Lottery ad spending a waste of needed dollars

What do you suppose these expenditures might involve: $19,000 for beach towels, $6,000 for lip balm, $7,500 for beverage coozies and $10,000 for battery-powered mini-fans?

Was it Ben and J.Lo’s beach party? An Enron meeting at Ken Lay’s pool? Actually, these expenditures were made by an agency of state government: your S.C. lottery commission is at work.

Of course, these expenditures and others like them are merely symbolic of the much greater waste involved in overall lottery advertising. To his credit, Gov. Mark Sanford has both recognized this wasteful spending and proposed doing something about it.

Specifically, in his executive budget the governor points out the embarrassing use of state money for the purchase of lottery party favors (which are not even given to lottery players, but instead sent to reporters and politicians to curry favor and show how cute and harmless state-sponsored gambling is).

Better still, the governor addresses the big picture and big bucks involved in advertising the lottery on TV, radio, billboards, newspapers, etc. The state spends more than $7 million per year on that, real money even by government standards.

To put that figure in perspective, not only does the state of South Carolina not spend $7 million per year advertising any public health issue, it does not spend $7 million per year advertising all public health issues combined.

From traffic safety to drug abuse to neonatal care and all the rest, you can add up the money the state spends to communicate on public health issues, and the figure will be less than the amount the state spends urging its citizens to gamble.

Even more bizarre is that lottery advertising is done for no apparent reason. As the governor notes, research shows that lottery advertising has virtually no impact on lottery ticket sales.

Specifically, an independent study by highly respected Maritz Research found that only 5 percent of lottery players said they were influenced to play by TV spots, even fewer by radio, newspaper and billboard ads.

The study said the true factors that drive lottery ticket sales are (surprise) the size of the jackpot and news coverage about that figure and the winners. Of course, those things are free.

So what’s a state agency with $7 million burning a hole in its pocket to do? Apparently, spend it telling us how wonderful it is. Have you noticed how most lottery ads now don’t even bother promoting the games? Instead, they feature college students expressing their gratitude to the lottery for funding their education.

While that’s nice as far as it goes, to hear the ads you would think these students are getting full-ride scholarships as opposed to the partial amounts provided. Moreover, the bulk of lottery scholarship money goes to middle- and upper-class families whose kids get most of the Life and Palmetto Fellows scholarships ($104 million).

By contrast, a relative pittance ($6 million) of lottery money goes to the needs-based HOPE scholarships. This is doubly ironic: First, that amount is less than the lottery spends on advertising; second, it is lower-income groups that provide most the lottery’s revenue to begin with. The state acts as Robin Hood — in reverse.

Come to think of it, lottery backers did promise those “Georgia-style” full-ride lottery scholarships to everyone, didn’t they? I can’t imagine they would have misled us. Oh, well.

In any case, this image-polishing by the lottery commission would be analogous to the Highway Patrol spending millions to tell us how many motorists it assists instead of using the money to hire additional troopers.

But if the patrol or any other state agency did that, legislators would howl and the news media would have a field day. For whatever reason, the lottery continues to get a free pass from both groups. Not only is the lottery’s marketing budget not critically analyzed by those who should be exercising oversight, it seems not even to be noticed.

Indeed, I would speculate that before reading this column you had not seen or heard one word in the media or from your legislators about the governor’s proposal to cut lottery ad spending. Meanwhile, $7 million that is badly needed for other purposes continues to be spent each year on an ad campaign that is irrelevant and indefensible.

This is not a question of the wisdom of state-sponsored gambling, but rather a question of fiscal responsibility. While the people voted for the lottery, I don’t think they voted for wasting its proceeds.

By the way, if you didn’t get a lottery beach towel, maybe you’ll receive a lottery holiday ornament. The lottery commission spent $8,000 on those.

Mr. Fisher is president of Fisher Communications, a Columbia advertising and public relations firm.