They can be kooky, spooky, and altogether ooky, but the first family of gloom is more appealing than ever! The California Lottery, Mississippi Lottery Corp., Pennsylvania Lottery, and Virginia Lottery are launching various versions of Alchemy3’s classic nostalgic brand ‘The Addams Family’ this fall.
The iconic and macabre family has experienced a resurgence of popularity over the last three years. The MGM animated films, released in 2019 and 2021, brought Gomez, Morticia, and the rest of the characters back into the limelight. And the upcoming live-action Netflix series, Wednesday, directed by Tim Burton, will boost their current popularity even more.
The timing of the series release is perfect for the four lotteries. Press coverage for the new show will deliver a welcome boost of free exposure for the brand. The new show will also continue to introduce The Addams Family to different demographics. “Since the Addams family has been around for generations, both Baby Boomers and GenXers find the property particularly appealing,” said Alchemy3 President Jeffrey Schweig. “The recent movies have introduced the Addams Family to a new audience— millennials. The upcoming Netflix series will further increase its already broad appeal.”
This broad appeal is why games featuring the brand have been so successful. Between 2019 and 2021, all nine of the Addams Family-themed games indexed over 100. This year, the four participating lotteries expect similar results for their own Addams Family-branded scratch tickets.
“This is our first game using Alchemy3 licensed properties. We are very excited to see how well this game performs,” said Jeff Hewitt, President, Mississippi Lottery. “We believe the Addams Family has multi-generational appeal. We are confident it will draw players of all ages.”
California Lottery expects to launch several licensed products in Q3, something they have avoided in the past. However, the Lottery is planning a variety of instant games to reflect the diversity and interests of Californians. This reasoning made The Addams Family particularly attractive. “This game resonated with all types of players in research and had especially strong resonance for 18-34-year-old casual players who found the licensed property an iconic and popular favorite,” said Whitney Anderson, Assistant Deputy Director of Marketing, California Lottery.
eInstant Debut
The Virginia and Pennsylvania Lotteries will introduce the first The Addams Family eInstant games this fall. “A focus of our iLottery program is new player acquisition, and licensed property games are an important part of that strategy. For FY23, we are planning to launch one new licensed property game each quarter while continuing to evaluate their impact on new player acquisition,” said Scott Kenyon, Strategic Games Manager, Virginia Lottery.
iLottery marketers can measure the success of licensed property games with more precision than their traditional counterparts. They know how many new players are depositing funds for the first time and what is the first game they play. However, the results still need to be analyzed over a long period of time.
“We see good results from licensed property games for acquisition purposes. Because it is a newer category of eInstants for us, we don’t really know yet if there is going to be a different life cycle for these games,” Kenyon said. “While we’re still getting positive results, we’ll keep evaluating as we go and make sure that our strategy is still producing positive acquisition results over time.”
Kenyon mentioned that licensed eInstants can utilize more of a brand’s assets during play. While scratch tickets can only show static visual images, eInstants can have whimsical bonus rounds with compelling animations and sounds. This makes the licensed eInstant game come to life for players.
“Licensed properties give us unique engagement opportunities because we can leverage the existing familiarity and well-known brand assets,” Kenyon said. “Such as the ‘snap, snap’ sound with The Addams Family.”
Instant Win Gaming (IWG) is producing the Addams Family eInstant. “We are finding that our licensed titles are a very effective at standing out with new players and introducing them to the eInstant category,” said Rhydian Fisher, CEO, IWG. “We are particularly excited by the Addams Family because the brand is such a great fit for digital games.”
4 Sales Channels
The Pennsylvania Lottery is going one step further by including The Addams Family within four different product categories: eInstant, Fast Play, Keno, and scratch tickets. The games will release in September.
Like Virginia, the Lottery will maximize the brand assets across all channels. For instance, the scratch tickets will feature varying scenes with the different animated characters, but the Keno skin will exclusively feature the Thing, the disembodied hand from the show. The Lottery will also activate a Halloween-themed second chance drawing with the game.
“The big licensed opportunity in September is The Addams Family,” said Kara Sparks, Director of Products, Pennsylvania Lottery. “Non-winning tickets from both the Fast Play and Scratch-Off games will be eligible for entry into our Halloween-themed second chance drawing. These games are two of six games eligible for entry.”
The Addams Family delivers undisputed broad demographic appeal, can be licensed for every major product category, and the upcoming Netflix series release makes it as relevant as ever. The lottery industry is lucky to have it and even luckier, they didn’t have to sell their immortal soul to get it!