I irritated Veronique by suggesting that she had effectively projected a message as a model 30 years ago; she corrected me saying that the message was mine, projected onto her. Her talent was to be an effective screen or mirror. She went on to explain her view that affirmation is something everyone seeks, and that affirming the optimism of lottery players may be the best way for us to use advertising. We remember some examples, in NASPL Insights October 2015.
Author: stephenwade
Changing Brands: A Conversation with Veronique
Veronique, who as a model helped build a brand and a successful company in the eighties, finds the brand now gone, while the company thrives. Her perspective, based on 30 years’ experience, is that the brand and the company are separable: the customers create the brand among themselves, and as the customers change, so does the brand. We speculate about how the 30-year-old lottery brand should be changing, in NASPL Insights August 2015.
What I Learned About the Lottery from the Economist of a Remote Pacific Island
Pio is an economist educated in the US Ivy League, who serves his native island of Zoa in many capacities, including Director of the Lottery. I was introduced to him at a meeting of economists in Seattle, and he opened my eyes to a factor that drives our year-on-year increases in Instant game sales. Economists agree: if money is getting cheaper, it takes more of it to express the same value, year after year. NASPL Insights June 2015
Do You Call That a Win?
Watching from behind the mirror in a focus group, I heard a discussion that led me to test: do people treat a win differently, depending upon whether it was merely a pay-back of the wager, or something bigger? Four key learnings from my work on millions of wins:1) it’s the dollar value of the prize, not whether it is more than the wager, that predicts how diligently it will be claimed, 2) even $1 prizes get claimed about 90% of the time, 3) $4 wins appear to be as valued as $5, and 4) about 2% of wins get missed, regardless of their value.NASPL Insights February 2015
US Lotteries Review 2013- Recovery from Recession
I examined the recovery of the US instant business in particular, after instant sales in most jurisdictions were set back by the start of the Great Recession. I found that due to migration of the business to games of higher price point (and lower profitability), only in 2013 did the purchasing power of Net Win (or Gross Gaming Revenue) first exceed its pre-recession level. This work appeared in WLA US Lotteries winter 2014.
Outlook for the Big Games in 2015
NASPL Insights December 2014, I assessed the behavior of the Powerball and Mega Millions games in the eleven months since California joined the Powerball game. I found that while sales at jackpots below $100 million had remained fairly steady, the sales response to jackpots approaching $300 million was less than half what it had been during the “base period” between Feb 2012 (when Powerball raised its price to $2) and April 2013 (when California joined). I went on to project the probability distribution for jackpots greater than $300 million in the coming year. The difference between the games was stark: Powerball was more likely than not to have three or more such events, while Mega Millions was more likely than not to have no more than one.
The Dashboard According to Jade
In my continuing discussion with Veronique, Jade, and their colleagues at the ad agency, Jade emerged as the champion of the view that the end-effect of actual sales is likely the most sensitive measure for demonstrating the combined effects of all kinds of lottery advertising and promotions. Advertising efforts may aim to influence sentiment, and they may be effective, but the player is more likely to express this by spending an extra dollar, rather than by changing the way she responds to a survey question. Further, although our efforts may be focused on a particular game at a particular time, we hope the effect of these efforts is more diffuse and longer-lasting. This suggests a measurement strategy aimed at detecting improvements across the portfolio, which I am glad to implement as the Dashboard According to Jade.
Common-Sense Construction
Math modeling can seem arcane, but I believe it is most effective when it incorporates intuitive or common-sense features. In describing the way people play the big jackpot games, for instance, we intuitively recognize that there are some people who play nearly all the time, and others who rush in when the jackpot gets to a certain size. I reassured Veronique’s agency that a well-crafted model can incorporate these features, in NASPL Insights August 2014.
No Really- I’m On Your Side!
The methods of hypothesis testing I learned as a scientist are applicable to many situations, including testing the effectiveness of advertising. The “null hypothesis” – the assertion that nothing has changed – is central to the method. This has the effect of putting me (the testing expert) in a position that feels adversarial, to those who are trying to show an effect of their work. In NASPL Insights June 2014 I recount how my first encounter with a client exposed both my methods, and their feelings.
What I Like About These Things
For a person who is without illusions about probability, what is there to lie about lottery games? This is a question answered in NASPL Insights April 2014 by my friend M., the gambling economist. I don’t mean an economist of the gambling industry- I mean an economist who likes to gamble.