War Games + Gold Rush Lottery: Advertising 2022 Winners

These award-winning ad firms from our Advertising 2022 competition weren’t playing around when designing and creating these advertisements. No matter what game you play, you want them to look good!

“Call of Duty: Cold War” (above) is a first-person shooting game developed by Treyarch and Raven Software and published by Activision. It serves as the sixth installment in the Black Ops sub-series and the seventeenth installment in the overall Call of Duty series. In their Gold-winning visual campaign for the 2020 game, the team at PETROL Advertising utilized 3D modeling, photography, and illustration for their key art materials to not only highlight the game’s storyline but to boost excitement for Call of Duty’s dedicated consumer base. 

The key art materials reinforce the game’s Cold War themes, with the campaign series depicting American, Russian, and British soldiers since each government was an essential player during the period. Marketing both the video game and its “zombie game mode,”  each campaign poster is decorated with slashes of the countries’ national flags and symbols. The campaign’s most pivotal artwork features a split soldier figure, half Soviet, half American. The American side is flanked by an American Eagle and snippets of the United State’s stars and stripes. The Soviet side dons sunglasses with the reflection of missiles in the lenses, with more missile imagery on his collar and near his shoulder. However, what truly makes this promotional poster compelling is its suggestion that the soldier could be the same man, alluding to the possibility of double allegiance while further setting up the video game’s theme of Soviet and American conflict, espionage, and propaganda.

With over 14 years of an award-winning partnership with Activision, the firm’s deep understanding of Call of Duty’s visual identity and brand voice has allowed them to master the ability to represent the brand’s projects in a new and unique way while also keeping it recognizable.

“Gold Rush” (above) was created as a part of a campaign strategy by PPK to promote the Florida Lottery’s Gold Rush Scratch-offs and their new high-end ticket design. With an updated design, more wins per ticket, and a new $30 supreme version with a million-dollar prize, the Florida Lottery needed the campaign “to leverage the prior success and brand equity of GOLD RUSH and drive new awareness and sales of the improved versions.” Working with an 11-week advertising flight, the team at PPK knew they needed a succinct commercial with a personality that could sustain the duration of time the ad would be live. This led to the creation of the 15-second video, designed to immediately grab the viewers’ attention and center entirely around the ticket. 

Directed by Nick McMurdy, Christy Beegle, and Carmen Clemente, the ad takes a humorous approach with a jewelry store environment and appraiser character with a tiny doppelganger who took a closer inspection of the ticket’s quality. Upon the campaign’s run, the sales skyrocketed, driving in over $400 million in total sales over the course of the campaign. In the process, “Gold Rush” led a single week of scratch-off sales that exceeded $193.5 million, setting a new industry record for the highest single week of scratch-off sales of any lottery in the country. The Flordia Lottery’s ticket wasn’t the only thing “as good as gold”: PPK’S clever video earned a Gold award in our Advertising Annual competition!

To see the full round-up of our 2022 Graphis Advertising Annuals winners, click here. To learn more about entering our 2023 Advertising competition, click here.