To promote the UK’s National Lottery and its support of British Olympics athletes, ITV and the National Lottery recruited London-based Art&Graft to create a campaign that represents the feelings of “togetherness” each Olympics Games brings to Great Britain.
“What we wanted to do with [these films] were make them more approachable and charming than other campaigns,” said Mike Moloney, creative director, Art&Graft.
The “Road to Rio” video (above) feature a flock of lottery tickets that start as individual tickets in people’s homes and fly off around the country, coming together to support athletes in training in every corner of the UK, from the shores of Loch Lomond to the Angel of the North and Giants Causeway. Along the way, each athlete is magically transformed from an amateur training on his or her own to a full-fledged member of Team GB.
The 3D-animated campaign includes commercials and promos as well as point-of-sale and out-of-home images. The underlying message is that buying a lottery ticket contributes, at least in part, to sending Team Great Britain to the summer Olympics in Rio.
“No one has done more than you to support our Olympic athletes,” the narrator intones. “So thank you. Every one of you can say ‘I am Team GB.’”
Camelot UK Lotteries Limited runs the National Lottery in the UK, and contributes more than £80 million each year to help support more than 1,300 athletes.
While ITV originated the initial concept of the transformative flock of lottery tickets, Art&Graft created the films’ characters and its whimsical landscapes.
“We wanted to make the athletes a little more human,” said Moloney. “These are normal people who do heroic things. Part of doing those things is seeing the transformation happen.”
Art&Graft also took real-life portions of the British countryside and animated them into magical places where these Olympic heroes live, work and train.
“We started looking at the work of Norman Wilkinson, who created these beautiful representations of the British landscape, of which personally I’ve always been a big fan,” says Moloney.


After the Games, Camelot and ITV are co-hosting a homecoming celebration that includes a range of free sporting events taking place across the nation. The “I Am Team GB” promo urges people to get involved on August 27.
The “Road to Rio” film launched Thursday, July 21 on ITV, with the “I Am Team GB” film following on July 5. Further cut downs, event promos, print campaign and OOH are following in the build-up to the Olympics Opening Ceremony on August 5 and the “I Am Team GB” event on August 27.
CREDITS:
Client:The National Lottery / ITV
Agency: Art&Graft
Creative Director: Mike Moloney;
Head of Animation: Clement Bolla
Head of 3D: Martin Salfity
Art Director: Stephen Middleton
Producer: Tom Bromwich
Illustration: Coline Bigelow, Clement Bolla, Stephen Middleton, Guitty Mojabi, Jim Wheeler
Character Animation: Clement Bolla, Ricardo David, Ellie Dupont, Sunil Kumar, Florian Mounie, Vincent Techer
Animation: Clement Bolla, Nicolas Canticus, Joe Maker, Stephen Middleton, Sam Munnings, Martin Salfity, Jim Wheeler
Print Artworker: Stephen Everett
Music: “Nothing But Love” by James, BMG Rights Management
Sound Design: Grand Central Studios
ITN Productions
Executive Producer: Jemma Cassey
Campaign Producer: Jennifer Collins
ITV
Executive Creative Director: Tony Pipes
Creative Director: Anton Ezer
Campaign Manager: Heena Jivan
Marketing Manager: Natasha Reddy
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