Test a Win with Washington Lottery's Department of Imagination

For more than a decade, Washington’s Lottery has encouraged its players to dream bigger and imagine greater with the help of the Department of Imagination. This year, Washington Lottery took it one step further. With the help of AI, it was able to take a hybrid approach in bringing its story to life at every level of the fully integrated campaign. Not only did AI allow Washington Lottery to entertain and excite its target like never before, but this technology allowed them to actually see what an amazing, Lottery-fuelled experience might look like. Run with the bulls in Spain? Hang out with giraffes in Africa? Sure! Thanks to Washington’s Lottery, you can now Test drive a win.

Campaign from VML Seattle used AI throughout - from the photos at the end of the TVC that show the cast traveling all around the world, to social films that show small groups of friends going on incredible adventures using their Washington’s Lottery winnings.

VML Seattle used AI very ethically, integrating a photo shoot at the TVC to make sure it accurately recreated the actors in AI. This integrated shoot allowed the team to gather assets that were used throughout the entire campaign. All SAG talent was paid additionally for all stills and AI capture, making sure that we ethically use and compensate all talent through the campaign.

Using Secret Level’s proprietary AI platform, the team were able to seamlessly allow anyone to visualise their ultimate vacation through a series of photos that show themselves traveling the world. This personalisation allows even those unfamiliar with AI to instantly transport themselves anywhere in the world with very little effort. 

Test Drive to Win Mobile Experience

Washington Lottery created a mobile experience called ‘Test Drive a Win’ that allows anyone to take or upload a photo and pick a destination anywhere in the world to instantly see themselves on an epic adventure after a big Lottery win.

Todd Derksen, GCD at VML Seattle said, "Secret Level’s approach to using AI to read the user selfie, break down the specific personal traits, and integrating those visual traits to the final prompt output really helped make the real-time generations more consistently on point. We embraced the surreal nature of generative AI output as it aligned perfectly for our Department of Imagination platform. We have always historically blurred the lines between reality and imagination and put a ton of extra internal effort into making our imagery feel a bit surreal. AI does that automatically which is why that tool came to mind during concepting.

"The ability to transport our audience to bucket list destinations with the simple throw of a dart is something we have wanted to do for a decade. It took a lot of creative prompt wrangling, testing, trial and error, in both order, style and specific word choice to train the AI into giving outputs that were consistently on brand and shareable. For the manual outputs in the broadcast, shorts, ooh etc. we did use multiple tools (including good old retouching) to achieve a more realistic look across the imagery while maintaining the absurd situations."

Jason Zada, founder at Secret Level said, "We used our proprietary platform to allow anyone to instantly transport themselves around the world using AI. We felt that the accuracy of replicating the person’s visual DNA was important to making the final photos fun and lifelike. Most consumers don’t have access to AI tools, so a commercial application that lets anyone instantly see themselves in a variety of locations around world was a fun challenge that could only be solved with AI."

Dave Clark, director at Secret Level said, “Agencies and Brands are finding ways to push the AI tech today and not waiting for Sora and advanced tech to come out tomorrow. AI is proving to be a capable tool that creatives can use to enhance their stories and imagine bigger. I loved directing a commercial for a brand and agency that is forward-thinking and approaching the creative meaningfully, telling the best story possible regardless of the tools or methods.”