The draw game Lotto is an anchor product of the Washington Lottery game portfolio. Washington’s Lottery wanted to see if customers, especially new customers, would participate in an interactive promotion with the offer of a unique experience or opportunity as a prize. The goal was to ‘upscale’ the Lottery brand with a prize tied to feeling great. The idea, conceived in conjunction with PR agency Publicis, was the Feel Like a Million a Million promotion.
The concept was unique. Customers, for the price of a $5 Lotto ticket, would be able to go to one of five malls locations on a designated day and give their video testimonial of why they deserved to ‘Feel Like a Million.’ The prize was a major head-to-toe luxury makeover, complete with new wardrobe by Macy’s and jewelry, teeth whitening, year’s gym membership, and much more. Customers voted on the top 25 regional contestant testimonials (as narrowed by a field of judges) through the Lottery website much like the TV show, American Idol. The top five ‘winners’ received makeovers with before and after videos and images posted on the Lottery web site.
The results? The promotion allowed the Lottery to forge new partnerships with statewide malls and well known retailers like Macys, Gene Juarez and Kay Jewelers, which helped upscale the lottery prize and brand. Over 50,000 unique visitors came to the Lottery web site to check out the promotion—over 80{adbb7e631a0c26494fad506504930a8cade10788e943d86ba4a9eaacc4472a81} with no URL referral and a 39{adbb7e631a0c26494fad506504930a8cade10788e943d86ba4a9eaacc4472a81} click-through rate. The promotion generated earned media of 33 news stories, with an estimated advertising value of nearly $23,000. Surveys of web visitors to the promotion web site indicated 55{adbb7e631a0c26494fad506504930a8cade10788e943d86ba4a9eaacc4472a81} were first time visitors to a lottery site, but also indicated that, in the end, the prize that most customer prefer is, not surprisingly, cash.
