31 PUBLIC GAMING INTERNATIONAL • MARCH/APRIL 2022 reluctance by some lotteries to print lottery tickets on non-lottery paper stock at supermarket tills is gradually being overcome. ADVERTISING The classical and simple analysis of the changes in advertising over the period would be explained by a move from functional to emotional advertising. The Cadbury “Gorilla” TV ad from 2007 (https://www. youtube.com/watch?v=NHtEyDrD4oA) which resulted in a sales increase of 10%, and the two other ads from Norsk Tipping (https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=2keNtOwZrnY) and EL Gordo (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FmgDksIoh0) are two of my favourite lottery ads from the period … neither of which look very happy (for lottery ads) but those of you who know the ads will know just how they pull at our heart strings. In preparing this paper I asked the ex-CEO of the Irish Advertising Agency that we used in the Irish Lottery (and who is now a professor of Marketing in one of our Universities) what he saw as the main advertising changes over the period and his answer was brief … “Ads”, he said, “have simply become less effective”. Admittedly, apart from being a cynic, he is a person obsessed with the effectiveness of advertising. So, while “Charlie Bit My finger” may have had 800 million views on Youtube in the past 14 years …what other effect has it had? Or the recent guy on TikTok on a skate board in Arizona lip-synching to Fleetwood Mac and drinking cranberry juice … has the cranberry juice company sold more product? So, while social media as a marketing tool may be mesmerising 20-something year-old advertising creatives … my Professor of Marketing believes the problem is that they only have a time horizon of one to two years and want to get a quick win and move on to their next agency … without a thought about building long-term value for their brands. It is all about the next tweet and keeping up with the competition. This might be seen as a cynical view … or it might be exactly on the money. Who knows? One interesting FACT, however, is that Google ad revenue rose from an annual figure of $0.4b in 2002 to $147B in 2020 … up by a factor of 365. At the beginning of our period, Brand building consisted of companies working to give their Brands specific values that they thought were important and communicate them to their customers in interesting ways. With the development of social media, cultural communities or “tribes” in this new space were empowered to turn off ads; ignore corporate messaging and create their own view of the world of corporate brands. So the task of marketers now is to identify these Brand communities; form relationships with them and interact with them as much as possible. But, let’s be very clear … this is not the same thing as simply hiring “influencers”. This phenomenon is sometimes referred to as “Cultural Branding”. I’m not completely happy with this term, but I think you get the message. This approach is particularly relevant as we emerge from the Pandemic. According to the experts, in times of crisis we fall back on “culture” as a way of making sense of our new reality and what our players now need most of all is reassurance and authenticity. Two final trends that are worth noting … Draws and Market Research. As lotteries introduce more and more draws and, as we witnessed during the pandemic, the importance of having an alternative or backup method of producing our results is vital … there is now an almost inevitable move to RNG-systems. I used to be a firm believer in the value of physical draw machines – where players could witness “chance happening”, but I am changing my views on this matter. For example, the live draw for EuroMillions (carried out in Paris) is not broadcast “live” by any of the participating lotteries. And I see the need for electronic draw systems to produce results for the more frequent draws that are becoming more and more common. For example, Cash Pop, a new game that is gaining in popularity in the US, needs 5 drawings a day. This is simply impractical or infeasible with the full rigors of a formal physical draw process. So, changing requirements and more robust and auditable RNG systems will convince more and more lotteries to embrace this change. From Market Research to Big Data and Data Analytics With the advent of Big Data – a term born in the early part of our 20 years – and Data Analytics – a term that has been around for many years, but whose time has now come – there is a whole new way of analysing behavioural data to provide reliable models for predicting consumer tastes trends and behaviour. In 2002 you or your market research company developed a set of questions; surveyed a sample of the market and fed back information on which you based decisions about a price increase or whether to launch a particular new game. Using Data Analytics you can now have much deeper data, better analysed, which enables you to develop a relationship with your players and move from just analysing behaviour to suggesting purchasing behaviour … It has moved on from “If you like that, you might like this” to “People who bought the games you play also played this new game” or “People like you, with your profile, also bought this new game” So, to finish … When you review all the changes in our sector over the past 20 years, I see very strong evidence of resilience, innovation and creativity. The lottery sector is sometimes criticised for not being innovative enough. I normally defend the lottery position by pointing out that true creativity comes from a process with constraints. We have Regulators; we have Responsible Gaming, and we have our “for the good of society” brand values to sustain. We are not free to do whatever we like. However, sometimes it’s good to be in the box to be able to think outside it. As Leonardo da Vinci put it “Art lives from constraints and dies from freedom” Bring on the next 20 years! In-lane sales
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