These New York Lottery print ads are beautiful and strange and a tiny bit subversive
This much I vaguely know: The New York Lottery has form when it comes to smart, funny ads. (Check out these ‘You’d Make a Way Better Rich Person’ TV spots. I also half-remember someone tweeting these Yeah, That Kind of Rich posters a while back, too.)
I’m not a New Yorker, so I don’t know how long New York Lottery have been ploughing this furrow, or how much their ads are part of the cultural landscape of the city. But from over here in the UK — where all lottery advertising is universally terrible, and anyway we’re much too squeamish about money to ever talk about being rich, so we focus on the mechanics of jackpots and rollovers instead — they seem pretty great.
And yesterday, @pro_copywriter posted links to these print ads. They’re out of DBB New York, exquisitely illustrated by Ray Oranges. And I bloody love them:
‘What will you think about when you don’t have to think about money?’
I’m not gonna comment. Let’s just look at another:
And another. (The illustrations remind me of Tom Gauld’s work):
And the final one:
It’s one thing to be subversive with brash swagger. It’s quite another to do it like this. Quietly. Calmly. Leaving time for your audience to pause and reflect. With a hint of melancholy. Ennui, even. Did I just use the word ennui in relation to a lottery ad? I think I did.
They make being rich seem kind of hollow, joyless and lonely. Like without the grit of the daily grind, your mind will have nothing better to do than retreat into intellectual trivia.
I once had a backstage pass to Glastonbury. Once backstage, I ended up in some VIP area or other. Inside that VIP area was an ‘exclusive’ tent. And inside the VIP tent were two people, standing too close to each other, looking really miserable.
These ads feel like that. For all their knowingness, I reckon they’ve nailed something deeper even than they were aiming for. Glorious.
