Monaco with its Bugattis, Louis Vuitton, and well-dressed Chihuahuas, hands you a thousand ways to tell a story.
There is a version that opens on spectacle. Texas Lottery’s influencer, Chet Garner, an American cowboy, with hat and tux, struts down to Casino de Monte-Carlo, the iconic grand casino known around the world. He’s there to film a scene for social media videos promoting the Lottery’s new family of Monaco scratch tickets. Americans and Europeans are equally fascinated. “I could win a million dollars and come back here?” One Gen Z Californian walking in Casino Square asks. An hour later, a bejeweled aristocrat asks him, quite politely, if he will be in a birthday video for his granddaughter. It’s an iconic look and pairing that turns heads instantly.
Then there’s a version that starts with a test. Andrew Leeper, former Brand Strategist for the Texas Lottery and now Imagine Experience’s new Vice President of Marketing, sets up his camera to capture the Formula 1 Monaco Grand Prix’s infamous Fairmont Hairpin. Within moments, a valet appears to stop them. Then a casino guard. Then the police. In Monaco, nothing is unseen. And yet, surrounded by uniforms, Bill McCoy, Imagine Experience’s CEO, produces a single sheet of paper, and five minutes later, all the uniforms leave. In a place where access is guarded, connections and confidence make all the difference.
But the moment that stayed with me was smaller. It was at breakfast at the Hotel Hermitage, the five-star palatial resort where the lottery guests will be staying. The room hums with the susurrus of old money. Bill joins me for a bite. As attendants passed, he stopped each one to say hello and ask how their day was going. One smiled and mentioned, almost as an aside, that it was his birthday.