Lotto Spot recently enlisted the help of agency partner McCann Calgary to launch “Not a Pickle,” a new campaign featuring a scratch-and-win ticket called “Dills to Bills” that smells like pickles when scratched and leverages the current food trend.
The “Dills to Bills” campaign, which promotes a $3 ticket shaped like a pickle jar, runs from Aug. 11 to Sept. 5 in Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba and offers the chance to win 10 prizes of $10,000.
Jordan Finlayson, senior copywriter with McCann Calgary, tells strategy that the agency wanted to tap into pickle imagery primarily because the food is having a moment among millennials and Gen Z.
“We needed a campaign that matched the novelty,” Finlayson says. “Instead of focusing only on prizes, we drew a playful parallel between real pickles and our ‘Dills to Bills’ ticket – humour designed for a younger audience. From wild postings you could actually sniff to bold new colours, name and gameplay, everything about this launch was fresh.”
The “Dills to Bills” campaign is being amplified through DOOH, print OOH and scratch-and-sniff wild postings in Calgary and Edmonton on Aug. 18 – “the first time a sticker you can smell has been used in Canada,” Julie Evans, VP and executive media director for agency partner McCann Canada, tells strategy. Additionally, audio ads are running on Spotify along with ad placements on Meta, Snapchat and Snapchat AR Lens, TikTok and Netflix.
Lotto Spot is the primary public-facing brand for the Western Canada Lottery Corporation (WCLC) for winner announcements, product news and lottery sales both in-person and online. The WCLC’s lottery games are available at retail locations and online under the Lotto Spot banner.
Jenn Mayuga, group account director at McCann Calgary, tells strategy that the agency’s main aim was to help Lotto Spot find contextual opportunities that resonate with the brand’s target audience.
“This is something we look out for across the different product categories that are available at Lotto Spot (i.e. scratch-and-win or draw based games like Lotto Max and Lotto 649),” Mayuga explains. “A different example of this would be when we participated in the action figure trend back in April where we developed our own spin on the trend and reimagined lottery winners as heroes of their own dream lives.”
