People’s Postcode Lottery utilised OOH’s full power to promote its biggest-ever prize pot
The Media Plan
In December 2024, People’s Postcode Lottery (PPL) was looking to promote its largest-ever prize pot of £32.5m via a nationwide multimedia campaign.
As the company was developing its media plan alongside independent agency the7stars, the teams quickly identified that OOH would play a crucial role.
Dave Singleton, PPL’s head of media investment, told The Media Leader: “With the fragmentation of television viewing impacting linear TV reach, we turned to OOH as a complementary extension of our broadcast strategy, offering the added benefit of precise targeting for our growth audiences.”
Two phases
The plan was constructed in two phases: an “invitation” phase and a “surge” phase.
During the initial period, Singleton said PPL’s OOH strategy was to focus investment on higher-dwell-time placements and areas that aligned to the company’s previously identified growth segments.
“From our research, we knew London and the surrounding commuter belts were key for our growth audiences and this became a major focus for our investment alongside other major cities, including Manchester, Birmingham and Edinburgh,” he explained. PPL “cherry-picked” specific sites before selecting the best formats designed contextual messaging for those specific locations.
Digital formats were also deployed across environments such as roadside, rail and the London Underground, with the twin goals of driving frequency and providing an opportunity to rotate messaging.
“To help our campaign hit home, we targeted bold, high-impact locations, including iconic sites like Piccadilly Lights and [Storm] Cromination, as well as large-format digital OOH displays in key areas,” Singleton added.
The day before the final deadline to enter the prize draw, PPL implemented its “surge” strategy by activating an additional 1,556 digital six-sheets to amplify the final sign-up call.
As Singleton explained: “This surge was timed for the Saturday before deadline day, taking advantage of higher foot traffic without the additional premium cost associated with Sunday’s increased footfall.”
Proving its value
The campaign’s creative focused on the prize pot and included a clear call to action: “Is your door in the draw?”
Where possible, contextual messaging was used to reference the city or town the ad appeared in for added relevance. Activity also integrated talent from its TV creative into specific placements and sought to tailor rotating messages for target groups to ensure the campaign stayed fresh throughout its duration.
According to Singleton, the creative approach “aimed to convert new audiences while ensuring our base and broader ‘reach the nation’ audience were not overlooked”.
Singleton told The Media Leader that he was most proud of how PPL “tailored the creative to the OOH format and location”.
“As a relatively new advertiser in the OOH space, the channel proved its value,” he said. “Whether static or full-motion, short versus long dwell time, creative was contextualised by location, with dynamic and rolling messaging on digital formats, and added sequential messaging where dwell time was limited.
“Creative and media worked seamlessly together to achieve exceptional results.”
The campaign exceeded PPL’s target outcome by 134%, Singleton pointed out, delivering its highest sales month to date.
Significant sales growth was measured among its target audience and PPL saw “notable spikes” in key geographical regions that it could directly attribute to OOH investment.
In future campaigns, PPL would look to focus on “further maximis[ing] how we contextualise messaging — aligning with the day, time, location and mindset of the audience — to truly create cut-through and impact”, Singleton concluded.
