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The Heart and Stroke Foundation of Ontario has upped its annual fundraising ante with a calendar lottery.
The foundation has run its lottery for the past 14 years, but this time, instead of paying $100 a ticket for the chance to win lots of cash, cars or luxury homes, consumers who purchase a $25 ticket have a chance to win one of 365 daily cash prizes of $5,000.
Many large charitable organizations run lotteries as an awareness and engagement tool, using big-ticket prizes to encourage consumers to pay for a high-priced ticket.
Petra Scott, senior marketing manager lottery, for the organization, said it conducted extensive research and found that while consumers love lotteries, ticket price point is an issue.
“The other insight that we got is people don’t want to live like celebrities, so they are not looking to win millions of dollars,” she says. “What we heard back from our consumers was ‘I would like to live a little more, enjoy life a little more,’ and that’s what we are hoping this does.”
In addition to the daily draw for $5,000, there will be draws for $10,000 every Friday, monthly draws for $100,000, 12 bonus holiday jackpots of $30,000 each and an early bird cash prize of $250,000.
Scott said the demographics for this lottery tend to range in age from 35 to 50, a little younger than the typical 55- to 70-year-old that bought the more expensive tickets for past lotteries.
Purchasers also receive a calendar that supports the foundation’s awareness mission with health tips, recipes and information on the draws. “We have printed 800,000 calendars and research has told us that we should raise a couple of million dollars in the first year, but longer term, we should be in the $7 million range,” says Scott.
Heart and Stroke has a $2 million marketing budget to support the campaign and is running television, radio and print ads by OgilvyOne Worldwide with media handled by Mindshare. Direct mail and social media will play a role as well.
The campaign kicked off earlier this week with a flash mob performance of “Calendar Girls” by Neil Sedaka.
