The Art of Access
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.
Bill stood, took his hand, and, without hesitation, sang “Happy Birthday” all the way through. Heads turned. Conversations paused. And for a few seconds, Stefane, the waiter, had his moment.
Later, I asked Bill why he did it. He said the real way you get access is not by demanding it. It is by making people feel recognized. Tomorrow, Stefane will come to find him again. He will remember. And once people know you see them, things get done. (True enough, the last two days, Stefane sought me out to make sure I didn’t need anything extra!)
It’s one of Bill’s many superpowers, and one of the reasons his company is so successful. After all, exclusive access is one of the three pillars of Imagine Experience. That doesn’t mean just getting behind the velvet rope. To Bill and his team, it means building relationships so that things that shouldn’t be accessible suddenly are. It’s how his team was able to shoot atop the Fairmont Hotel. It’s also how they consistently provide one-of-a-kind experiential prizes.
Concierge
For Imagine Experience, true concierge service means treating guests like A-listers, like CEOs, and, as Bill says it, “like they won the lottery.” Their process is tied to behavioral science and communication. It’s equal parts psychology and empathy.
“Our team truly cares about our guests and the experience. We become part of their family. We meet them where they are in life and walk them through every step of the way. While our process is the same with everyone, no guest is the same and everyone requires a different level of tailored hospitality,” says Alex Fennig, EVP, Production, Imagine Experience.
It might feel like table stakes to assume someone going to Monaco, or any destination on the lottery’s dime, would have an incredible moment. But for Fennig and McCoy, moments don’t just happen. “There’s so much work that goes into creating these special memories,” Fennig says. “We’ve built the systems and the team to consistently deliver for our guests. But beyond logistics, our team is deeply passionate about creating once-in-a-lifetime experiences, the kind people talk about for the rest of their lives.”
“Our team is deeply passionate about creating once-in-a-lifetime experiences, the kind people talk about for the rest of their lives.”
For Chet and me, it’s evident in the way Fennig engages with the group. You can see her constantly processing and evaluating the next step. For instance, we’re all relaxing at dinner, and then she stops the conversation just to check for food allergies before ordering. It’s the little details that make a big difference.
The next night, we were scheduled for a fancy dinner, yet she could see the group’s energy was starting to lag after a long first day of shooting. She pivoted, deciding to go to a nice but American-style bar, ordering lots of small plates that came out quickly so people could get fed and back to bed as quickly as possible.
Expert management of people is how Imagine Experience has been successful. “More than producing an experience, we’re creating moments our guests will carry with them long after it’s over,” Fennig says. “Planning is key, but ultimately, the most important thing is how we make guests feel.”
Which says a lot, because Fennig believes in “minute-by-minute” programming, something she learned from her days in NASCAR live event production (her father is a legendary Crew Chief, perhaps leading to her focus on the details, and she started in the sport as an intern in college). She and her team meticulously plan each day to guarantee positive guest experiences.
“Our process is the same, no matter what client, whether it’s a lottery guest or a PepsiCo executive,” Fennig says. “That being said, I love lottery players. We work with plenty of guests who have expectations of what they deserve, but lottery people are among the most loving and open-hearted. They recognize this may be the first and only time they ever get to experience something like this, and that makes them so grateful and down-to-earth. They truly understand this as a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, and they treat it like that.”
It makes her think of her parents, who haven’t traveled a lot and have rarely, if ever, left the country. “I understand what they are going through,” she says. “It’s why we are willing to walk guests through every step of the journey, whether it’s getting their passport, which might mean flying to a different state to acquire it if they haven’t gotten it in time, or just ameliorating the fear and anxiety that comes with travel. You’re walking people through a process with no judgment. Becoming part of their family is what we do.”
Storytelling
From the beginning, storytelling has always been a part of Imagine Experience’s DNA. “Everything we do follows a traditional plot structure,” Bill McCoy says, “because it’s proven that the emotional connection to the media you consume makes it special and memorable. It’s engineered that way.” It’s about creating immersive experiences, instead of just another trip.
It’s still fundamental to how every experience is produced, and evident in our own moments. For us, it starts with a prelude, the opera on the first day, a remarkable but relaxing experience. (We were in box seats, and I sat next to a throne, though Prince Albert did not attend.) Then, the next day, we crafted perfumes at one of the most prestigious olfactory institutions in the world, and then the next day it was racing cars through the French Riviera, until, finally, flying in a helicopter to dine on a yacht that serves as the trip’s crescendo.
Andrew Leeper stayed at the Texas Lottery to help build an innovative in-house advertising program, despite industry offers. The Texas Lottery team was like family and gave him the support and opportunities to swing for the fences creatively.
That kind of creativity and resourcefulness put Leeper on Bill’s radar. As Leeper and McCoy collaborated on projects like Tinseltown Takeover and Skycruise, they shared a vision of bringing experiences to life before a ticket ever goes on sale. “We talked about how lotteries could improve the way they market experiences, not as an afterthought, but as something engineered from the start,” Bill explains.
For nearly a decade, Bill had been espousing the value of the content that can be created around second-chance prizes, and the creative alignment with Andrew felt like a prophecy fulfilled. Storytelling did not have to live only inside the trip; it could start before the ticket hits the market and continue long after, with content captured early and released strategically to bolster sales. Bill courted Andrew for a while to convince him to make the jump. But the opportunity Imagine Experience offered became too compelling to ignore. What ultimately tipped the scale was that the work itself felt worth evangelizing. “Imagine was bringing new ideas and approaches to the lottery industry, and I was excited to share and build on that with colleagues in the industry,” says Leeper.
Driving the Moyenne Corniche between Eze and La Turbie.
Leeper joined in early January. Before joining Imagine Experience, he produced roughly six additional months of content for his friends at the Texas Lottery. “I didn’t want to leave them hanging. They really are like family to me,” Leeper says.
Since starting on January 6, Leeper has been in constant motion. In roughly eight weeks, he has visited 12 lotteries, filmed a brand video, worked on a project for WCLC, and now finds himself in Monaco. “It’s been a whirlwind,” he laughs right before he gets in the back of a Porsche Speedster to film Chet driving a classic red Thunderbird through southern France in the coastal town of Antibes. “We’re a long way from Texas.”
His methodical process is how he keeps up and how he melded so quickly with the team. For instance, like Fennig, his Monaco shot program is a color-coded schedule where every picture and video he wants is already visualized, replete with screen grabs pulled from Google Earth so he can see each scene before the crew ever arrives. Then he adds an extra flourish that seems baked into the company’s culture, dropping Chet’s photo into each location. It’s unnecessary, but it’s that extra little touch.
“When you handle everything from concept to production you need to be this organized. You have to have a plan for every shot, every line, every scene,” Leeper explains. “That’s also what gives you the creative space to play and find fun, authentic moments.”
Leeper’s tenacity has impressed even Bill. “I told him, please don’t burn out!” Bill laughed. Bill has backed that up on set by jumping in wherever Andrew needs help, even carrying around heavy camera bags and capturing B-roll. (Although, at the Villa Ephrussi de Rothschild, Bill threw the 360-degree camera into the air to get a cool shot, and I think I saw Andrew’s soul leave him for a moment.)
“When you handle everything from concept to production you need to be this organized. You have to have a plan for every shot, every line, every scene.”
Andrew Leeper behind the camera on the Riviera drive.
Each night, Bill gets texts from Andrew, with video edits sent as late as midnight or 1 a.m. One of them comes through with a simple verdict. “This one slaps,” Andrew texts.
“It’s passion,” Bill says after he reads it, enjoying a nightcap with me. “We’re a team of nerds. We dive into the nuance that nobody cares about but us. That’s just who our team is. It’s about the details, whether you’re in sales, production, design, or marketing. It’s about loving what you do.”
It’s readily apparent Leeper loves what he’s doing. I’ve overheard him whisper more than once, “Every scene is a postcard here in Monaco.” To be fair, he isn’t wrong. It’s breathtaking.
But what makes him valuable is not just that he sees it, it’s that he knows how to translate it for lotteries. He’s producing content in the exact formats they need, 30-second, 60-second, 90-second cuts, whatever the campaign calls for, built for every aspect ratio and placement. He thinks in variations, too, tux versus no tux, different closing lines, different pacing, different endings. Then he bundles it all into a clean, ready-to-use package that a lottery can drop straight into a promotion, the story already shaped for the audience it needs to reach.
Imagine the Possibilities
Bill is the kind of person who fills the room the moment he locks eyes with you and lands a joke. But he’s also quick to insist the spotlight belongs elsewhere. Imagine Experience isn’t built around his charisma; it’s built around what the team can guarantee for lotteries and their winners.
Fennig designs the trip with precision and empathy, anticipating needs as they arise. The result is happy guests, whether they are executives or players, who have a story to tell their friends back home. And now, with Leeper on the team, that story can start before anyone even scratches a ticket. When it starts early and lands right, the experiences become a new tool for the lottery to push, creating excitement and brand advocates in one promotion.
Reporting from Monaco for La Fleur’s Magazine.