Skip Friday 13th
La Libanaise Des Jeux
Issue 42 | March 2017
Agency
Impact BBDO Dubai
Creative Team
Regional Executive Creative Director Fadi Yaish Creative Director Daniel Correa Associate Creative Director William Mathovani
Production Team
Digital Director Hisham Lahouasnia Technical Lead Nilesh Thakkar Technical Director Nabeel Qaisar User Interface Developer Mohsin Khan
Date
2016
Background
Loto Libanais wanted everyone to feel lucky. That way they would feel more inclined to play the lottery once a week. The challenge was to get more people than ever to play Loto Libanaise on the unluckiest day of the year, Friday 13th.
Usually you would expect superstition to kick in and the number of players to drop.
The campaign objectives were to increase sales of tickets, grow site traffic by 2,500% and reach 500,000 media impressions.
That's all.
Idea
Friday the 13th is the unluckiest day of the year. Luckily, the world is round. So when it's Friday 13th in Beirut, Lebanon, it's Thursday 12th in New York and Saturday 14th in Tokyo and other cities around the world.
The plan was to get people to play Loto from a different time zone and, literally, skip Friday 13th.
A 24-hour microsite was created, skipfriday13.com, which allowed everyone in Lebanon on Friday 13th to play from different cities that were still on Thursday the 12th or already on Saturday the 14th.
This was managed by re-routing Loto Libanaise' website IP address every hour from one city to the next, across 24 servers worldwide based on their time zone.
Results
The biggest single day of ticket sales on record: 23,827 tickets.
(Source: Nielsen sales report for Loto Libanaise, Jan 2015 – April 2016)
Site traffic increased by over 14,900%.
Over 1.1 million media impressions on Facebook, Twitter, LBC International, MBC, The Daily Star, among others) worth more than USD105,000.
92% positive sentiment across all mentions.
67% increase in brand buzz.
39% increase in positive reputation.
Our Thoughts
What we like so much about this campaign is that it is one of a whole series of smart and funny ideas from Loto Libanais. A year ago they made a video claiming to have sent all the black cats (which are unlucky in Lebanon) to England and New Zealand (where they are lucky). Then there have been some provocative press ads and some funny radio spots. The consistent theme has been irony because the people of Lebanon and UAE are as cynical as the rest of us. This strategy acknowledges that the chances of winning are infinitesimal. We are all equally unlucky. On the other hand, someone does win once a week and maybe this once, despite the odds, it could be you.