PGIJANFEBMAGAZINE2021a

16 PUBLIC GAMING INTERNATIONAL • JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2021 PGRI INTERVIEWS PGRI INTRODUCTION: The New Hampshire Lottery was established in 1964, making it the first U.S. lottery in the modern era. Now, almost sixty years later, the NH Lottery continues to be a leader in digital transformation, modernization, and diversification of the game portfolio. When I asked Director McIntyre to put this amazing trajectory into historical context, I did not expect the context to be so thoughtful and expansive. Thank you, Charlie! I f ever there were words that captured the essence of what is needed in running a business, a government agency – or in our case, the amalgam of both of those things –it would be the insight of Charles Darwin. The famed naturalist who traveled the globe in search of the origins of growth and change, and discovered the phenomenon of biological evolution and natural selection, the fact that organisms change in order to adapt and survive. Type in the words ‘Darwin’ and ‘quote’ and dozens of memes pop up with art and images of a grand- fatherly and wise Darwin looking upon us and urging the change and growth necessary to reach our full potential. The problem is…he never actually said that, not even close. The quote is either at- tributed to the Origin of the Species or the Voyage of the Beagle, both long and dense reads for people who are not scientists. In reality, the quote was from a Louisiana State University Manage- ment Professor, who was paraphrasing what Darwin actually wrote and distilled it for ease of use. Herein lies the rub - ease of use. The path towards our understand- ing of evolution was not easy. The path towards understanding and adaptation is long, fraught with peril and fails as often as it succeeds. For every eagle there’s a dodo bird that evolved itself straight into oblivion and a tasty morsel. The New Hampshire Lottery faced a similar issue, a predictable one. Before I arrived in 2010, the lottery had endured its sixth straight year of declining sales. New Hampshire Governor John Lynch and the members of the Lottery Commis- sion were unhappy. Well, unhappy doesn’t begin to do it justice as they were 37 steps past unhappy – downright cranky would be more accurate. Governor Lynch has a Harvard MBA and had enjoyed a successful business career and his patience had been worn thin. When I was introduced to him during my interview in June of 2010, what I thought would be a five-minute quick ‘hello’ turned into a 45 minute discussion about product mix, price escalation and the retail footprint for optimized merchandising. I knew then we were in trouble. RE-ORG/RE-TOOL/ RE-DEPLOY This was the three part strategy for turning around the Lottery’s moribund sales. We sat in the Lottery office and tried to think about ways to make the product better, more accessible and bring the retailers into the fold. I was a lawyer and so hilariously inexperienced at sales it was pitiful. But away we went …and nothing worked for a while. Sales were still plummeting, all were impatient, and I was asking if I could get my job back at the Massachusetts Lottery. But then the changes we made to the tickets, and to the prize structures and to the shipping schedules worked. A new bonus program, whereby stores got higher levels of commission for increased sales, worked. We conducted copious amounts of research and listened to the results. Then structure surrounding market segments, player attitudes and message-testing took shape, and we changed how we looked, how we communicated with our players and then how we were perceived by the EVOLUTION “It is not the strongest of the spe- cies that survives, nor the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is most adaptable to change.” Charles Darwin Charles McIntyre, Executive Director, New Hampshire Lottery We still do everything we did twenty years ago. We just try to keep up to date with advances that happened twenty minutes ago.