The 30 best ads of Campaign Brief’s 30 years. 2005: Lotto ‘Wallet’ press

Campaign Brief WA turns 30 this month, so over the thirty days of June we’re looking back and choosing the best ad done in each of our 30 years.

Three ripper ads in contention from 2005 – all from Marketforce. The best of them is the Lotto ‘Wallet’ press ad by Murray Laird and Ben Green. It was a brilliant use of the newspaper to connote what a Lotto win could feel like. The ad wrapped around to the other side of the spread, so if you worked your way through the paper to page 125 (or whatever it was) you saw the back of the wallet with the same message.

Probably wouldn’t work today – no one carries cash anymore – but in 2005 it was a perfect encapsulation of what playing Lotto is all about for the punters. It won a heap of awards: Best of Year at the Campaign Brief Awards, three Caxtons, Bronze at AWARD, Gold and The West Australian Fellowship at the PADCs

Also done by Green, Brownes ‘Missing’ had been created the year before as a series of posters but in 2005 the idea was transferred onto the actual cartons of skim milk where it belonged.

Putting missing people on milk cartons is an American thing but we all understood the idea in Oz too, applied as it was to double-chins and widening posteriors. Another brilliantly simple, quick communication of the core product benefit.

Rosendorff’s ‘Big Bang’ press ad by Tom Wilson and Andrew Tinning won our second Caxton Creative Exercise. It was a very clever piece of copywriting by Wilson that still brings a smile. It’s the only jewellery ad we’ve ever seen that makes blokes think spending wads of money on a diamond ring might be a good idea!