Faltering Lottery Revamps Games, Hires New Agency

California Lottery officials are rolling the dice--hoping that big, big changes will lure back customers.

Late Friday, the lottery handed its $25-million ad business to a new agency, in the hopes that a new ad firm can help it better inform customers that drastic changes to the lottery have already been made--and that a complete overhaul is planned over the next six months.

Among other things, the number of lottery computer terminals in the state will be doubled to 20,000 by the end of the year.

Lottery officials declined to be specific about proposed changes to lottery games, but a far greater variety of games is on tap. “Instead of just chocolate, vanilla and strawberry, you’ll also have Rocky Road and peanut butter fudge,” lottery spokeswoman Joanne McNabb said.

Also, lottery insiders say that the poorly received “Big Spin” TV program will likely be replaced by a flashier show. And the odds of winning lottery games will continue to improve.

For the first time since the lottery began in 1985, the advertising will no longer be created by a Los Angeles agency. The account went to the San Francisco office of J. Walter Thompson, the agency that creates the popular Sprint ads featuring “Murphy Brown” star Candice Bergen.

The ads were formerly created by the Dailey & Associates, which was fired from the business. Executives at Dailey were unavailable for comment late Friday.

“You just don’t hear the talk on the street about the lottery in L.A. that you have in New York or Chicago,” said Larry Postaer, executive vice president of Rubin Postaer & Associates, which briefly created lottery ads in 1985. “The lottery needs a lot of public interest--a lot of buzz. There is no buzz here.”

Lottery officials are all too aware of that. A new lottery director was named about six months ago. Since then, virtually every lottery game has been modified so that there are more winners. And to encourage more players, the lottery is pushing retailers, who previously limited cash prizes to $99, to pay cash to customers for winning tickets worth up to $599.

But it will be an uphill battle to lure back business. Sales are expected to plummet to less than $1.5 billion this year, compared to $2.6 billion just two years ago. Many regular customers were turned off in 1990 when the lottery made it more difficult to win the Super Lotto jackpot. Although the odds have since improved, they are still not as good as they were.

Lottery officials also point out that the recession has generally hurt state lotteries nationwide.