MAGAZINE OF THE EUROPEAN LOTTERIES, 2011, SEPTEMBER ...
MAGAZINE OF THE EUROPEAN LOTTERIES, 2011, SEPTEMBER ...
MAGAZINE OF THE EUROPEAN LOTTERIES, 2011, SEPTEMBER ...
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ich the experiences with the brands going from passive<br />
to interactive, becoming more entertaining and more inclusive.<br />
Played daily, they are connected to the intimate<br />
space of our players, their Social Graph, their friends. A<br />
Fan page that is well thought out and nicely animated<br />
consolidates the image of the brand, increases its sympathy<br />
asset, creates a daily link with its fans and reveals its<br />
natural ambassadors.<br />
But a presence on Social Media is also a very fast and efficient<br />
way to manage consumers’ satisfaction. Very often,<br />
during moments of preoccupation, Social Media are the<br />
first platform to release the information either through<br />
our channels or not. Ensuring an attentive and reactive<br />
management of the comments allows us to detect any<br />
incident and handle it very quickly. It’s like creating an<br />
abridgment between our brands and our players, which<br />
emphasises the positive feelings of our players. It is presenting<br />
numerous public “thank you” and pushing the<br />
players’ satisfaction out of the confined individual space<br />
to produce a public, viral and repetitive expression of enthusiasm.<br />
The last months have been filled with success and have<br />
been a learning experience.<br />
- Social Media are no magic bullets to reach younger<br />
players. These media work across generations, connecting<br />
our games to our audiences both young and<br />
mature. Forget about any miracle to rejuvenate an audience<br />
but dare imagine a clear success with the 30-50<br />
years old age group too.<br />
- Fans do not find us by themselves. A fan base is built<br />
upon a targeted communication and results in unprecedented<br />
interactive experiences (e.g. create a “Dream<br />
List” through an e-shopping interface for the launch of<br />
the Euro Millions page) and/or nice incentives (e.g. win<br />
a romantic trip, festivals tickets, donations to a charity,<br />
etc.). Facebook members are intensely courted. Gaining<br />
their attention must be earned and the same goes<br />
when it comes to retention.<br />
- Is your agency handling the advertising campaigns on<br />
Facebook perfectly? They are key factors for visibility<br />
and success on Facebook. And per Facebook’s own recognition,<br />
the digital agencies’ lack of experience in this<br />
field often compromises the results of the brands. Mastering<br />
the commercial environment of Facebook warrants<br />
in turn a precious response by Facebook’s teams<br />
(local antenna or Facebook Europe) when you fall victim<br />
to a bug.<br />
- Social Media, global media, strictly local opportunities.<br />
If access to Facebook, Twitter and other social media<br />
works for most of the brands without any restriction<br />
per countries, the Lotteries face challenges due to their<br />
territoriality, in a context where their brand names are<br />
often and paradoxically local namesakes in other countries.<br />
Thus beware of the tempting promises of the latest<br />
commercial opportunities tied to Facebook : Some<br />
are not implementable when a country filter is mandatory<br />
for a Fan page, as it is for all Lotteries. Getting to<br />
know the specific Facebook policies for Lotteries allows<br />
avoiding mishaps into impossible projects. Also, it is<br />
extremely difficult to track down many of the conversations<br />
on the local brands, when their names are slightly<br />
similar to those in neighbouring countries or when<br />
they are marketed in other countries. To find out what<br />
is said in a specific territory about well-known brands<br />
LOTTERY & TECHNOLOGY<br />
such as Lotto or Euro Millions is a definite challenge.<br />
And today’s online watch or e-reputation solutions are<br />
rarely successful at doing so. These are the limitations<br />
not to be ignored.<br />
- Social Media are never turned off. Insulting comments<br />
on a Sunday, a bug one evening at 10 pm … For certain<br />
brands, Sunday is even the day where fans are the most<br />
active. It is impossible to think of a Facebook page without<br />
an alert system and a manned management that is<br />
operational 7 days a week and after office hours.<br />
- Do you really know what they say about you? Managing<br />
Social Media is a whole application that cannot be<br />
comprehended without a careful daily listening and<br />
a reaction to players’ conversations when necessary.<br />
The listening effort must become more refined to find<br />
the proper tools, the correct key words adapted to the<br />
linguistic peculiarities we face (e.g. an efficient tool in<br />
French might not sound the same way in Dutch) and<br />
needs to be wide spread (Twitter, blogs, Facebook, forums,<br />
Google+ and more…), with the knowledge of the<br />
limitation that a monitoring may never be totally complete.<br />
Once under control, Social Media can deliver<br />
formidable opportunities.<br />
15 NEWS 37 <strong>SEPTEMBER</strong> <strong>2011</strong>