Dancing Horses Go Viral and Cakes Make Pranks in Washington Lottery’s Campaign

Creative production company We Are Royale (WAR) recently produced a series of broadcast and digital spots for the ‘Go Full You’ campaign for Washington’s Lottery. Conceived by agency Wunderman Thompson, and directed by Jason Cook, executive creative director at WAR, the campaign is a humorous take on the dreams made possible after winning the lottery. 

‘Cake’ tells the story of a mother whose lifelong dream of becoming a baking master is a reality after winning the lottery. But this mom isn’t just serving up sweet treats; she’s serving up family pranks with her exquisite cake-moulding skills. 

In ‘Cowboy,’ a lottery winner trades the city life for ranch life, where he befriends a horse who turns out to be a smooth-trotting line dancer. They become a viral sensation. 

WAR produced :15 edits of both spots. 

“Bringing to life narratives that push the boundaries of our targets’ imaginations is never easy, and these spots followed that tradition,” says Todd Derksen, Wunderman Thompson group creative director on the Washington’s Lottery account. “Despite a sudden neverending hail storm, a feisty horse, and severely underestimating the durability of fondant, Jason and WAR stayed the course, bringing to life two great spots, and continued the story online with a unique cut of each for social.”

“As a big fan of absurdist humour, the stories Wunderman Thompson came up with for this campaign were not only in my wheelhouse as a director, but also the off-beat creative we like to take on at WAR,” remarks Jason. “We treated these spots more like short films, making them more cinematic than just straightforward comedy, and had a great time playing in this silly, wonderful sandbox with them.” 

The team aimed for a cooking show aesthetic for ‘Cake,’ using locked-off shots to track the mom’s increasingly realistic cake creations coming to life over time. WAR commissioned local cake masters in Seattle to craft eight rounds of hyper-realistic cakes resembling everything from a soccer ball to a cup of coffee to a hairbrush, among many other household items. 

“With only two of each dessert to work with, we had to be incredibly careful with our delicate props, and land the shots with minimal takes,” says Jason.

To sell the viral video concept for ‘Cowboy,’ WAR’s production crew constructed a music video set – complete with concert lighting and back-up dancers – inside a horse arena at a local ranch. They captured the footage entirely with handheld cameras to make the viewer feel right there in the corral with the horse.

“Training a horse to do a synchronised dance alongside his human companion comes with its own unique set of challenges,” concludes Jason. “We reverse-engineered the choreography, with the human actor following the horse’s lead to make it look like they were doing the dance routine together.”