THE Lotteries Commission’s multi-million dollar transition to the Lotterywest brand has been well received by WA’s advertising industry, which has voted it as a more recognisable brand in 2003.
THE Lotteries Commission’s multi-million dollar transition to the Lotterywest brand has been well received by WA’s advertising industry, which has voted it as a more recognisable brand in 2003.
In a survey to rank WA’s leading brand names, Lottery-west was voted number two, compared with a ranking of four in last year’s branding survey.
The Lotteries Commission’s brand refurbishment to the fresher and more contemporary Lotterywest was the result of disparity between its corporate brand and products, according to Lotterywest public affairs manager Andrew Walton.
“A couple of years ago we realised that we had to re do our shop fits and point-of-purchase merchandise and at that time we evaluated the brand and we found flaws with it,” he said.
“Lotto was the dominant brand compared to the Lotteries Commission.
“People had a clear idea about the brands but they were very different. If you were describing them like character personalities then Lotto was the Austin Powers. It is a fun brand with bright colours and lots of charisma. The Lotteries Commission was John Howard. But it’s the organisation that brings you Lotto and brings funding to the community.”
Mr Walton said the relaunch was initiated because a large number of consumers were not linking Lotto to The Lotteries Commission, and therefore not making the connection between the commission and its community involvement.
The new Lotterywest brand was introduced to every piece of The Lotteries Commission advertising shown after April 27.
The radical overhaul involved changing its 70-year retail name and renovating shop fits-outs of its 430 retail outlets.
The first retail refit took place this week, and upon the successful completion of three stores, the point-of-sale merchandise will be rolled out across the State, Mr Walton said.
The final stages of the rebrand are taking place over the next few months.
“The most visual part of the campaign hasn’t even happened yet. As we speak the first retail outlet is having its windows done with new branding material and we will complete three shops,” Mr Walton said.
“We will see how happy we are with those and then roll out to other stores.”
Retailers have been supportive of the costs to refit stores.
“They see this as an investment some of them are desperate to get it,” Mr Walton said.
Marketforce has held the Lotterywest advertising account for approximately 30 years.
The current three-year contract expires at the end of the year, however one of the two 12 month options has recently been negotiated with Marketforce, effective from November 2003.
Mr Walton said the brand transformation was built around four attributes with branding specialists Enterprise IG.
“Those are rewards, inspiring, trusted and engaging,” he said.
In addition to the main corporate brand the company has modernised its product brands.
“They had become very dated and we found that in order to fulfil the objectives of the corporate brand and to develop the brand family we had to work on the product brands,” Mr Walton said.
“We had to tread carefully because the brands were quite strong in the market. The Lotto brand has been made over but the colours remained and the logo is similar.
“We kept a lot of the brand characteristics the same, but if you put the new one next to the old one they are very different brands.”
Lotterywest had not ramped up its advertising to promote its new look, according to Mr Walton, with its greater prominence in mass media instead the result of brand synergy.
“The ad spend hasn’t increased that much. The ads all finish with the Lotterywest brand now. So it might be Scratch and Win or Lotto but you associate it with Lotterywest now,” he said.
