Washington’s Lottery has deployed 50 LED signs from Carmanah Signs, headquartered in Calgary, Alberta, for a pilot test of electronic signage. The red LED signs-sized four inches tall and 14 inches wide-highlight Washington’s Mega Millions as well as in-state Lotto jackpots.
“We first saw the sign at the National Association of Convenience Store show last year,” said David Harrison, sales director, Washington’s Lottery. “We know from our research that updated jackpot signs create sales. We have struggled to get the retailers to keep the manual signs updated with every type of incentive possible. When we saw this solution, we knew it had to be great.”
For its test, the lottery worked with key high-volume accounts in supermarkets and convenience store trade styles. “We asked our sales reps to ID those locations,” said Denise Furman, merchandising and promotions coordinator at Washington’s Lottery.
“The key benefit we saw to signs is the automatic update feature from our GTECH terminals,” said Harrison. “The Carmanah signs are hooked directly into our GTECH Altura terminals sp the jackpot values are automatically updated.”
Furman said the wireless communications interface allows the lottery to experiment with the location of the electronic signage to maximize viewing. “We can place the signs wherever we need to in a retailer’s store,” said Furman. “For example, you can have the terminal inside the c-store at the sales counter but you can put the jackpot sign in the window where customers can see it.”
The lottery would like to expand the number of outlets with the signs. “Optimistically we see putting them in all our accounts, especially ones which do a significant amount of draw game sales,” said Harrison. “I have asked our research department with the help of GTECH to determine what the impact is in terms of sales at these test location with the LED signs. Theoretically if you could get a small increase in sales at an account with this LED sign, it will pay for itself in short order.”