Camelot’s new national lottery rebrand, Genius or Misfire?

The last time Camelot rebranded the National Lottery here in the UK it was 2002 and at a cost of approximately 82 million pounds. In the 13 years since, the imagery and colours of our nation’s favourite games of chance (that everyone we know never wins on!) have not really altered. This has now all changed. Wolf Ollins, a brand consultancy with offices in New York and London, was engaged to research and deliver this rebranding.

The National Lottery brand has been spending the last 18 months repositioning itself to focus on the life changing results of its product portfolio.

Wolf Ollins has wisely kept the crossed fingers logo which is widely recognised in the UK (95% of all the UK public recognise the crossed fingers logo of the lottery).

Converted work with brand concepts and brand positioning and as such this highly recognisable business and its changes make a great case study for us all to discuss, as we look at how the logo and website changes impact on the user.

So what has changed?

Well let’s start with the logo. Below we take you through the revisions it has seen.

Pre-2002.

The new one created at a cost of £50,000! The blue had a touch of shine added. The smile on the hand made more pronounced and the name of the company rounded to make it feel friendlier and less formal.

Then we have the latest logo as of July 2015.

As you can see there has been a move away from the traditional colour scheme synonymous with the national lottery and we start to see the inclusion of these blue stars. These same blue stars you will find running through a lot of the website changes. So straight away you can see a new colour scheme and the smile on the hand has been reduced in size however it is more prominent and gives a friendlier feel to the logo. The text has been placed back at the right hand side of the main icon.

Then we move on to the new site :

If you’re like us, the first thing you will notice is the green. It’s kind of hard to miss! The colour scheme is certainly more akin to brand palette choices made in the late 90’s early naughties. Clearly the idea is to invoke a feeling of nostalgia, or – and this is the more likely option – Camelot and Wolf Ollins let data dictate the colour of this home page and used results from user testing to find the optimal colour scheme for performance rather than aesthetics. If this isn’t the case then we would have to say that this has missed the mark in terms of the look and feel the national lottery should invoke. This feels more akin to British seaside amusements than a charitable institution.

Then we move on to the menu system. Here is where the flexibility of the new logo really becomes prominent, Utilising different colour schemes and shapes we can see that even the mighty euro millions game has had its highly recognisable blue tones changed to an almost florescent yellow. We can also see the promotion of the Game Store.

What is the Game Store?

Part of the Camelot strategy was to integrate all the Instant Win Games and Scratchcards. They will now be brought together under the umbrella brand ‘GameStore’ across both the National Lotteries digital and retail channels. The theory is that the GameStore will make it much easier for players to identify and play their favourite instant win games wherever they are – and will again reinforce awareness that these games belong to The National Lottery. This seems a sensible decision.

Sally Cowdry, Camelot’s Marketing & Consumer Director, explained: “We already operate four of the biggest brands in the UK. But, like any major brand, we need to evolve and innovate to ensure we stay relevant and engaging in an increasingly complex and competitive marketplace.

“While most people know that Lotto is part of The National Lottery – largely because it is the flagship game, launched in 1994 – many aren’t aware that EuroMillions and Instants are also National Lottery games and play a big role in raising massive sums of money for National Lottery-funded projects.

“This is important because our research clearly shows that, when people – particularly younger consumers – understand that these games contribute to National Lottery funding, they are more positive about our brand. That’s why we developed our recent ‘Play Makes It Possible’ campaign, which has been hugely successful in starting to link all the games together and showing how The National Lottery changes lives – both through creating winners and contributing to Good Causes. This new look and feel is only one part of our overarching ‘Life Changing’ brand communications strategy, but it signals our continued commitment to constantly adapt so that The National Lottery and its games remain fresh, relevant and appealing in the years ahead.”

Here at Converted we are not sure what to make of this. I’m sure focus groups would be the basis for these comments, but sat reading this did any of you actually think that EuroMillions and the Instant win games played no part in the Lottery funded projects out there? We would have been more surprised if it wasn’t the case.

Finally and probably most significantly in this national lottery rebrand we see the Life Changing section of the site pictured above. Here we can see the strategy really take shape in the design. Huge focus has been placed on the work they do (rightly so) by limiting the menu bar to just three main things. Play. Results of playing. THEN SEE OUR GREAT WORK! You will see they now give an amount raised so far this week. This serves multiple purposes but from a user point of view there is an association to charities maybe lacking in previous designs.

This evokes a feeling of the greater good in players. Are you more likely to feel comfortable handing over your money if you are given the feelings you are helping charitable causes and not just trying to make yourself rich! Course you are. That’s why it was done. Just another example of how a subtle (maybe not) change to a website can have powerful effects to the end user. This kind of experience is at the heart of UX web design.  You will also notice they take the opportunity to showcase multiple winners of big prizes.  Real people, just further emphasising that famous lottery slogan ‘it could be you’ – By emphasising we mean shovelling them at you by the bucketful!

So… What do you think? Here at Converted we applaud the brave decision to re-imagine the logo and feel of such a widely recognised business and while not all of the elements have been executed as well as could be (colour pallet people), generally it is an effective demonstration of how a change in strategy can affect the practicality of a website and the whole, tone, colour and feel of a brand online.

If you would like to discuss UX design or your own website contact Converted today.