The decision by one Ireland’s biggest advertisers not to commission an original creative idea

Kiwis’ cash-in-transit caper has been adapted for Ireland

The decision by one Ireland’s biggest advertisers not to commission an original creative idea for its latest campaign but to copy one from another market has sent chills through the industry.

The National Lottery’s new Heist television advertisement portrays two cash-in-transit employees on the way to deliver money to a bank. There’s chat between the older man, the driver, and his younger colleague about what they would do if they won the lottery. As they pull up to the bank, the driver says: “What if we just kept driving?” Which he proceeds to do.

The younger man is alarmed, as are the controllers back at base, as the van heads out of town. Then the older man pulls a winning lottery ticket from the van’s visor and all is revealed with much jubilation from the lucky pair and from the colleagues in control who were in on the secret.

So far, so relatable: who hasn’t idly chatted to colleagues about a lottery win? And that’s probably what TV watchers in New Zealand thought when they saw Armoured Truck, the 2018 ad for that country’s Lotto Powerball.

The plot, pace and even much of the dialogue in Armoured Truck is the same as in Heist. But why copy a creative idea instead of commissioning, as they have always done, an original one?

Anne Mulcahy, chief marketing officer at the National Lottery, says: “We saw an opportunity to bring a strong idea to Irish audiences in a way that was locally produced, culturally relevant and aligned with our brand platform.”

She says the New Zealand campaign was adapted for the Irish market by its Dublin agency Folk VLM. Filmed in April, it is “visually rooted in recognisable Dublin landmarks including the Docklands, the Samuel Beckett Bridge, North Wall Pier and Poolbeg”.

While there are tweaks to the action and dialogue, there is one obvious change in the Irish version. In the New Zealand version, one of the men is Indian and in the “imagine if we won” chat the pair talk about the cruise they’d take, stopping off in Mumbai to visit his mother. The dialogue is heartwarming and funny – and entirely missing from the Irish version because its young man is Declan, a lad from the country.

Karl Waters, chief creative officer at Folk VLM, says that change is down to casting. They went into the process, he says, as they always do with diversity in mind, but it came down to the chemistry between the two actors who were eventually chosen.

Mulcahy explains that the lottery had access to the New Zealand campaign, made by DDB Aotearoa, through its membership of the World Lottery Association, which “regularly shares ideas”.

That suggests a vast library of campaigns stretching back years, ready to be copied. Little wonder there’s concern in the home-grown advertising industry which prides itself on – and earns revenue from – original ideas. If one major Irish advertiser can do it then might others follow?

Waters rejects the idea that Heist is controversial, saying “it is part of trend of centralising assets”, where creative executions are remade by brands for international markets.

That will ring true for anyone who has seen a car ad filmed in an unidentifiable high-rise city but with a shiny Irish reg plate that was added in post-production or who remembers ad breaks filled with commercials for cleaning products with clumsily dubbed Irish voices. And major brands certainly recast and remake campaigns for different markets.

These though are global brands strategically using their own creative treatments. This is different and it’s not clear if the lottery will be again looking to the international affiliate network for another off-the-shelf campaign idea.

It’s all the more puzzling given how effectively Folk VML has interpreted the lottery’s new Dreams Waiting to Happen brand platform since it won the creative account last year. Folk’s first campaign for the lottery launched in September and is still on our screens.

It sees a couple in their suburban kitchen talking about holidays when the woman reveals that the holiday this year is going to be very different because they’ve won the lottery. Relatability is at the heart of the strategy, Waters says.

Similarly, Folk’s heartwarming Christmas campaign sees a bus driver going above and beyond to bring passengers to band practice in the community hall. If he won, he’d do Route 66. Again, Waters says, it is relatable, a dream that could happen.

All this reflects a major pivot in the National Lottery’s marketing proposition, from showing quite bonkers fantasies in past campaigns to something more realistic.

Gone are the ads filled with blindingly bright fantasy worlds of apartment blocks transformed into water slide parks, doors in fields opening into glamorous universes and work mates floating in the sea off some tropical beach.

In the lottery’s new, more down-to-earth world, Declan dreams of owning a “proper sports car, black, cream interior”. His New Zealand counterpart namechecks an Aston Martin.

At present Folk is devising the lottery’s autumn campaign. Ultimately, Waters says, industry talk about his client copying (he prefers “adapting”) an old ad from another company and made for another market is just that, industry talk.

Viewers, he points out, watching Heist won’t be thinking of those New Zealanders from 2018, they’ll just see two guys striking it lucky in the lotto.

https://www.irishtimes.com/business/2026/06/16/why-is-the-national-lotterys-new-ad-campaign-a-copy-of-an-old-new-zealand-one/