Lotteries can engage and dazzle their players, and potentially reach non-players, with vibrant instant games featuring potentially dozens of different scenes.
By Patricia McQueen
Published August 20, 2024
The barks were heard around Michigan on May 1, as 30 dogs were announced as the stars of the Michigan Lottery’s Lucky Dog instant game, which launched June 4. The game with 30 different scenes is one of the latest lottery offerings that push the envelope and take advantage of new printing technologies.
Multi-scene lottery games aren’t new – lotteries have been using them for years to showcase such things as local attractions and artists and a wide variety of other interests. The latest printing technologies are able to produce an almost unlimited number of scenes for a single game, with vibrant color and clarity as an added benefit. A few such games have launched in North America over the past 18 months, and for the right game, the ability to easily produce a large number of scenes is just the ticket.
It seems particularly well-suited to contests, where ideas and images are submitted to a lottery during a promotion. Those types of contests aren’t new to lotteries either, but it may be time to consider them more often. Since a key goal is to maximize player engagement, the more “winning” submissions that find their way onto a ticket, the better. That was an important goal for the Michigan Lottery as it took the popular “Lucky Dog” concept to a whole new level.
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The More the Terrier
Michigan certainly isn’t the only lottery to offer a ticket celebrating man’s best friend – there have been many! Nor is it the only lottery to offer a contest to select a winning dog (or dogs) to appear on a lottery ticket. After all, it’s a great way to engage a statewide audience of dog-lovers! For example, the Mississippi Lottery recently launched its own version of Lucky Dog, with eight winning dogs chosen from a field of more than 3,300 entries. Yet the Michigan Lottery’s new Lucky Dog game took the idea and ran with it, with 30 winning dogs chosen from a whopping 7,000-plus entries. Each of these dogs is featured on one of the 30 different scenes in the game.
The Lottery got the ball rolling with a call for entries last November – inviting Michiganders everywhere to submit their dog for consideration. There was no doubt that this was going to be a fun game – and a fun process – with this announcement:
Don’t miss the a-paw-tunity to have your dog featured on a Michigan Lottery instant game ticket! Thirty Lucky Dogs will be selected and featured on the Lottery’s upcoming $1 instant game, Lucky Dog! If you think your dog has the pet-tential, submit their photo and a short bio so we can honor how pawsitivley precious they are! We want to know what makes you so mutts about them because, let’s be honest, we would choose them all if we could! Entries will be accepted from Nov. 6 to Dec. 8. Let’s raise the woof and get this pawty started! Enter now and we will collie you later if we select your pup! If it takes us some time, don’t stop retrievin’!
“It presented us with a very unique opportunity to engage with our players,” says Michigan Lottery Player Relations Manager Jake Harris. That engagement began with the contest, continues with showcasing the winners and many of the also-rans, and ultimately translates to sales – and plenty of media interest along the way. “That’s why a game like that does well.”
Importantly, the game generated interest among people who weren’t necessarily avid lottery players – they just wanted to have their dog featured on a ticket. “We’re always looking to develop things that are going to appeal to the most numbers of Michiganders,” adds Harris. The appeal spilled over to media outlets throughout the state, especially when the 30 winning dogs were selected. They made for great local human, er, canine interest stories.
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With such an overwhelming number of entries, there was a lot of work involved in choosing the 30 top dogs in just three or four weeks. The process rested primarily on the Michigan Lottery’s printed products team, and also included other staff members. They had to review the quality and composition of the submitted images, and there was of course the cuteness factor. “But it’s hard to find a dog that’s not cute, right?” asks Harris. Other important considerations were making sure that the winners included a wide variety of breeds and that they represented all geographic areas of Michigan.
With more than 7,000 entries and “only” 30 ticket scenes to populate, it was also important to recognize all the enthusiastic dog owners (and one ambitious cat owner!) whose pets weren’t chosen. So the Lottery is sharing as many dogs as possible on its website.
On May 1, the Lottery held a big event on the Capitol lawn honoring all 30 dogs, and most of them did indeed show up with their owners. Those owners received a goody bag that included sample tickets, plus a large reproduction of the ticket featuring their own dog. “We did our best to get a group photo of everyone,” says Harris. But with so many dogs, “not everybody was looking at the camera. It was a little wild, but it was fun!”
As of early August, Lucky Dog was quite popular with players and selling well. And there’s the added novelty of dog owners who can tell friends and family to look for a ticket featuring their dog at their local lottery retailer.
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Sweet in Idaho
The Idaho Lottery is no stranger to multi-scene games, having previously partnered with the state’s Department of Parks & Recreation to create a game that celebrated Idaho’s most scenic treasures, state parks. A renowned local artist provided images for the 11 collectible scenes featured in the $5 scratch game Idaho Parks.
For its dive into a game with almost twice as many scenes, the Idaho Lottery in 2022 developed an industry-first partnership with Spangler Candy, the parent company that makes the iconic Sweethearts candies. The result was the $5 instant game Sweethearts, which launched Dec. 27, 2022, with 20 scenes, each featuring one of the candy’s signature phrases, from “Be Mine” and “Cutie Pie to “Pick Me” and “XOXO.”
“When you buy a box of Sweethearts candies, you look forward to all the different, cute and clever sayings, especially during Valentine’s Day,” explains Sherie Moody-St. Clair, Idaho Lottery Marketing Director. “We wanted the ticket to reflect the box of candy experience by getting a different saying each time you played.”
The Idaho Lottery’s Sweethearts game was more than just a scratch game, she adds. “It was more of a social experience with the added benefit of winning up to $50,000. For more than a century, the conversational, heart-shaped candies have been adored by generations with its sayings centering around love and caring.”
Players loved the game so much that the Lottery produced a new version for Valentine’s Day this year, although one with only nine different scenes/sayings. The original Sweethearts was a finalist for NASPL’s Best New Instant Game in 2023.
Moody-St. Clair will continue to be on the lookout for games suitable for such a large collection of images. “We are always trying to be creative, innovative, and ultimately…legendary. So, you never know the next idea that will utilize a multi-scene concept.”
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Reaching Younger Players in Québec
Just two weeks after Sweethearts first launched in Idaho, Loto-Québec released Boréal, an extravagant 30-scene $2 game featuring wildlife species that call Québec home. The images were taken by prize-winning photographer Jean-Simon Bégin and were reproduced in stunning quality for this game.
The objective of Boréal was to reach a younger clientele of casual players, explains Rosalie Brault, Acting Director of Products and Development and Executive Vice President of Lottery Operations. That is a Loto-Québec strategy that introduces a new game once per quarter that is specifically designed for the young adult audience. “We usually reach our player target,” she says, even though the various niche games are not necessarily lucrative.
With Boréal, though, the success was significant when compared to other niche products that have been printed using only one scene. “Among lottery players who had purchased a scratch ticket in the past 12 months, younger players (18-34 years old) had rated several characteristics of the ticket more positively and were more tempted to buy it than players aged 35 and older.”
It’s always a good thing when lotteries reach their goals with a product, no matter what that goal is. With the success of Boréal, Loto-Québec followed with another multi-scene scratch game this year. Like Lucky Dog in Michigan, this one highlights a great use of these games – contests that engage players.
Point de vue d’un petit comique (Point of View of a Stand-Up Comic) is a game created in collaboration with École nationale de l’humour (National School of Humor) as part of a contest. This $2 game has done well among the 18-34 age group, even though it reaches a smaller proportion of players overall.
All students of the school who wished to participate could submit, in teams of two or three, a lottery concept. To create a concept that complied with lottery laws and codes, two employees from Loto-Québec provided the students with a brief training on ticket creation. “The goal of the competition was to create a different educational experience for the students who, once graduated, would need to create jokes, texts and comedy acts in various contexts,” explains Brault. “The lottery field thus became an interesting learning domain for them, given the regulations in place.”
The team whose game was selected proposed a concept closely related to humor. The ticket represented the point of view of a comedian on stage, with a microphone on a stand, in front of an audience. The unique feature of the game was that it offered different jokes written on the ticket. Therefore, the visual of the ticket was always the same, but the joke on the ticket varied from one ticket to another. Nearly 30 different jokes were published on the tickets, ensuring that each time a player purchased a ticket, they had the chance to discover a different joke.
With experiences to date being positive in terms of reaching a younger audience with these vibrant, engaging games, Loto-Québec plans to annually launch one multi-scene game using the same printing process going forward.
The Sky’s the Limit
With lotteries competing for both the entertainment dollar and the digital space, games like these that invite engagement from concept development to actual play may become increasingly important for continued growth. While the digital world is now at the forefront, there’s still nothing like the look and feel of a beautiful printed ticket with scenes that make a personal connection with players. Add to that the high-resolution print quality now available even for the numbers and symbols uncovered in the play area, and players have a more enjoyable experience than ever!
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