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// PUBLIC GAMING INTERNATIONAL // November/December 2016
We hosted an official ticket launch event
at our Phoenix location featuring Big Red,
cheerleaders and former Cardinals to greet
our players. Our partnership with the
Arizona Cardinals allows us to be onsite
at every home game during the regular
season. We developed a branded instant
game with the Cardinals that features a
robust second chance prize program. Be-
cause of our presence at the games, lottery
has elevated the visibility of this product
in the market and widened appeal to our
light and medium players. Since launch in
early September, we have gathered more
than 8,200 sign-ups to our second chance
database. In mid-December, our grand
prize winners will be publically recognized
during pregame at the last Arizona Cardi-
nals home game of the season.
We are also leveraging the Arizona Car-
dinals’ digital presence. They have been
promoting the ticket through multiple
channels of their own—including email
and social media. We have been work-
ing with their marketing staff as we move
through the season to best reach their fans,
as they pull the second largest volume play-
er base of any professional sports franchise
in Arizona and index at 149 for past 30-day
Arizona Lottery players.
*
*Scarborough, 2015.
Unlike other games-of-chance sectors, Lot-
tery gives back so much to the community, to
good causes. How can we leverage that bet-
ter? How can we engender more passionate
and genuine appreciation on the part of the
players, and the consumers in general?
G. Edgar:
When I was interviewing for
this position, I was astonished at the amount
of good the lottery does for our great state.
Like most people in Arizona, I believed that
Lottery dollars were used to support edu-
cation, but really knew nothing about the
impact that the organization had in our
community. Coming from a background in
communications, my immediate sense was
that this was a glaring opportunity.
When I accepted the position, I was
eager to get the word out about how the
Arizona Lottery gives back. As our team
began to develop a strategy to achieve that
goal, we found that there had been initia-
tives in the past using paid media, but that
they didn’t hit the mark with the public.
Part of the challenge we face is that Ari-
zona Lottery has 18 separate beneficiaries
that we serve. So we can’t brand ourselves
as an education lottery or a health and
welfare lottery. We serve programs as di-
verse as wildlife conservation and court
appointed advocates for children in the
foster care system.
So we embarked on an effort to better
know this important constituency that we
served. We initiated meetings to strength-
en the relationships with the agencies so
that our partnerships go beyond just the
dollars we deliver.
Through public relations and earned
media efforts, we are getting the word out
about each beneficiary that we give back
to. In direct collaboration with the ben-
eficiary organizations, we are leveraging
our position within the media market to
benefit the programs we serve. With so
many beneficiaries we have a steady pool
of amazing stories that really demonstrate
the impact we have in our community.
With these story pitches to media, we
focus on the human element and find the
person who has been directly impacted by
the services of an organization that Lot-
tery dollars go to. For example, we recently
spoke to a woman who was formerly a child
in the Arizona foster care system. She was
fortunate to be a part of the Arizona Su-
preme Court program, Court Appointed
Special Advocates (CASA). Through this
program, she was assigned an advocate,
which is an everyday person—and volun-
teer—appointed by a judge to speak up
for abused and neglected children in court.
However, these advocates become so much
more than just a voice in a courtroom; they
truly become the only adult figure and role-
model in these young lives. Hearing about
the impact that this advocate had on this
woman’s life as a child, and leading into her
adult life, is simply amazing.
100 percent of CASA’s funding comes
from the Arizona Lottery. Our funds help
CASA recruit, train and maintain profes-
sional staff to manage and support more
than 1,000 CASA advocates. These funds
also support the recruitment and high-
quality training for those advocates. Tell-
ing this story to Arizona is so important
for the children in Arizona’s foster system.
We understand that when our play-
ers think about lottery, they immediately
imagine jackpots or the dollars they can
win. Player satisfaction is certainly one of
the most important missions we serve, but
my objective would be to get our players to
understand that when they give their dol-
lar to purchase a ticket, they have already
won because that dollar is funding so many
great programs in our community.
You are launching the Frogger Scratcher in
November and five new Holiday Instants as
well. Are Instants a good platform to create
new and different, and maybe even a little
wacky, campaigns to appeal to new consum-
er groups?
G. Edgar:
Instant tickets are definitely
the way that lotteries can get creative and
to your point, appeal to new consumer
groups. Frogger will certainly spark nos-
talgia in people who have a love for the
game and the decade it was born in. Holi-
day tickets stand out with their bright col-
ors and glittering details, and they’re also
great for gifting to friends and family 21
and older. Our Holiday Family of tickets
has been a long standing favorite.
As we look at our instant strategy, our
focus is looking for opportunities to be in-
novative in the products we develop with an
objective of finding better ways to connect
with our players. As mentioned before, our
Arizona Cardinals ticket is a prime example.
We recently closed our spotlight game
the $185 million cash explosion in the
$20 price point. It was a wildly success-
ful game over a two year timeframe. As
we developed its follow-up spotlight we
wanted to build on its success. So our cre-
ative team worked closely with the ven-
dors to create a ticket that incorporated
the look and feel of the previous game
while giving some new flare and opportu-
nity to the new ticket. The $200 million
Cash Explosion launched on September 6
and it has exceeded what we were doing
with its predecessor.