ialottery blog

This Just In! We’ve Announced the Winners in ‘Super Tech’

Our holiday promotion has set records again this year, and we’ve got the “Super Tech” winners to announce today! 

You’ll likely remember that way back in September (when all of us were groaning about the upcoming cold weather), we launched our third technology-based holiday promotion. It was called “Super Tech” this time around and it came with a few new twists.

Your response just blew us away! Iowa Lottery players entered more than 2.1 million non-winning holiday tickets into the Super Tech promotion! That’s the most entries we’ve ever received in a web-based promotion, and it’s all thanks to you!

Yesterday we held the drawing to determine the 250 winners of the cool techie prizes that were offered in Super Tech and also selected the winners of the promotion’s six Super Prize packages.

Congrats to the Super Prize package winners:
•    Rob Dahlgaard, Waterloo
•    Chris Derrickson, Ruthven
•    Anne Erickson, Fort Dodge
•    Darell Failor, Marion
•    William James, Saint Charles
•    Brad Seward, Clinton

Each of them will receive a Sony® BRAVIA® 46-inch HDTV, Sony® NEX-C3 digital camera, Sony® Tablet™ S (16GB), Sony® PlayStation® 3 (160GB), Sony® 3D Blu-ray Disc™ home theater system and $2,000 cash. State taxes for the prize package also will be paid.

You can check out the complete list of all the Super Tech prize winners on our website.

We’d better get to work now to see what we can come up with for the 2012 holiday season. Two million entries will be hard to beat!

He’s Going Tailgating in Style!

Today we had the opportunity to give a New Hampton man one of the biggest birthday gifts ever.

Jeff Weigel was the grand-prize winner in our “Great State Tailgate” promotion, so we decided since today is his 51st birthday, we’d just deliver it to him.

We trekked out to Jeff’s place of business in New Hampton, a car dealership called K&W Motors. He rushed out the front door to greet us and check out his tailgate trailer, part of a package valued at more than $22,000.

Jeff wasn’t the only big winner in yesterday’s drawing. Five other lucky players won prizes of $1,000 each. You guys entered more than 94,000 tickets in this promotion. Way to go!

We tricked out Jeff’s trailer with balloon bouquets and streamers when we took it to him. He’ll also be getting a $2,000 cash prize so he can customize the artwork on the outside of the trailer. As a lifelong Iowa fan, he said he plans to outfit it for the Hawkeyes. 
           
  The tailgate trailer came fully equipped with:
•    42-inch LCD HDTV with DirecTV® receiver and HD auto satellite antenna
•    SONY® theater system with iPOD® Direct Connect
•    Hitch-mounted tailgating gas grill and 54-qt. cooler on full slide system
•    1000W portable generator
•    30 AMP electrical panel box
•    $2,000 cash for customizing the trailer, for travel and spending money.

Congrats, Jeff! And to see if you were one of the winners of a $1,000 cash prize, check out our website.

You can ‘Super Tech’ the Halls This Year!

That’s right; our techie holiday promotion is back for its third year running, but with a twist! We had over one million entries in our “Tech The Halls” promotions in 2009 and 2010 combined, so we’re bringing you a bigger, better “Super Tech” this season!

Players who enter Super Tech have a chance at winning one of more than 250 prizes of Sony® electronics, including six Super Prize packages worth more than $4,900 each!

You can enter through noon Jan. 23 and the drawing is set for Jan. 24. As usual, results will be posted on our website.

There are 10 holiday tickets you can enter in the Super Tech promotion through your VIP Club account and different prizes are involved for different tickets. 

Here are the tickets you can enter and the prizes you can win:

•    Enter non-winning $1 Snow Bank or Winter Bucks for chance to win one of 50 Sony® portable DVD players

•    Enter non-winning $2 Lucky Elves Bingo, Betty Boop™ or Santa Games Doubler for a chance to win one of 50 Sony® 3D Bloggie® HD cameras

•    Enter non-winning $3 Merry Crossword or Sparkling Winnings for a chance to win one of 50 Sony® PlayStation® 3 packages (160GB)

•    Enter non-winning $5 Holiday Bonus Crossword and Holiday Wishes for a chance to win one of 50 Sony® Tablet™ S (16GB) prizes

•    Enter non-winning $10 Holiday Countdown for a chance to win one of 50 Sony® BRAVIA® 32-inch HDTVs!

And, if you enter one of each of the 10 holiday scratch tickets, you’ll automatically receive an entry at the Super Prize level. Each Super Prize package includes all of the following electronic prizes plus $2,000 cash: Sony® BRAVIA® 46-inch HDTV, Sony® NEX-C3 digital camera, Sony® Tablet™ S (16GB), Sony® PlayStation® 3 (160GB) and Sony® 3D Blu-ray Disc™ home theater system. State withholding taxes for the prize package also will be paid.
    
All holiday tickets entered into the Super Tech promotion also will earn players “Points For Prizes™” that can be used in the Iowa Lottery’s VIP Club store.

 © 2011 King Features Syndicate, Inc./Fleischer Studios, Inc.
™Hearst Holdings, Inc./Fleischer Studios, Inc. www.bettyboop.com and www.bettyboopstore.com
Copyright © 2011 Sony Electronics Inc. All Rights Reserved.
®Sony products, marks and logos are registered trademarks of Sony Inc. and are used with permission.

Thanks to You, We’re Winning Awards!

This week was the North American Association of State and Provincial Lotteries (NASPL) 2011 conference, and we walked out with a few awards!

Thanks in part to all you blog readers, I received the Powers Award for Public Relations through Social Media. Powers Awards are presented in recognition of the significant contributions lottery and vendor employees have made to the lottery world. These awards are named in honor of the late Edward J. Powers, the “Father of U.S. Lotteries.” The Iowa Lottery and I appreciate your support!

Another thing to celebrate: The lottery’s “Rock of Ages” scratch ticket was named one of the top three instant tickets of the year! You probably remember our $2 scratch ticket and the corresponding Rock of Ages promotion. We gave away Broadway show tickets, signed guitars and an all-expenses-paid trip to New York City for two.

The ticket was actually designed right here at Lottery headquarters by one of our own staff. You can bet she’s really proud of the ticket now! We did our best to make the promotion a rockin’ good time, and it seems like it worked.

Thanks to all of you for making our success possible!

A Fun Time in the Big Apple

Six months after the promotion ended, our players are still rockin’ it to the “Rock of Ages” show!

This spring, we launched a ticket and promotion around the hit Broadway show, Rock of Ages. We gave away a ton of totally rad prizes and had fun with all the 80s lingo. It was a real trip down memory lane for a lot of us!

The grand prize in the Rock of Ages drawing was an all-expenses paid trip to see the show on Broadway in New York. Our winner, Kevin Stewart of Des Moines, has kept us informed along the way about his plans and excitement for the trip.

Kevin just got back from his trip, and was cool enough to share his photos with us on his blog. He said he had an awesome time and hopes to see the show again!

Is It That Time of the Year Already?

Ready or not, the holidays are coming! We kicked off the holiday season with our third tech-themed holiday promotion. This year, we’re calling it Super Tech; and we’re giving away some super prizes.

Since we changed things up a bit, we have a lot of information to dole out to our players about Super Tech, and we’re doing our best to make things as simple as we can. You can brush up on all the information on our website.

Last week, we got our first really great question about the promotion. One of you reached out to us via email and asked, “I entered ten holiday tickets into the Super Tech promotion using my VIP Club account, but I don’t have any entries into the Super Prize. Why?”

That IS a great question. And here’s the answer: You need to enter one of each of the 10 holiday tickets available this holiday season to receive one eligible entry for the Super Prize. Remember, our holiday tickets are hitting retailers in waves this season, but all 10 tickets will be available by the end of October.

If you’ve got questions about the Super Tech promotion, or anything for that matter, send them our way! You can submit questions here on the blog, via Twitter or Facebook, or through our email address, wmaster@ialottery.com.

Have fun ‘Super Teching’ the halls this season!

Why Are There Different Points For The Same Game?

We just got a great VIP Club question that I want to share with you here because it’s something a lot of folks may be wondering about.

The issue has to do with the points you receive when you enter nonwinning scratch tickets in our VIP Club. One of our Club members sent us this question: “Why are the points given on the same type of scratch ticket different?”

The player is right: You don’t get the same number of points from ticket to ticket in our VIP Club, and that’s exactly how it’s supposed to work. Let’s take our “Crossword” game as an example, since it’s always one of the top tickets entered in our club. 

When you enter your Crossword ticket in the Club, the points you get will vary from entry to entry. One time you might get 20 points for your ticket and the next time you might get 35 points. We designed the process to work that way to keep things interesting. That way, it’s a surprise every time you enter a ticket!

Another question we’ve gotten has to do with those games where you get an entry into a promotion AND points in our club. “Great State Tailgate” is the current game where that applies. When you enter a Great State Tailgate ticket in our VIP Club, you get an entry into our promotion drawing for the tailgate trailer we’re giving away and you get the points for that ticket. You don’t have to do anything to get both options – it’s an automatic process built into our system.

Great questions, keep ‘em coming!

We Had A Great Time At The Fair!

Thank you to everyone who came to see us this weekend at the Clay County Fair! The lottery had a booth Friday night during the Fair’s preview night. And while we were there, we gave away two sets of tickets to the Alan Jackson concert on the Fair’s final night (Sunday, Sept. 18).

Two local folks went home happy winners – we drew Tracy Wilkerson of Spencer as the winner of the first set of tickets and Karen Eickhoff of Spencer as the second winner. Both women got two tickets to the concert along with admission tickets to the Fair on us.  

It was a gorgeous evening in Spencer and a perfect night to be at the Fair! In the winner’s photo, you’ll see (left to right): me (Mary Neubauer), Tracy Wilkerson, Karen Eickhoff, and Arnie Woerdehoff, the manager of our Storm Lake office.

If you didn’t see us at the Fair, don’t worry, there are lots of other chances to see the lottery out and about at events this fall. Click here for the list of games we’ll be attending with our Great State Tailgate trailer!

They’re Headed For A Great Getaway!

Congratulations to the winners of our Great Iowa Getaway promotion!

We held the drawing to determine our trip winners yesterday and ended up with some lucky names from all across the state, as you’ll see below. 

These folks will be headed out to see the sights and sounds of Iowa! Congrats again to our winners, and thank you to everyone who plays the Iowa Lottery. 

•    Honey Creek Resort - Tiffany Delarme, Marshalltown
•    Ames Hilton Garden Inn/Boone Scenic Valley Railroad – Tim Messler, Des Moines
•    The Inn at Okoboji – Krystal Ahrens, Fostoria
•    King’s Point Waterpark Resort, Storm Lake – Glaine Coleman, Cedar Rapids
•    Frank Lloyd Wright Historic Park Inn, Mason City – Gary McKown Jr., Cedar Rapids
•    Hotel Julien Dubuque – David Yackle, Eagle Grove
•    Hotel Blackhawk, Davenport - Elizabeth Hansen, Cedar Falls
•    Harrah’s Casino Hotel, Council Bluffs – Daniel Cramer, Des Moines

It's Tailgate Mania!

It's almost college football season, and you know what that means - tailgating! We're turning one of sports fans' greatest pastimes into a smokin' promotion this year, called "Great State Tailgate."

Today we launched a brand new $2 scratch ticket, dubbed (appropriately) "Great State Tailgate." It has 13 top prizes of $10,000; but if you end up with a few non-winners, hang onto them!

We've partnered with three of Iowa's biggest schools - University of Iowa, University of Northern Iowa and Iowa State University - to bring you a second-chance promotion with a prize to set you up for the ultimate tailgating experience.

The grand prize in the promotion is a customizable, towable tailgate fully equipped with:

⇒ 42-inch LCD HDTV with a cable receiver and HD auto satellite antennae
⇒ name brand theater system with mp3 connectability
⇒ hitch-mounted tailgating gas grill and 54-qt. cooler on full slide system
⇒ 1000W portable generator
⇒ 30 AMP electrical panel box and much more!

The winner of the grand prize tailgate will also be able to customize the artwork on the outside of it to fit his/her specifications! So, if you're the big winner and you want it tricked out in your favorite team's colors, you can do that! Want a tailgate covered with pics of puppies and kittens? Feel free! It would all be up to you!

Along with the grand prize, we are also giving away five cash prizes of $1,000.

As a reminder, you'll need to sign up for our FREE VIP Club to enter. You have until noon on Tuesday, Dec. 6 to enter, and we'll hold a drawing on Dec. 8 to determine the winners.

Want to see the tailgate in person before we give it away? We're heading out to 11 home football games at Iowa, Northern Iowa and Iowa State give everyone a chance to check out what they could win! Visit our promotions page to see the dates of the games where we'll be.

And as a bonus, players can bring any Iowa Lottery ticket with them to the games for a chance to play our Wheel Spin game and win some cool Lottery and university merchandise. We'll see you there!