CPR Promotional Check-Up - Sep 8, 2011

Lottery Tickets

Lottery tickets, in a bad economy, are a HOT HOT HOT prize. The station in Ft. Myers did ten packs of $1 scratchers and people were coming to the station within 30 minutes of winning to pick them up.

A couple of the stations have had new scratch-off games debuting and their state/provincial lotteries are asking for promotions, and ponying up tickets for contesting.

You could do "Ticket Blast" where you open up the phones and everyone who "gets through" in 20 minutes gets 20 tickets. (You take 20 or 30 winners but make it sound like you took 1000)

We've talked with one of the stations about taking an intern, putting him in a scuba wetsuit and turning him into the Human Scratch-Off. Write prizes on the suit, spray it down with some kind of paint and have people scratch it off. Win what is revealed underneath.

Can you get one of those booths where you stand inside and bills swirl around you? How about loading it up with lottery tickets. Blindfold a listener and they have (dial position) seconds to grab as many as spin around them, they can grab and cram them in their pockets. "Ticket Blizzard".

The Bank Vault Dash is something you usually followup the Dollar Bill Game with. You have a big plexiglass vault filled with Monopoly money and a listener gets a dial position number of seconds to run in and grab as much as they can. At WPGC I think it was $17,000. Same concept but filled with little cards that stand for lottery tickets. You get a scratchoff ticket for each one you can remove from the vault.

I did something at an NBA game where we piled a stack of bills in the middle of the court at halftime. Five listeners were brought out, and wrapped from head to toe in doublesided tape. On cue they dove/fell into the money and start rolling and flopping around. You got 107 seconds to get as many bills stuck to you as you could. And then were gently lifted up and out of the pile. The bills were picked off, you were unwound and you got to keep the money. The team LOVED it. Could easily be done with tickets.

How cool is Peak Broadcasting in Boise? They had their own scratchoff tickets through the Idaho State Lottery to promote the Boise Music Fest. It can never hurt to ask...for a station or morning show series of tickets.

KRST in Albuquerque and Fly in Albany have both done Concentration as a contest with web elements. You could do this with matching brands of scratch off tickets, ie: Wild Cherrys, Royal Flush, Texas Hold 'Em. Match two and get ten of them.

High/Low has been done for cash but never for lottery tickets. Put an odd number like 1517 lottery tickets in a box and people guess the number based on previous guesses and prompts of "high" or "low".

Or do a singles or dating event called "Whole Lotto Love". Make a love connection and get a dial position number of tickets.

When the prize amounts get up in the hundreds of millions for stuff like Powerball, the story starts to get some coverage which means that a good stunt can get you some press. The Beat in Vancouver is one of many stations that has done pools. They took 925 listeners names and went out and bought 925 tickets. The pool split the winnings. And yes, people DID come to the station to get 18 cents.

In San Francisco, Jo Jo Wright and I went to a Laundromat, put 48 numbered tennis balls in a dryer and the first five that popped out, he played. Great visual content for the website.

What you DON'T want to do? Give away $2 tickets individually on the air. You never ever want to do prizes that are less-value then the gas it will take to come and pick it up.