The Pennsylvania Lottery used a feline theme for its “Lottery Literacy – Curiosity” Responsible Gambling campaign. It launched in late August 2022.
The lottery leveraged paid social videos as its media strategy to direct consumers to the Pennsylvania Lottery website to learn more.
“To tap into the viral nature of social media channels, the creative team leveraged the current social media user obsession over animal-themed content, specifically the ‘cat memes’ trend. The cat theme also ties into the campaign name, ‘Curiosity,’ and goal of educating Pennsylvanians because cats are known to be curious animals,” said Stephanie Weyant, Deputy Executive Director, Marketing & Product Development, Pennsylvania Lottery.
The 9Rooftops creative team was tasked with creating an engaging “Lottery Literacy” content series that educates Pennsylvanians on responsible gambling practices. “Our inspirational theme was ‘Games are more fun when you know how to play: The PA Lottery is making it easier to learn how to play your best,’”explained Weyant.
9Rooftops utilized insights from Scientific Games research, as well as 9Rooftops research on behalf of the lottery.
“Through this research, we found that Pennsylvanians have some understanding of lottery rules and best practices, but there are some areas for improvement: While the PA Lottery prominently displays age and odds information on tickets and advertising assets, surveys still showed a lack of awareness and retention. Our goal was to address these education gaps by developing a flexible creative platform from which relevant, helpful, and lasting content can exist for players in Pennsylvania. The campaign also aimed to support the Pennsylvania Lottery’s brand positioning, ‘a distinctive burst of fun and excitement’ and deliver this message in a way that the consumer can digest and understand while also being catchy and engaging,” said Weyant.
She said the “‘Lottery Literacy – Curiosity’ is an awareness campaign with the primary KPI being reach.”
The three overarching video concepts, “What Are The Chances,” “Underage & Responsible Gambling,” and “Myths & Misperceptions,” are all on the PA Lottery’s YouTube channel.
The Lottery used a series of three cat-themed videos—“Chances,” “Answers,” and “Curious”—on paid social that direct the consumer to the PA Lottery website (https://www.palottery.state.pa.us/Misc/Stay-Curious.aspx).
On the dedicated landing page, PA Lottery players can learn more through the three long-form videos that align with the social videos: “Chances,” “Underage & Responsible Gambling,” and “Myths & Misperceptions.”
“The Lottery Literacy campaign has been well received by players and has generated great engagement on the Lottery’s social media channels,” said Weyant.
If other lotteries wanted to borrow this creative to run in their jurisdiction, Weyant said “we are open to sharing this creative with other lotteries; however, there would be editing as well as other costs as Pennsylvania Lottery branding is throughout the video, visually and in the voice-overs.”