everybody can draw a line from the diagnosis to the actions they've been tasked with. These were the three biggest barriers I saw after listening and reading for four weeks.
Shared and explicit
behaviours.
If there is one thing I truly believe marketing success depends on, it is shared and explicit behaviours. These were printed on our walls and read out at the start of all important meetings. Our agencies signed up to them too.
Hard on the work, easy on each other
We demand high quality work. We can't relax that criteria. But we are nice to each other.
Work ethic
We work hard. We won't be successful without this.
Critical thinking
We ask questions. We question the assumptions we believe to be true. We look for evidence. Healthy scepticism, not cynicism.
Humility
We don't know what is right. We should care far less about who is right. Ego gets in the way. It starts with the team.
Strong opinions, weakly held
We change our minds when evidence suggests we're wrong. Not just ok, but demanded of everybody.
Share early and often
We share our work, our views, and our results with everybody interested. We don't spin our results. Ever.
My strategy
had three parts.
The three barriers led to a three-part marketing strategy. Every decision, every metric, and every media choice that followed traced back to one of them.
Get noticed more
Increase brand salience, fame, and mental availability.
Be liked more
Increase brand affect and build a stronger emotional connection with the brand.
Be easier to buy
Make it easier to find and buy online and in retail.
What the strategy
meant in practice.
Here are some of the bigger calls that fell out of the three-part strategy. Every one of them maps back to get noticed, be liked, or be easier to buy.
Focused on The National Lottery as the masterbrand
Our product brands had been playing first fiddle, competing against each other with different colours, taglines, and personalities. By doubling down on one masterbrand, we focused our budget, media spend, and other resources.
Sharpened positioning to "a ticket to dream"
We are not simply selling jackpots. We are selling a ticket to dream. People don't expect to win. They hope they will. They buy the chance to pleasantly dream today about what they would do if they won. The dream isn't exciting if you don't have a ticket.
Brought back "It could be you"
Dropped in 2013. Bringing it back was seen by some as a risky move for a new CMO. But research showed the tagline was famous, liked, and prompted people to dream. The gold was in the past.
Doubled down on distinctive brand assets
Our ability to build DBAs is one of our strongest capabilities. Our CEO stood up in front of the entire company and explained why they matter in a world where attention is scarce and media is fragmented. And he showed it with numbers.
Measured ROI properly
The very first thing I did in my starting week was kick off an econometric modelling project. For every €1 we invested in advertising, we got €2.68 back in profit. We doubled down on the most effective channels and cut the least effective ones.
Measured and grew mental availability
Not just awareness. We measured Category Entry Points. Which buying cues does the brand attach to, and how strongly? That sharpens creative, media placement, and messaging all at once.
Invested in Good Causes
The business had stopped talking about Good Causes for seven years because it didn't drive sales directly. Our intrinsic motivations research showed that knowing some of your money goes back into the community keeps people open to playing again.
Improved the journey online and in retail
Shopper research in stores. Rebuilt mobile app journey. Targeted non-customers with the language to ask for the right game on the right day.
The theory, and
how we taught it.
Two frameworks sat underneath the decisions we made. The first explains how we grew mental availability. The second explains why Good Causes matters even though it doesn't drive sales directly. Then the tools we built to make sure the whole team understood them.
The Category Entry Point we built around
A CEP is a buying cue. We picked one, measured it, and built the creative and media around it. The CEP we chose was "when I dream about changing my life".
changing
my life
Lottery
ticket
The science behind why we buy
Purchases are prompted by cues. The brain runs a feedback loop that decides whether each purchase was worth it. Knowing a bit of your money goes back to the community keeps you open to the brand after a loss.
A habit, an internal thought, or an external prompt triggers a purchase decision
Consumer behaviour is goal-orientated
The goal is the excitement of dreaming about winning
Feelings train the brain on whether the decision was good or not
Online training modules
We built in-house marketing effectiveness training for the whole team, with a quiz at the end of each module. Available to everybody in the company. Even finance colleagues wanted to do it.
AIM Awards, 2021
Won Best Advertising Campaign at Ireland's All Ireland Marketing Awards. The same campaign that beat nearly every UK brand on System1's creative benchmarks.
Best advertising campaignNot all metrics
are equal.
Most marketing teams live at the base of the pyramid, counting activity and outputs, because those are the easiest things to measure. We worked all five levels. Click any level to see the metrics we used.
The money metrics
What the CFO and Board actually care about. Revenue, profit, margin, return on investment. If marketing can't connect to these, it's a cost centre.
- Revenue: our first ever €1 billion year in 2021, a 19% increase vs 2019
- Year-on-year growth tracked against the highest in the history of the business
- Reported to the Board, not just to marketing
What people actually do
Lifetime value, purchase frequency, retention, churn. Leading indicators of level one. If customers are behaving the way you want, the revenue follows.
- Frequent players: grew from 740,000 in 2019 to 803,000 in 2021, a 9% increase
What lives in their heads
Mental availability, brand affect, distinctive brand assets, category entry points. The bridge between what you put in the world and what people do.
- Brand equity tracked across 10 measures, every one up between Apr 2020 and Sep 2021
- Distinctive brand asset linkage: logo 95%, "It Could Be You" tagline 87%
- Category Entry Point "when I dream about changing my life": 74% think of The National Lottery
- Good Causes sentiment: 46% to 68% over the period
How people react to the work
Ad recall, creative quality scores, click-through, engagement. Useful, but mid-stream. They tell you if an asset is working, not if the business is moving.
- Marketing ROI: €2.68 profit returned for every €1 we invested, measured via econometric modelling
- System1 star ratings benchmarked against the best advertisers in the world
- Our rising stars rating of 4.6 out of 5, beaten only by Cadbury in a UK-wide test
- Won Best Advertising Campaign at the 2021 AIM Awards
Proof that money was spent
Impressions, reach, followers, traffic, frequency. Necessary for reporting, and often confused with results.
- Reach and frequency tracked, but never treated as the success metric
- Output metrics used to diagnose why levels 3 or 4 moved, not to claim wins
- Our reporting headlines were always levels 1 to 3
Business and
brand success.
The revenue growth didn't come from price increases or increased distribution. It didn't come from sales promotions or high jackpots. It came from a brand that had regained its footing, and from customers who played more often because they felt more connected to it.