Loto Libanais is the official and exclusive operator of lottery games in Lebanon under the supervision of Lebanese Ministry of Finance MOF. It plays an important role in the Lebanese economy allocating an average of $42.4 million dollars annually to the Government’s budget while returning around 45% of its revenues as prizes to the Lebanese people who invest their winnings, thus increasing consumption and contributing to a healthy economic cycle.
Understanding the existing background of the mood prevailing in the society, we realized that Lebanese people were losing hope. They saw little opportunity to achieve their goals and ambitions, and this directly translated into our biggest barrier; our audience had lost the optimism required to believe a Lotto ticket could translate into a big win and the realization of a dream. If we could get our audience to once again believe a dream could have significant and positive outcomes, we could get them to buy in to the Lotto dream again.
We needed to reinvent the lottery in a way that would encourage their optimism and openness to the possibility of something good happening at such a dark time. Our approach was to invite people to play with their dreams instead, urging them to be positive and dream at a time when it was needed most. We decided to change the game by challenging the age-old practice of picking a lottery ticket with a number and gave people a chance to enter the lottery with their dreams. By moving the experience of playing the Lotto out of stores and directly into people's hands, we completely changed the way they interacted with the brand.
Introducing Dream Number - an online application where users could enter their dreams, to generate their very own unique lottery numbers as derived from that unique dream itself.
By designing a bespoke typeface in English and Arabic, with multiple number combinations embedded within each character, the application allowed users to create billions of number combinations, allowing them to enter the lottery instantly.
The real dreams entered by users were then turned into our print campaign, which featured hidden numbers within the dreams. These user-generated ads captured the mood of the Lebanese people and gave them more reason to turn their dreams into a reality. Our message was also communicated with the help of digital billboards, that effectively showcased how real dreams were turned into lottery numbers. We also created social content and got the always-online youth of Lebanon excited about our new way to play.