Expanding lottery’s cultural relevance – without alienating longtime players

Leverage Emerging Talent to Inject Fresh Thinking

In 2024, as Brightstar Italy’s multidisciplinary marketing team began to reimagine the promotional plan for Lotteria Italia − the country’s cherished annual Christmastime raffle – they engaged with Sapienza University, one of Italy’s top ranked public institutions.

Through what is now an ongoing partnership with the university’s masters in marketing management program, the team brought this real-world project into the classroom.

“We provided the students with a creative brief, just as we would for an agency,” Laura explained. “They started with an analysis of the market and consumer attitudes toward Lotteria Italia, and we worked with them as they developed creative concepts for a marketing campaign, a media plan, and the strategy behind it.”

One standout student each year is chosen for a six month internship with Brightstar Italy. In 2024, this was Lorenzo Elia, who co presented the case study with Laura at the EL/WLA Marketing Seminar.

“Integrating a student with our team is another way to help us understand how we can refocus our communications to intersect with a younger adult generation,” said Laura. “Gen Z is rising, so as we looked to develop a new narrative, we focused on the older members of this segment, people who are currently between 23 and 30 years old.”

External research confirmed that Gen Z responds strongly to:

• Authenticity – 70% prefer natural, unpolished language
• Irony – humorous messages are 20% more memorable
• Short, direct communication

Lorenzo’s assignment was to apply these principles to the 2024 social media and digital marketing campaign, defining the tone of voice and bringing a fresh point of view to a brand deeply rooted in national culture.

From Institutional Messaging to Human Stories

Brightstar Italy had already been shifting toward more relatable storytelling, and the partnership with Sapienza accelerated this transition.

For the wider 2024 Lotteria Italia campaign, Feliziani’s integrated marketing team developed a new advertising concept featuring small vignettes from everyday life, such as women chatting in a hair salon and a couple on a dinner date. Each featured a character asking the simple question: “Hai già preso il biglietto?” / “Have you got your ticket yet?”

The approach tapped into a powerful truth: Buying a ticket for the annual Lotteria Italia is a cultural tradition and a seasonal “to do.” The campaign tagline quickly became a natural conversation starter—so natural, in fact, that retailers and players began saying the slogan aloud, unprompted.

The campaign’s unifying simplicity worked across media channels and for every touchpoint. The Brightstar team even experimented with AI for one point-of-sale poster, which featured the slogan with an image of a “grandmother” whose facial expression was humorous and relatable. “It was curious, because the use of AI would seem to run counter to the authenticity favored by this group,” Laura noted. “But when we discussed this single execution with the students, they liked that the ‘grandmother’ seemed to be the common one in whom many Italians could recognize their own.”

Testing New Content

Social media became a low-cost testing ground to easily change communications and experiment with tone and creative ideas. Under the supervision of Feliziani’s team, Lorenzo developed memes that helped modernize the Lotteria Italia brand voice. These included a popular cat image and a map-obsessed grandmother helping to locate ticket retailers for people who were traveling home during the busy holiday period. The social campaign created a conversation space that helped to drive engagement.

Social media also proved to be an especially valuable laboratory for testing and learning, given that the country’s lottery advertising regulations do not permit sponsored social media posts, and the impressive results were all organic (see Media section further below).

Moving with the Times & Trends

Lotteria Italia campaigns have always mirrored the nation’s cultural moment. In the years immediately following the pandemic, the campaigns leaned into symbols of hope. In 2024 and 2025, Italy’s extraordinary tennis boom—spurred by top-ranked player Jannik Sinner and Italy’s two consecutive Davis Cup victories—offered another authentic storyline.

Direct advertising to lottery players is banned in Italy, with the only exception being the annual Lotteria Italia game. Brightstar integrated tennis imagery into the campaign and placed television ads on a tennis specific sports channel, successfully attracting the attention of younger adult viewers who were engaged in the sport’s rise.

Varying Media

To maintain balance between audiences, Brightstar Italy diversified the campaign’s media mix:

• Traditional players: Television and Facebook
• Younger adults: Connected TV (e.g., Netflix) and Instagram
• Not used: TikTok (audience skewed too young)

Instagram results were strong: more than half of new followers fell squarely into the segment that the marketing team aimed to reach—remarkable for entirely organic content.

The more contemporary and human storytelling also had a strong business impact:

• 29% increase in ticket sales year over year
• 45% increase in online sales year over year
• Continued 10-11% growth when the format repeated in 2025

Importantly, refreshing communications didn’t just attract young adults—it energized all players.

Maximize All Touchpoints

The involvement of younger generations in lotteries also relies on a solid strategy for digitalizing the overall experience.

This digital transformation engages multiple teams within Brightstar Lottery Italy: the SEO team, which ensures that all digital assets appear at the top of search engine results; the Web Analytics team, responsible for analyzing user behavior and shaping effective conversion paths; and the Customer Experience team, which designs smooth and consistent journeys across all touchpoints, helping bridge the transition from retail to online.

In this regard, an important innovation was introduced for Lotteria Italia when the campaign continued in 2025: the addition of a QR code on the ticket to encourage participation in the daily draws. This initiative led to a 30% rise in participation in daily draws (2025 vs. 2024).

This transformation is supported by continuous storytelling focused on promoting the online channel, highlighting the benefits of digital play, and ongoing product innovation.

Integrated Approach

Throughout the year, Brightstar Italy employs a “studio” model to produce narratives, point of sale content, draw show videos, and other creative assets for a range of lottery games. This approach blends internal expertise—brand, user experience, and responsible gaming—with a network of external agencies and collaborators.

“It’s important to have an integrated approach between our internal teams and our agency, production, and media partners, to find novel approaches to storytelling,” says Laura.  “It’s a collaboration that creates value for all involved.”

Activating a New Lottery Conversation

Brightstar Italy’s experience affirms that lotteries can engage younger audiences without distancing older ones. By fostering inter-generational collaboration, modernizing storytelling, and staying culturally tuned in, they unlocked a refreshed brand voice—without losing the heritage that makes Lotteria Italia iconic.

The campaign resulted in a new, shared connection point, which has taken on a life of its own. Now, as Laura observed, “We need to let them activate this conversation between generations about lottery.”

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