CorpComms Magazine

Tickle me, sixty-three - the National Bingo Game Association has decided it's time to abandon its bright day-glo colours and adopt a more sophisticated look, as befits the trade association for one of the UK's most popular leisure activities.

About 3 mn people in the UK play bingo at least twice a week. Countless others pop into the country's 680 bingo halls, of which 550 play the National Game offering a top weekly jackpot of £200,000 for a 50p stake. The National Game was launched (one score) 20 years ago and has endured (cup of tea) three facelifts since then, but marketing and communications director Steve Baldwin believes the latest new look reflects the industry's maturity.

 'Twenty years ago bingo halls took up old cinemas, but consumers' expectations have changed dramatically since then,' he says. 'They don't want to go into shoddy facilities, so we are seeing more purpose-built bingo halls alongside multiplex cinemas in leisure parks.'

Indeed, bingo is now the most popular leisure activity among the (overweight) 28 to (jump and jive) 35 age bracket. The National Game, which offers the biggest prize available in the UK after the National Lottery, is played every night of the year except Christmas day, with (one little duck) two games on a Saturday, in the afternoon and at night. The top prize is offered on a Sunday evening, while the jackpot up for grabs on Thursday, Friday and Saturday night is £100,000.

'It is a product that is robust and healthy. Granny will go to bingo, but so will the next generations,' says Baldwin. 'We wanted to talk to them in a language that was appropriate and immediate on a verbal, visual and audio basis.'

Full house

The National Bingo Game Association enlisted Islington-based communications and design agency The Workroom for the rebranding. 'We did some research into who the customers were,' explains Workroom director Anna Cotton. 'That involved talking to the operators and owners of the clubs as well as the customers within the clubs.'

'Bingo has a long history and is quite colourful,' she continues. 'It is a very visual language, and we didn't want to lose that. Customers relied on the National Bingo Game Association's logo; it inspired confidence and trust. We discovered that bingo is viewed as serious, but also frivolous and fun.'

Designing a new look for the association was no easy task. Its logo has to sit alongside those of its members, such as Gala and Mecca, who have made liberal use of the primary colour paint pot. 'They are a little bit hectic,' says Baldwin, with some degree of understatement. 'There is a certain kind of excitement conveyed by them, and they all make use of the word 'bingo'.'

The association's old logo, with goldcoloured letters and a fist reminiscent of old Communist posters making up the 'i', failed to stand out against members' lurid logos. 'We realised that we could own the word 'national', and that became our starting point,' says Cotton.

The Workroom came up with a design focusing on the letter N, made up of (young and keen) 15 dots in purple, pink, yellow, acid green and blue. The dots represent the 'dabbers' that bingo players use to cross out numbers, while 15 represents the fewest possible calls needed to win a game. Some dots have a blurry outline, which makes them appear to glow.

Spot on

'The new design is a combination of a visual brand and something that can really strike a chord,' explains Baldwin. 'The previous image had no broader application, but these coloured dots can say and do many things. They are creative shorthand for the National Game. They translate to everything - television, tickets, point of sale and web site - in a consistent and cost-effective manner.

'Bingo halls are very busy environments. It is important to have communications and point-of-sale displays that cut through that but still reflect the fun and energy.'

The association is considering other ways to implant the new logo in the nation's psyche, from advertising on a hackney cab, greeting cards and wrapping paper to T-shirts emblazoned with 'Bingo Bitch' and other catchy phrases picked out in coloured dots. 'We are talking the language appropriate to our younger customers,' explains Baldwin.

The new look will be backed by a TV advertising campaign devised by agency DFGW and a new web site designed by Spinnaker. 'Previous TV campaigns have focused on the thrill and excitement of winning, represented by a heartbeat. Medical evidence shows that a player's heartbeat when they are one number away from winning is higher than it is during any other activity, even an assault course,' says Baldwin.

'The new campaign is based around the theme of 'Who introduced you?',' he continues. 'The vast majority of players get introduced to the game by somebody else. Their enthusiasm for their leisure activity is genuine and real. We wanted to tap into that enthusiasm. The campaign uses real players and their own stories. We have three generations of the same family, an 80-year-old player, a 19-year-old player, a rugby player who says he would rather be at bingo than not. They are great soundbites.'

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