Play Makes It Possible with The National Lottery

As far as incentives to play The National Lottery go, having a 1 in 14 million chance of the jackpot probably doesn’t sound too tempting to the average man on the street. But a campaign currently running on ITV1 aims to reveal on the positive projects benefitting from lottery funding up and down the country and the organisations that feature are as genuine as they come.

Created by brand storytelling company Art and Science under the supervision of creative director and director on the mammoth project, Phil Lind, the emotive films have been running alongside targeted ITV1 programming throughout the summer but the campaign is set to intensify into September.

Lind is creatively directing 10 films for the project through ITN productions and comments: " The partnership between The National Lottery and ITV has given the ITN team amazing access to some incredible projects funded by The National lottery that are as varied in nature as they are geographically across the UK.”

Lind is behind the award-winning Unquiet Film Series for the Times and Sunday Times and it was that work, through Grey London, as well as his channel rebrand for ITV a few years ago that bagged him the lottery gig.

“With 4 different directors engaged to share the making of the ten films, including myself, it was important to set a creative framework that would provide consistency across the campaign for each director to follow. In a nutshell this framework consisted of not shooting any ‘talking heads’ at all, voice over would be supplied entirely by the contributors and recorded as if for radio.”

The real people that feature in the docu-style films have genuinely benefitted from the investment of lottery funding and the Play Makes It Possible campaign uncovers the various projects and organisations from the point of view of the subjects.

“It has been both humbling and a pleasure to meet and work with such incredible contributors and see the true life-changing benefits that National Lottery funding brings to so many people across the UK. It is also incredibly creatively rewarding to be telling stories with so much substance."

The films have been part of a targeted media plan, rolled out and placed alongside programming with regards to genres such as drama, factual and entertainment and the latest will be broadcast this weekend during the launch of this season’s X Factor. The campaign will keep the momentum with planned slots during the Rugby World Cup at peak viewing times through September.

Now read our extended interview with Phil Lind on how he put together a creative strategy for the project's various parts along with more films from the Play Makes it Possible campaign.