Powerball is an Australian lottery game run by Tabcorp. In a saturated market, if Powerball was to grow it needed to stop relying on its core base of players and attract younger audiences. This sounds easy enough but when you own all major lottery brands and want to drive growth without cannibalising your other brands it is not so simple.
Brand tracking was also showing that all lotteries games lacked brand differentiation. Players were prize loyal more than brand loyal. This lack of brand differentiation was compounded by the launch of Lottoland offering Australians access to mega million-dollar international lottery prizes for the first time. To address these issues, it was agreed that a new brand positioning and brand launch was required for Powerball, but it could not be at the expense of other Tabcorp lottery games.
A combination of quantitative and qualitative research was undertaken to help shape the new brand positioning.
Research identified a number of key insights. Firstly, Powerball’s previous positioning, ‘live an extraordinary life’, was not being delivered by the advertising. At the same time, we knew from a recent research survey into Millennials, Millennium Monitor, that the social values of today were changing, and the new brand platform needed to position Powerball in a more relevant way.
However, the key insight was that was for Powerball players it is not about the big win enabling you to buy whatever you want. They were motivated not by what they could buy but what they could be. The Powerball win gives players the opportunity to be the person they were meant to be.
This insight provided the inspiration for the new brand platform – Powerball. Play By Your Own Rules.
To demonstrate this, and to relaunch the brand and its new positioning, we created ’The Power Ball’. A party where Powerball winners from different walks of life meet and celebrate their win in their own unique way. These fictitious characters came together as an expression of who they feel they were really meant to be. They were an eclectic mix of peregrine falconers, biker chicks, arctic explorers, golfers and more.
Since launch Powerball has almost double its yearly revenue (98% increase since FY17) and is leading the Lottery portfolio clearly for Tabcorp. It has also become the category entry point for new players attracting younger players to the category, something not achieved for many years.
“Play By Your Own Rule” has made Powerball a clear category leader that is going from strength to strength, allowing Tabcorp to invest in innovation projects and continue to create new and exciting ways for players to experience playing lotteries.
Powerball is now much more than just a game, it is a brand that emotionally connects with its players and this has taught Tabcorp in how to create loyalty with brands, not the prize amount.
