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// PUBLIC GAMING INTERNATIONAL // July/August 2016
feeling and emotion than pitching a value
proposition, like spend $1 for a chance to
win a life-changing jackpot.
You used “Hey, you never know” before, years
ago with your in-state lotto game, right?
G. Gurney:
It is important to refresh
the messaging even if it still seems to be
working well. The “Hey, you never know”
worked very well for us, but we wanted a
refresh. So we just put it on the shelf for
a few years and decided now was a good
time to bring it back, and it connects very
well with our brand image.
We are deliberately steering ourselves
away from some of the hard sell appeal to
jackpot fever mentality. Even the “I make
a way better rich person” we used for our
Lotto is intended as a tongue in cheek
view of how people believe they would be
more realistic in their use of new found
wealth than imagined eccentrics. At the
time we used this last year, our state Lotto
was hitting some high very jackpots, like
$40 million. This campaign was very ef-
fective because it points out
that $5 million or $2 million
or even $1 million is a lot of
money and a life-changing
event for most of us. And
when you think about how
it’s going to change your
life, you’re going to do “rich”
much better than these other
people. Younger adult fanta-
sies are typically not all about
being rich and self-indulgent.
This campaign creates space
for the millennials to imagine
how they would help other people and
fulfill other aspirations.
We look back at what has worked over
the past nearly 50 years and resurrect and
recast some of the successful strategies and
marketing themes that have worked well
before. Even our branding includes some
of the colors from the 70s, which we think
are fun and whimsical. Right now, our
branding is more of an invitation to just
be yourself and imprint your own attitude
and imagination onto the playing experi-
ence. We want consumers to see us as a
playful brand, to find an interesting game
that they can think of as their own little
diversion or break in life.
It’s less about creative and original than
about optimizing ROI, applying resources to
produce the best result.
G. Gurney:
Absolutely. We also move
promotions around to keep our expenses
down. It costs money to run promotional
campaigns every day for an entire week
and refresh every week. But still, it is im-
portant to maintain visibility and keep it
fresh for the consumer. So now we mix
it up. A campaign might have a promo-
tion run just one day a week, or for just a
few hours a day. And we have brand mes-
saging that attracts attention to specific
promotions—like improving the chances
to win higher prizes if you play during a
preset two hour period, like during lunch
time. Buy the ticket during these hours
and increase your odds to win by 50%.
Or play this particular game to receive a
bonus play. Normally we run our Quick
Draw promotions in the early evening or
late afternoon. Now we’ve inserted one at
lunch time to create a slightly different of-
fer. These promotions appear to be fresh
and new but cost much less than what had
become our standard promotion. Maybe
they’ll cause the consumer to change their
routine, try doing something different,
like buying a lottery ticket. Players that
may have always played on Thursdays try
playing on Tuesday to take advantage of
the promotion. Also, we find that these
promotions that may have been conceived
for the purpose of reducing promotional
costs are actually pulling in new consumer
groups. Rather than going back to the
same core players with enhanced value
propositions, we try to maintain visibility
and mind share of the core players, and fo-
cus on reaching new player groups at the
same time. Promotions that are different
but simple have the virtue of not alienat-
ing our core players. And ultimately, that’s
what it is about—broadening the player
base in the most cost effective way.
The NY Lottery also just won two
North American Effie awards for effi-
ciency in Marketing. It was for a project
to locate a winner who hadn’t claimed a
Cash4Life ticket worth $7,000,000. Op-
erational efficiency is fundamental to our
business model. This was a very low-tech
guerrilla marketing effort with stick figure
posters that we affectionately called Mr.
Sticky—partly because of the stick figures
and partly because it stuck with the media
and consumers.
New York has the biggest marketing budget
in the country. Yet you focus as much on ROI
as anyone.
G. Gurney:
Marketing and
promotions are as much about
logistics, operations, and the
science of demographics, as
they are about creative adver-
tising and promotion. We do
have a robust marketing plan,
but that has to be fully lever-
aged in order to connect with
a very diverse consumer base
in New York—remember we
have a population of nearly 20
million that is spread across 10
DMAs and generate nearly $8 billion in
sales. New York has the highest cost of ad-
vertising in the country. When you look
at it that way, we are under as much pres-
sure as anyone to eke out every ounce of
ROI from our spending. Each jurisdiction
has different sets of challenges, different
sets of resources and circumstances to deal
with. We know we can’t advertise every
single game, or reach every single con-
sumer in a predictable way. So we focus
perhaps more than most on building the
brand, creating awareness, and promoting
the spirit of fun. Our thought is that in-
We need to capture that new
player info in the form
of player registrations so that
we can develop a relationship
and communicate
with them going forward.