Make Me a Millionaire

Consumer Activation Target
Lottery Players

Challenge
The California Lottery needed to generate awareness of the new Make Me a Millionaire TV show and Scratchers® ticket, and in the process reinvigorate its brand with the existing audience, as well as a new, younger consumer set. Alcone was tasked with launching these two critical initiatives, particularly in major California markets televising the syndicated show.

Solution
Alcone identified the following insights: promoting Make Me a Millionaire through a web or print promotion would not do the show justice, and that consumers played the Lottery in part because of the thrill it gave them. We needed to build on this. Also, we needed to create a compelling promotion that would engage local media, in turn exponentially increasing consumer awareness.

We developed a scaled-down, modular version of one of the show’s four segments—Safecracker. The Make Me a Millionaire show was brought to life allowing each consumer attending the event to experience the show in its actual format. This gave consumers a taste of the play style of both the game show and the Scratchers ticket, driving both viewership and sales.

The Make Me a Millionaire Mall Tour was created. The Make Me a Millionaire Mall Tour was conducted at malls across California. This tour created awareness of the new Lottery game show and Scratchers to a wide audience of both loyal/frequent players and potential/infrequent Lottery players.

Results
This promotion was a tremendous success. Each event experienced long lines of consumers from start to finish. Local TV stations covered each event for both live broadcast and taped for that evening’s news. There was a significant increase in Lottery Scratchers sales for the Lottery retailers located in each mall.

There was a significant increase in Make Me a Millionaire Scratchers ticket sales—over 7,000,000 Scratchers tickets were sold during the promotion period, making it the highest selling Lottery Scratchers ticket during that sales period.