The Maryland Lottery “zoomed” in on a clever gift for its lottery community during the holidays. It created zoom backgrounds which were given away for free.
“Virtual meetings have become the ‘new normal’ for many throughout the country as they work from home or connect with friends and family during the COVID pandemic,” explained Jill Baer, Director of Creative Services, Maryland Lottery & Gaming. “People love using virtual backgrounds during meetings for several reasons: 1) they allow people to express their creativity; 2) they add a little fun to meetings; and, 3) they obscure room backgrounds, allowing people to keep their work spaces (which may now take place in their bedrooms or even closets!) out of view. By offering these Maryland Lottery-themed backgrounds, we are subtly incorporating our brand into people’s day-to-day lives as they spend much of their time working from home or video chatting with friends and family. Hopefully, these fun and festive backgrounds will spark conversations that keep the lottery top of mind.”
The Maryland Lottery’s virtual backgrounds featured ornaments and snowflakes to capture the fun and spirit of the season while also incorporating the Maryland Lottery brand. “One background will even feature the graphics from this season’s holiday point-of-sale,” said Baer. “If our players respond positively to these backgrounds, we may continue to create new ones on a quarterly basis to coincide with the change of the seasons or to highlight different holidays throughout the year.”
The lottery collaborated with its creative advertising agency, GKV, in designing the graphics and virtual backgrounds.
These virtual backgrounds were available to everyone. They can be downloaded from the lottery’s Holiday landing page. “We will also promote them on our social media pages, allowing our fans to simply click and save the backgrounds to their devices,” added Baer.