Step aside Santa, the Gate and People’s Postcode Lottery are delivering the best Christmas gift of all this year: a share of £16.9 million!
People’s Postcode Lottery is a national subscription lottery where 33% of the ticket price is donated to charity. A staple of their TV ads are the four Postcode Lottery ambassadors - Danyl Johnson, Jeff Brazier, Judie McCourt and Matt Johnson - as well as newbie ambassador Jason Donovan. Their objective was to create a TVC which highlighted their biggest ever prize of £16.9 million, to be won by one lucky postcode in the UK in their December draws!
They came to us with the idea of seeing Jason driving a huge red Postcode Lottery lorry advertising the £16.9m prize amount on its side, to build excitement for the lottery’s biggest EVER prize. We brought director Giles Smith on board, who helped us to create the magical, nostalgic Christmas scene.
This shoot involved a quick turnaround, with only a few weeks to produce, shoot and edit ready for broadcast in early November. Finding a residential street location in London in this narrow time frame was a challenge, but we managed to find the perfect street that fit our huge lorry plus all of our facilities.
With the ad being set at nighttime, filming had to be split between an outdoor night shoot on location and a daytime shoot in studio, where we replicated the twilight sky with lighting trickery. We scheduled this into two consecutive shoot days, also working these timings around the busy schedules of our Postcode Lottery ambassadors.
Of course, shooting in early October, our residential street location didn’t initially look quite as Christmassy as we needed it to… this is where Art Department and Special FX came in, dressing each house in festive decorations and twinkling lights. From putting up Christmas trees in windows to dressing gardens with festive animal statues, they left no snowflake unturned. And the amazing Machine Shop SFX team dusted the whole street in faux snow for the full winter wonderland effect!
Check out the behind-the-scenes from the shoot here:
Our in-house post production team edited the ad, with the colour grade completed by George Kyriacou at Black Kite Studios. The result was a 30s TVC with 20s and 10s cutdowns, with alternative scripts for different broadcast dates, which launched in the first weekend of November and was broadcast throughout the month.
We also worked with the Postcode Lottery team on a suite of online content to support the TV campaign, which we shot on set with the PPL ambassadors to go out on their Instagram, Twitter and Facebook pages throughout November. We delivered over 20 pieces of video content with corresponding copy, including the behind the scenes film, interactive quizzes, Instagram reels, bloopers, a prize draw launch and more!
The Postcode Lottery team said of the project -
“You and the team really have done such a brilliant job on everything for this project. We really can’t thank you enough for pulling it out of the bag in such limited time!”
Cast:
Postcode Lottery Ambassadors | Danyl Johnson, Jason Donovan, Jeff Brazier, Judie McCourt, Matt Johnson
Featured Artists | Leanne Street, Linda Jean-Barry
Client:
Brand | People’s Postcode Lottery
Managing Director | Robert Letham
Head of Events | Nicole Allan
Marketing Manager | Katie Boyd
Head of Marketing | Julie Paterson
Deputy Head of Marketing | Lynsey Mackintosh
Creative Manager | Walter Grant
Producer | Daniel Warren
Print Studio Manager | Thomas Murphy
PA | Cara Owens
Crew:
Director | Giles Smith
Producer | James Shannon
Production Manager | Lindsay Cowan
Junior Producer | Alice Briers
Production Assistants | Robbie Shirley, Lewis Faithfull
Floor Runners | Ela Kotze, Morris Pusey
1st AD | Jean-Paul Lebon
2nd AD | Rosie Owen
3rd AD | Simon Jenkins
DOP | Dan Holland
Focus Puller | Ian Coffey
AC | Ali King
Grip | Dave Bradshaw
Grip Assistant | Sam Kaye
Playback | Robbie Ross
DIT | Paul Swann
Drone | Ascension Films
Drone Operator | Ibrahim Serra-Mohammed
Gaffer | Steve Finberg
Best Boy | Dan Fontaine
Lighting Desk Op | Tim Shotter
Sparks | Chris Polden, Rob Stewart, Sabrina Corda, Wayne King, Robin Brigham
Genny Op | John Forsyth
Supervising Rigger | Tom Gillings
Riggers | Neil Dengel, Jamie Horwood
Sound Recordist | Martin Seweryn
Art Director | Elizabeth Melinek
Art Assistants | Libby Uppington, Ellen, Alex, Quaddie, Romain
Art Runner | Billy McNamara
SFX | Machine Shop
SFX Snow | Alex Forbes, Jono Long, Paris Rivers
Stills Photographer | Michael Heffernan
Digi Assist | Martin Slivka
Lighting Assistants | William Allen Morgan, Bruce Horak
Wardrobe Stylist | Angharad Merrey
Wardrobe Stylist Assistants | Gemma Butterworth, Sophea Bailey
Chief MUA | David Sesmerouiz
MUA Assistant | Shani Mushington
Chief Hair Stylist | Hannah Godley
Hair Stylist Assistant | Lilia Mullinger
Jason Donovan Makeup Artist | Jackie Tyson
Unit Medic | Paul Venton
Catering | Honey and Thyme
Driver of Artic 1 | Kurt Halton
Driver of Artic 2 | Cliff Messenger
Locations Manager | Tom Holt
Edit | The Gate Films
Colour Grade | George Kyriacou @ Black Kite Studios
Like what you see? Think we could bring your idea to the screen, then contact us below.
