Lucky bus takes tickets for a fare go

A tour bus covered in instant scratchie lottery tickets has paid off big time for punters and the NZ Lotteries.

The remarkable vehicle covering consists of thousands of genuine lottery tickets able to be scratched off by a passersby. The innovative promotion drew crowds of eager scratchers as the bus toured the country.

The Scratchy Bus Road Trip concept was developed to promote the new Instant Kiwi lottery tickets.

According to DDB New Zealand producer Andy Robilliard, the campaign connected the public with the Instant Kiwi brand and tickets in an unforgettable way. Everyone who scratched the bus was in the running for cash prizes up to $10,000.

“The project was an overwhelming success. The PR generated by the road trip - 14 cities in 28 days - ensured an extremely efficient marketing campaign that delivered a large increase in ticket sales for New Zealand Lotteries,” he said.

Pictured: Eager scratchers hoping for a win.

The campaign is likely to be a world-first promotion with a printer producing stick-on scratchy tickets for large-format outdoor use.

The Instant Kiwi Bus and Billboard Scratchy was recognised at the 2011 Pride in Print awards with a gold in the industry development category.

Likely to be re-run next year in an evolved form, ad agency DDB says it will again call upon the same printing industry specialists it partnered with for this promotion, Impressions International and Omnigraphics.

The project required some innovative planning and techniques. Impressions managing director Bill Bamford said they printed some A4 scratch panels, deployed them outside and subjected them to a variety of tests including being struck with a fire hose at various strengths to simulate the bus being cleaned and heavy rain.

“We then applied to a billboard fabric and let that get good exposure to the wind and sun to see if its movement as a ‘flag’ would cause the scratch silver to crack or come off. This was repeated over four to six weeks until we were confident it would stand up on the billboard and bus, yet still scratch off reasonably easily,” he said.

“Then we had to think through the application to the bus and billboard and instigate a system of applying the panels in the correct places. We could not see what prizes were on each as they were covered up by the scratch panel and in the case of the billboard we had to put a ‘blocker’ in the panel we were printing so it could not be read from behind when mounted.”