State Lottery Team in Anaheim Focuses on Pushing Ticket Sales

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

No, this is the 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 these 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 it is just weeks away, Levine’s marketing strategy at the moment is based as much on unknowns as knowns.

Outlets Still Unknown

Levine said Friday she did not know which of about 5,000 stores, bars and other applicants in Orange and San Diego counties would 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 the start would be 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, already she was predicting its success--even in fundamentalist Christian communities within her region.

‘It’s Family Fun’

“It’s not gaming. It’s family fun,” Levine said. Also, she said, she and her “pro-lottery” 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 that she could already tell as she traveled around Orange County that “the enthusiasm (for the lottery) is great.”

“Just to get a telephone put in, at first I was told it would take a few days,” 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 couldn’t wait for the lottery, Levine said, and the phone was installed the following day.

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

Experienced Team

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.

Ulysses Carter, 54, district manager for Orange County, spent 10 years with Newsweek magazine in Los Angeles, recently as regional manager.

Molly English, 31, district manager for San Diego and Imperial counties, spent nine years in marketing for airline companies, recently as district manager of Southwest Airlines in Denver.

Al Alvarado, 34, district manager for Riverside and Imperial counties, was the northwest divisional sales manager for Rubbermaid Corp.

Levine and her directors spent last week selecting about 50 sales representatives, including 14 for Orange County, who will provide lottery decals and additional promotional material to lottery ticket vendors and visit them at least once a week.

Also Levine spent 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 its sales procedures and bookkeeping.

Levine said she already has plans for promoting lottery tickets after the initial enthusiasm about the lottery dies down. 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 used the tactic during the Arizona lottery in 1982 and it often doubled or tripled a store’s business.