The National Lottery Thank Customers with #SupermarketSurprise Campaign
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| YouTube |
It can be easy to forget that the lottery is more than just a big, dark geyser that people throw their change into in the hope that they'll be the ones standing over it when it erupts and sends all the money spewing back to the surface. In the UK, The National Lottery funds thousands of enterprises from charities to the arts to heritage projects. In fact, since The National Lottery was founded 21 years ago, £33 billion has been raised for good causes. Buying a lottery ticket constitutes a real, tangible contribution to British culture and in a recent stunt, they found a way to aptly demonstrate that fact.
The stunt in question involved sending Alan Dedicoat (the guy who calls out the numbers) to a Tesco in Cumbernauld, near Glasgow. Dedicoat took custody of the store's security room and jumped on the tannoy, addressing customers directly as they approached the counter to buy a lottery ticket (sending them in to a state of bewilderment in the process). Each customer was handed a gift, ranging from a pair of Wellington boots to a violin to a pair of ice skates.
Those gifts might sound unrelated (and utterly random in their valuation) but they were really just symbolic of something which had been funded by the lottery. The boots represented an invitation to MugStock Festival in the nearby Mugdock Country Park, the violin pointed to an evening seeing Nicola Benedetti at the Usher Hall in Edinburgh and the ice skates were tied to a skating lesson at the Time Capsule, a massive water park in Coatbridge.
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| YouTube |
Whilst all the customers would have doubtlessly already been aware of those places/events, they may not have known that they had, in fact, partially funded them. Inviting them to experience the cultural institutions that they had been putting money towards is an inspired way to both raise awareness and to thank people for the good work that they didn't even know they were doing. In a statement about the stunt, UKNL representative Vicki Kennedy relayed that “Every week National Lottery players raise £34 million for charities and projects and that funding touches communities all over the country."
Dedicoat himself was similarly enthusiastic about the stunt. "I’ve had so much fun giving Lottery players a surprise by booming over the store tannoy" He said. "I can’t think of a better way to say thank you for their continued support."
These kinds of publicity and awareness raising projects are extremely popular at the moment, since through online distribution across YouTube and other affixed social media platforms, it extends so much further. In days past this might have been shown as an advert on TV, but with the benefit of sharing, the people who appreciate the video will become instrumental in promoting it further still, perhaps encouraging the UKNL to do similar things in the future. Here's hoping.
Callum Davies
Callum is a film school graduate who is now making a name for himself as a journalist and content writer. His vices include flat whites and 90s hip-hop. Follow him @CallumAtSMF
The National Lottery Thank Customers with #SupermarketSurprise Campaign
Reviewed by Unknown
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Friday, September 04, 2015
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Reviewed by Unknown
on
Friday, September 04, 2015
Rating:
Unknown
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