Washington’s Lottery uses AI to show the wild things you can do as a winner

Lottery advertising, which often indulges in winner fantasies, is a prime case study for using generative AI in the creative work—as seen in a new campaign for Washington’s Lottery. Sign up for Ad Age newsletters From influencer marketing to agencies, get the latest news and analysis delivered to your inbox Click here The campaign, created by WPP agency VML Seattle in partnership with AI-focused production studio Secret Level, uses generative AI across multiple outputs. A TV spot (below) and accompanying social videos use AI to place the actors playing lottery winners in exotic destinations, doing wild activities. An additional mobile experience at testdriveawin.com extends the experience to the user. You upload a photo of yourself, and it spits out images of you doing crazy things around the world. “Transporting our audience to bucket-list destinations with the simple throw of a dart is something we have wanted to do for a decade,” Todd Derksen, group creative director at VML Seattle, told Ad Age. The imagery is quite surreal throughout, as we’ve come to expect from generative AI. (Secret Level used a mix of subscription-based AI tools and custom and open-API tools to create the visuals.) Derksen said this surreal quality was welcome for this particular work. “We embraced [it], as it aligned perfectly with our ‘Department of Imagination’ platform,” he said. “We have always historically blurred the lines between reality and imagination and put a ton of extra internal effort into making our imagery feel a bit surreal. AI does that automatically, which is why that tool came to mind during concepting.” Three social videos extend the theme, with lottery winners dreaming up places to go and instantly being transported there. Secret Level, which recently rolled out a self-promo video celebrating AI as a positive game changer for the industry, told Ad Age it used AI very ethically in the new campaign. On set for the TV spot, the company held a separate photo shoot to capture the actors’ appearances for the AI shots. These assets were used across the campaign, and all SAG talent was paid additionally for stills and AI capture. Recent news: Sora reveals industry divide over AI and creativity The mobile experience replicates the dartboard from the TV spot. After throwing a dart and landing on a destination, the user is prompted to take a selfie (or upload a photo), which the app uses to generate three shareable, downloadable images. “Most consumers don’t have access to [advanced] AI tools, so a commercial application that lets anyone instantly see themselves in a variety of locations around the world was a fun challenge that could only be solved with AI,” said Jason Zada, founder of Secret Level (who in 2006 created “Elf Yourself” for OfficeMax, an early experiment in integrating selfies into personalized online content). Ad Age Creativity Bookmark our section covering the best in brand creativity every day Read more here The mobile experience required extensive testing and tweaking to generate outputs that were consistently on brand and shareable, Derksen said. These included a lot of wrangling of creative prompts, including order, style and specific choice of words. “Secret Level’s approach to using AI to read the user selfie, break down the specific personal traits and integrate those visual traits to the final prompt output really helped make the real-time generations more consistently on point,” he said. The campaign also includes billboards. Derksen said the agency did do some retouching of the images for the TV, social video and outdoor ads—“to achieve a more realistic look across the imagery while maintaining the absurd situations.” Dave Clark of Secret Level, who directed the TV spot—and whose spec video for Adidas last year, which he said he made on a coffee break, caused a stir in AI circles—said the lottery work shows how creatives can think bigger with their ideas now, thanks to the emerging tech. “Agencies and brands are finding ways to push the AI tech today and not waiting for [OpenAI’s] Sora and advanced tech to come out tomorrow,” he said. “I loved directing a commercial for a brand and agency that are forward-thinking and approaching the creative meaningfully, telling the best story possible regardless of the tools or methods.”

Washington’s Lottery uses AI to show the wild things you can do as a winner

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