About the National Lottery
The New York Lottery continues
to be North America’s largest and most profitable Lottery, contributing
$3.11 billion in fiscal year 2014-2015 to help support education in New
York State. The Lottery’s contribution represents 14 percent of total
state education aid to local school districts.
A rich New Yorker spends
millions of dollars for a dead bat to add to his dead bat collection. An
internet startup guru pays hundreds of dollars for solid gold staples
to bind historic documents together. An eccentric heir spends $28,000 a
week on expensive wine – to bathe in.
A lot of millionaires certainly have questionable ways to spend their riches.
The New York Lottery’s namesake
game LOTTO has created more New York millionaires than any other jackpot
game. With a track record like that, we believe our winners make way
better rich people than these odd and eccentric characters who enjoy
their spoils in decidedly unique ways.
Inspired by this notion, the New
York Lottery’s advertising agency, McCann, has put together a campaign
highlighting why New York LOTTO players make the best rich people. The
LOTTO campaign, "You’d Make A Way Better Rich Person" reminds us that
LOTTO has made millionaires out of more New Yorkers than any other
in-state game.
“When the LOTTO game debuted in
1978, it was designed to fuel players’ dreams of being rich with a
starting jackpot of just $250,000,” said New York Lottery Director
Gardner Gurney. “LOTTO grew exponentially and over the years has turned
1,326 New Yorkers into LOTTO millionaires. We believe our LOTTO players
have the knowledge, charisma and common sense to be rich in the best
way.”
“We’re clearly having fun with
the campaign’s wry portraits of wealthy eccentrics,” said Grant Smith,
McCann Executive Creative Director, “The truth is that New Yorkers enjoy
watching the odd behavior of some rich people. Because we all know
that, if we were rich we’d do a better job of it.”
The campaign spans television,
radio, online, billboards and placards, a/k/a out-of-home, as well as a
first-of-its-kind digital “Field Guide” to identifying eccentric wealth
at RichPeopleGuide.com. Here, New Yorkers can discover exactly which
type of Rich Person they would be better than if they were rich.
Among the specimens found in the Rich People Field Guide (www.RichPeopleGuide.com)
are the Hypertense Hyperallergenic, a histamine normal person, but
simply too wealthy to have normal feelings about dirt; the Eccentric
Collector of Eccentric Collections, who has never had to work,
socialize, or have meaningful relationships with other humans so has
acquired a unique social adaptation: amassing a ridiculous assortment of
alarmingly weird objects; and the Grown-Up Child Star whose efforts to
reclaim her lost childhood have resulted in an exotic animal menagerie,
and an even more exotic wig collection.
New York’s LOTTO game earned
more than $83.9 million in sales last fiscal year and returned 51
percent of that (more than $43 million) to aid the state’s 760 school
districts. The New York Lottery posted overall sales of $9.16 billion
for its traditional and video lottery operations for the same time
period, returning $3.11 billion in profit for education. The Lottery’s
contribution represents 14 percent of total state education aid to local
school districts