Lottery Promotion for Southland Cranking Up in Anaheim

The small office in an Anaheim business park bears the name of a financial management firm. But the tenant inside hasn’t been playing the markets or cutting real estate deals.

No, this is temporary quarters for the southern regional sales office of the California Lottery Commission, covering Orange, San Diego, San Bernardino, Riverside and Imperial counties.

For the last two weeks, as construction has proceeded across the street on permanent district offices, regional director Janet Levine, 51, and her three district managers have been working from their sparsely furnished quarters--hiring salesmen and laying the groundwork for a massive campaign to promote California’s first lottery.

The lottery, to raise funds for education, is to begin sometime this fall. But though the lottery is just weeks away, Levine’s marketing strategy at the moment is based as much on unknowns as knowns.

Right now, Levine said Friday, she does not know which of some 5,000 stores, bars and other applicants in Orange and San Diego counties will receive permission to sell lottery tickets. (The selection is scheduled to be announced next week.)

Nor did she know how many tickets each vendor would receive or how many tickets each could expect to sell each week.

Further, Levine said, she didn’t even know when the state lottery would begin.

“If I could give you a date, I would,” she said. “Everyone has been asking.” She could only guess that it would start in late September or early October. Commission officials in Sacramento still haven’t announced a date.

But if Levine didn’t know when the lottery would start, she already was predicting its success--even in fundamentalist Christian communities within her region.

“It’s not gaming. It’s family fun,” Levine said. She said she, her salesmen and vendors would be stressing that 34% of the lottery’s proceeds will go to public schools.

Although advertising for the lottery hasn’t begun yet, Levine said she had discovered as she traveled around Orange County that “enthusiasm (for the lottery) is great.”

“Just to get a telephone put in, at first I was told it would take a few days,” or possibly a week, Levine said. But when she told the service representative that the phone was for the lottery commission office, the response was immediate.

The representative said she could hardly wait for the lottery, Levine said, and the phone was installed the following day.

Levine and her directors say they plan to market the lottery no differently than any other consumer product.

A former sales manager for carpeting firms in New York and Phoenix, Levine is the only member of her team with previous lottery experience. For the last four years she was marketing manager and coordinator of the Lotto game for the Arizona lottery. But all her district directors have strong sales backgrounds.

Levine and her team spent last week selecting some 50 sales representatives--including 14 for San Diego County --who will provide lottery decals and additional promotional material to lottery ticket vendors and visit them at least once a week.

She also spent time last week hunting for an auditorium so she can begin training sessions for 200 to 300 vendors on how the lottery is played and on sales procedures and bookkeeping.

When the initial enthusiasm for the lottery dies down, Levine said, she has plans for the continuing promotion of the tickets. These include a “loser’s lottery” at selected ticket outlets in which “the store takes all the losing tickets, people sign the tickets and then draw for $50 in groceries--or 10 free lottery tickets.” Levine said she had tried the tactic during the Arizona lottery in 1982 and it often doubled or tripled a store’s business.

Promoting California’s lottery won’t be much different than marketing the Arizona lottery, Levine said--except marketing this one may be easier.

The Arizona lottery raised funds for transportation, Levine noted. “It’s easier to say, ‘With the additional income, schools will be able to do some more things’ than to say, ‘This will add income to buy a new bus,’ ” she said.