We had the unique opportunity to create a new lottery game from the ground up. The name, the logo, and most importantly, the brand personality. Our task was to appeal to a new, younger customer base—carving out a new segment of players (age 18-34), which to this point didn’t exist. Sweet Million messaging did just that, by delivering a clear, consistent message. Sweet Million gives players the best chance of winning a million, and that’s sweeter than just about anything. The campaign uses painfully sweet imagery—which is still not nearly as sweet as Sweet Million.

For two weeks before launching Sweet Million, tease messaging aired on network, cable and radio stations across NY to pique consumer interest and begin building awareness. A fully integrated launch was implemented statewide simultaneously with the launch of the game for 9 weeks. To rapidly build awareness amongst NY’ers, (younger, non-lottery players), TV/radio were utilized with selective programming that would reach infrequent/non-player targets. This enabled us to utilize newspaper and OOH to reach the general market/younger more elusive target. Additional buzz was created through guerilla marketing, (street singers, life size sweet graffiti mural in high traffic and trendy areas.) Three weeks into it, the Sweetscape microsite launched, providing users with interactive experiences and employing cute baby animals who talk about the game whilst creating their own Sweetscape. Banner ads drove consumers directly to the Sweetscape, while a Facebook page delivered content in a forum most relevant to the younger target.

Within 8 weeks of the initial launch awareness of Sweet Million grew to 33%, a level comparable to a few more established New York Lottery games. The Sweet Million campaign generated quite a bit of buzz, with articles appearing on dozens of blogs and publications. YouTube posts of the Sweet Million TV spots reached over a million hits before the campaign had concluded. Sweet Million game sales realized average weekly sales of $1.3 million, generating incremental revenue to the New York Lottery. Most importantly, over 52% of 18-24 year olds and 46% of 24-35 year olds had played Sweet Million, impressive considering playership of Lottery games among this target had historically never been higher than 5%.