Dutch Lottery Campaign Advert Again Wins Public Plaudits

Image source: Donald Trung, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

The Dutch await their annual New Year’s Eve Lottery campaign advert with some excitement. A recent addition to the wide-ranging festive traditions in the Netherlands. So this year Bart Timmer from Czar Amsterdam took the helm, and delivered. This is no mean feat. Progressive jackpot lottery adverts require a bettering of what has gone before. Previous years have won awards. Culminating in a heart-warming moment stood at a lotto agent in festive scene, this one should too.  

So, it is rare someone tells you to watch a Dutch lottery campaign advert. At least, I suppose, if one isn’t Dutch. However, this year the tale told in the one minute forty-five second spot is quite the heart-warmer. It has thus cropped up internationally across social media. This means it isn’t only the Dutch themselves who can enjoy the story of Frummel. Frummel, you should note, is a small black kitten, the last of a litter for sale. It is exceedingly telegenic, and possibly a little bit CGI.

At the start of the lottery campaign advert the old man who stars alongside Frummel worries. He remembers the old superstition that black cats bring bad luck. However, it soon transpires his concern was unwarranted. Frummel does quite the reverse. He brings good luck. Every time he meows. So it’s a cute twist that even the best lotto jackpot reviews on sites like Lotto Agent would find wry. However, perhaps a little counter-intuitively the kitten doesn’t help him win the lottery.  

Watch Frummel The Lucky Black Kitten Here

So your typical lottery campaign advert will positively dwell on the concept of you winning. They might make mention of the good causes they support, but in the end tend to rely on your hope. This ad differs slightly. Having led his owner to play the lottery at a street lotto agent with a few obvious hints, he still meows. This leads the old man to give his chance to the young couple just behind him. It is quite the reversal of accepted wisdom and practice. Czar’s are worth their fee. 

“The best kind of happiness is someone else’s.” Said Arno de Jong, the CMO of Nederlandse Loterij, which pays out the best lottery jackpots in the country. It’s something the agency responsible for producing the advert played upon. Darre van Dijk of TBWA/NEBOKO admitted; “The strength of this campaign lies in the disruption of the idea by giving the symbol of misfortune the leading role.” He’s probably right. It’s every bit as good a lottery campaign advert as its predecessors. 

Dutch Lottery Campaign Advert Leads To Lotto Agent Moment

The only question now is who’ll win. The New Year’s Eve draw is already massively popular and each year more people play. This is in no small way thanks to the very clever lottery campaign advert that comes on the screen each year. People await it now with the same eagerness small children do Santa. Those of us who regularly hit up Lotto Agent and similar sites like to see some effort made. Adverts that treat us as more than just greed machines just out for ourselves.

Lotteries are rarely about winning. Participation without gain is far more common. That’s sort of the point. So we like to see some return. The Dutch lottery campaign advert reminds us that we don’t play as much for ourselves as for those we help. Good causes the world over benefit from lotteries. Some adverts reference these. The Dutch don’t need to be so obvious. They get a small black kitten to hint at it instead, and in doing so makes the Staatsloterij perhaps the best lottery to play.

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