In this New York Lottery spot titled “Bat Collector,” we meet a NY man who spent $3.2 million for a dead bat. He shows off his collection of neatly framed, stuffed bats displayed in his bat den, which is no relation to the bat cave.
A voiceover and a super then relate, “You’d Make A Way Better Rich Person.”
And of course, winning the NY Lotto is our key to showing how much better a rich person we would make.
Jim Jenkins of O Positive directed this and several other similarly themed spots in this campaign conceived by a creative ensemble at McCann New York. (For example, in another commercial we are introduced to another eccentric gent who spends $28,000 a week on expensive wine–to bathe in.
“We’re clearly having fun with the campaign’s wry portraits of wealthy eccentrics,” said Grant Smith, McCann executive creative director, “The truth is that New Yorkers enjoy watching the odd behavior of some rich people. Because we all know that, if we were rich we’d do a better job of it.”
The overall campaign spans television, radio, online, billboards and placards, as well as a first-of-its-kind digital “Field Guide” to identifying eccentric wealth at RichPeopleGuide.com. Here, New Yorkers can discover exactly which type of Rich Person they would be better than if they were rich. Among the specimens found in the Rich People Field Guide are the Hypertense Hyperallergenic, a histamine normal person, but simply too wealthy to have normal feelings about dirt; the Eccentric Collector of Eccentric Collections, who has never had to work, socialize, or have meaningful relationships with other humans so has acquired a unique social adaptation–amassing a ridiculous assortment of alarmingly weird objects; and the Grown-Up Child Star whose efforts to reclaim her lost childhood have resulted in an exotic animal menagerie, and an even more exotic wig collection.