The archive · Advertising · Marketing decision · 2021
Winamax's The Lift turns a sports bet win into a runaway elevator ride for mum
TBWA\Paris rewrote the gambling ad: a son's winning sports bet buys his mother a first-class flight, delivered by an out-of-control lift ride.
Winamax
What it had to solve
In summer 2021 the Champions League final and Euro 2020, played a year late, gave French sports-betting operator Winamax its biggest television window to launch a new campaign. The sector's advertising had settled into familiar codes of winning and money, so the brand wanted a new reading of the punter and why he bets.
How it works
Sports-betting advertising in France had settled into familiar codes of winning, odds and the thrill of money. Winamax, a French online sports-betting operator, used the summer of 2021 — the Champions League final followed by Euro 2020, played a year late — to launch a film that reinvented the sector's rules by asking what a win is actually for.
TBWA\Paris and director Sam Pilling answered with The Lift. After winning an online sports bet, a son books his mother a first-class flight to a dream destination. The lift that is supposed to carry her back down to the ground instead takes off, hurtling up through every floor of the building and out into the sky, causing plenty of damage on the way, until she settles into her plane seat at the height of her happiness.
The film's music does much of the storytelling: Elvis Presley's If I Can Dream lifts the absurd ascent into an emotional ride, and the closing line — 'Anything for your mama' — turns the adventure into a statement of gratitude rather than a celebration of gambling itself.
The Lift ran during France's biggest football moments of 2021 and then travelled the craft circuit, winning Gold for Best Art Direction/Production Design at the 2022 Kinsale International Film Craft awards and entering the D&AD Annual 2022 and Eurobest 2022.
Why it lands
- It changes the subject: the film is not about winning money but about what the winner does with it, a motive the sector's money-codes never claimed.
- The runaway lift turns one idea into escalating spectacle — every floor is a new set-piece, and the damage adds comedy instead of tension.
- Elvis's song and the closing line carry the emotion without dialogue, so the idea works across a broad summer-football audience.
- Craft made an impossible ride believable enough to be funny rather than silly, which is why it won in art direction and production design.
What it did
Aired across the Champions League final and Euro 2020 window of summer 2021 in France, The Lift presented a betting win as a gift rather than a prize. It won Gold for Best Art Direction/Production Design in the 2022 Kinsale International Film Craft awards and was entered in the D&AD Annual 2022 and at Eurobest 2022.
What you can take
When a category's advertising is stuck on one motive, hand the audience a new one inside the story: make what the product is for visible, then let spectacle carry it.
Since then
The Lift anchored Winamax's 2021 summer campaign around the Champions League final and Euro 2020 and outlived the tournament window on the awards circuit: it won Gold for Best Art Direction/Production Design in the 2022 Kinsale International Film Craft awards, was filed in the D&AD awards archive and was entered at Eurobest 2022, with a Making Of released to show how the lift's skyward journey was built.
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