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CJRW Lottery Strategy: Playing To Win Over Millennials

4 min read

The day after CJRW signed a hotly contested $34.5 million advertising contract on Feb. 16, a team led by Gary Heathcott at CJRW was busy putting a new face to the Arkansas Scholarship Lottery.

And that face, based on a couple of 30-second ads the Little Rock firm will be pitching to lottery officials, is younger.

Lottery Director Bishop Woosley and CJRW President Jill Joslin signed the five-year contract, which was protested by two rival firms and briefly snagged by legislative review. The next afternoon, Heathcott was showing rough cuts of the two commercials, which he emphasized had not yet been approved by his client.

Heathcott, the senior client strategist on the account, was joined in CJRW’s third-floor conference room by public relations chief Mark Raines and Katherine Vasilos, an account executive who joined CJRW in June after a stint as director of operations and special projects for the Arkansas House of Representatives.

Vasilos queued up the commercials on her laptop. The first featured ecstatic faces of lottery winners over a soundtrack of energetic opera. “You gotta play to win,” said the emphatic voiceover at the end. The other ad featured office workers, including millennials, rejoicing with their winning tickets at work. Chest bumps and end zone-style dances played over dramatic music fit for NFL Films. In fact, Heathcott said, a former NFL Films announcer recorded the voiceover.

The Arkansas lottery attracts relatively few millennials, Heathcott said, but in California, “they’re the No. 1 players.”

Lottery research and tracking have armed his team well, Heathcott said. “We learned a lot about who the lottery is reaching, and not reaching. It’s a proven fact that millennials will play the lottery, but you’ve got to tell them about it.”

The campaign hopes to highlight Arkansans helped by the lottery, including jackpot winners and students who receive lottery-paid scholarships. Since Arkansas pays out more in winnings than most states (about two-thirds of revenue), “it’s actually easier to win playing the Arkansas lottery,” Heathcott said.

One lottery goal was to keep students in state for college and beyond. “We want to get in and find some of those students who got their education and stayed, serving in careers that will change other lives,” Heathcott said.

CJRW’s social media department, headed by Elizabeth Michael, plans to be heavily engaged. “One way is that we’ve released a statewide geo-filter for Snapchat,” Vasilos said. “The goal is to engage millennials, and one way we’re doing that is that we’ve released this filter. It creates awareness about the PowerBall when it’s at a high level like it is today. This is just one example of something new and innovative that our team is coming up with.”

The campaign’s creative director is Wade McCune.

Heathcott was happy to discuss the lottery contract, something he could not do while the deal was pending. “Certainly, we are pleased with the outcome … and honored to advance this important endeavor,” he said.

The contract sets CJRW’s main source of compensation as a 13 percent commission on ad placements. Ad buys will constitute some 77 percent of the budget, Woosley said, which would create nearly $4.5 million in commissions if the overall budget doesn’t increase.

The cost schedule also calls for $135 an hour each for “Public Relations Director/Planning” and “Public Relations Coordinator,” as well as $95 an hour for “Social Media Planning/Management,” but Woosley told lawmakers that those services might be used lightly.

Back on Jan. 25, Heathcott sent Woosley an e-mail notification that CJRW has Oaklawn Racing & Gaming as a client, a longstanding relationship that fueled rivals’ protests on conflict-of -interest grounds. Lottery consultants identified the Hot Springs racetrack and casino as a competitor for Arkansas gambling dollars, but both Woosley and Oaklawn have said they see no conflict. Nevertheless, out of “an abundance of caution,” Heathcott sent notice that “the staff that works with the Lottery will not work with Oaklawn and vice versa.”

He also told Arkansas Business the Oaklawn team will not be mixed with staff working to keep the state’s largest ad contract, the $14 million-a-year Department of Parks & Tourism assignment that CJRW now shares with Aristotle Inc. That contract is up for bids now.

Woosley replied by email that he appreciated Heathcott’s sensitivity to concerns, specifically those voiced “by legislators and the other vendors,” but he said CJRW’s arrangements were “beyond what was called for” and he is satisfied “that a conflict does not exist.”

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