The Pennsylvania Lottery is cross promoting its instant, Fast Play and iLottery products through three tie-in licensed brands. THE WIZARD OF OZ™, Grumpy Cat® and Gold Fish®.
THE WIZARD OF OZ, Gold Fish and Grumpy Cat are licensed brands available to the Pennsylvania Lottery through its supplier Scientific Games. Scientific Games was also able to create iLottery versions of these popular brands.
“Licensed property games are a great conduit to drive players who enjoy the brands to try all of the different category of games,” said Stephanie Weyant Fidler, Deputy Executive Director, Marketing & Products, Pennsylvania Lottery. “Through couponing and iLottery bonus money, the Pennsylvania Lottery can incentive players to try all of the games offered at retail in the online space. For the first time, we are also offering iLottery bonus money as a prize tier in a second-chance drawing.”
The lottery’s concept is to drive iLottery traffic to retailers through exciting offers involving the licensed property games. Weyant provided examples of their marketing offers involving the Grumpy Cat licensed property below:
• Weekly offer: Spend $20 on Grumpy Cat iLottery game, Get a Free $2 Fast Play coupon.
• Weekly offer: Spend $20 on Grumpy Cat iLottery game, Get a Free $2 Scratch-Off coupon.
• After a player enters a non-winning Scratch-Off or Fast Play ticket into the Grumpy Cat Second-Chance Drawing, their entry is submitted into the appropriate drawing for that game category, and they get an offer to try the iLottery version: Spend $5 on the Grumpy Cat iLottery game and Get $5 in iLottery bonus money.
• The Grumpy Cat Second-Chance Drawing involving the Scratch-Off and Fast Play games also includes $100 of iLottery bonus money as a prize tier.
THE WIZARD OF OZ iLottery game launched June 13; the $5 Scratch-Off launched June 18. The Pennsylvania Lottery’s Second-Chance Drawing for THE WIZARD OF OZ launched on June 17 and closes on August 22, 2019.
The Gold Fish iLottery game launched May 30; the $3 Scratch-Off launched June 18.
The Grumpy Cat iLottery launched April 18. All new, the lottery launched a $2 Grumpy Cat Fast Play on July 2. Finally, the $2 Scratch-Off launches July 23. The Grumpy Cat Second-Chance Drawing launches July 2 and closes on August 29.
In terms of sales projections, Weyant said “licensed property games tend to over index, so we expect these games to do the same.”
The lottery is supporting the licensed brand games with different advertising programs.
THE WIZARD OF OZ is being supported with TV, point-of-sale (digital and printed), retailer events, online banners and digital OOH. Gold Fish is being supported with rich media units. Grumpy Cat includes point-of-sale (digital and printed) and digital OOH.
“The Pennsylvania Lottery is just getting started with its efforts to integrate the retail and online worlds,” said Weyant. “In the future, we are looking at more ways to tie together the product lines. For example, we are exploring adding iLottery bonus codes on the retail games. The Michigan Lottery has had a lot of success with iLottery bonus codes on core Scratch-Off games.”
