Loto-Quebec's digital signage drives lottery ticket sales

October 27, 2007 by Dave Haynes

POPAI put on a “POPAI University On The Road” session in Montreal the other day, and because I was in town, I was able to sit in and have a listen.

There were three good speakers, but the most relevant for me was Francois Bourdeau of Loto-Quebec, a communication specialist there and the very enthusiastic guy behind Loto-Quebec’s digital signage efforts to date.

Bourdeau laid out how the corporation, which has more than 8,000 points of sale around La Belle Province, started looking at the opportunity three years ago and building a strategy. They knew they were going to be changing out their aging lottery ticket machines for new ones with more bells and whistles and much faster printers, and there was an opportunity to add a screen to each of those.

They also wanted to spray the territory, so to speak, and make a claim on prime visual space in thousands of drug and convenience stores where other powerful brands also covet space.

They have now put out 350 screens, covering four retail verticals and kiosks. More than two-thirds of people surveyed liked the screens and almost all agreed the screens were “a positive element” in the retail environment.

More to the point, Bourdeau showed some numberless graphs that clearly indicated the screens were helping move the sales needle. He wouldn’t say how much, but did indicate it was several percentage points. Given the lottery business is a mature one, in which sales have all but flattened out, Bourdeau termed the sales impact as “huge” for the lottery corp.

The plan is to eventually have 19 inch screens at most or all sales locations.