Hoosier Lottery taking bids for ad buyer and planner

Eight firms are bidding to be the media-buying and planning-services agency for the Hoosier Lottery, the agency said Thursday.

The lottery is seeking a firm to serve as its media-buying and planning agency for local and cable television, print, radio, Internet, mobile and billboard advertising.

Lottery officials anticipate annual billings on the account of $8 million to $10 million.

The requests for bid calls for the agency to handle about 20 ad campaigns per year with media budgets ranging from $100,000 to $1.2 million.

Bids to a request for proposals that went out Oct. 21 were due Nov. 13, and lottery officials hope to notify finalists Wednesday.

Finalists will be asked to give a presentation and cost proposal to Lottery officials on Jan. 11, and a winner—or winners—of the bid will be notified by Jan. 25, said lottery spokeswoman Courtney Arango.

The winning agency’s contract will begin Feb. 8 and run through June 30, 2017.

“We’ve had a good amount of interest in this [contract],” Arango said.

The firm that currently holds the contract is OMD Worldwide, a division of New York-based Omnicom Media Group.

Lottery officials declined to say if OMD bid again for the job, and OMD officials could not be reached for comment.
 
Though the Hoosier Lottery ad contract isn’t as big as it used to be before lottery officials took some work in-house and divided the deal into two parts, local media buyers still said the contract currently up for bid could generate annual revenue in the low six-figures for the winning agency.

“At one point, the Hoosier Lottery deal was the biggest ad account in the state,” said Bruce Bryant, whose firm, Promotus Advertising, formerly worked on the account. “It’s $8 million or so in billings. It’s the Hoosier Lottery. It’s still tempting, but this contract doesn’t get the attention of the state’s biggest agencies like it used to.”

Promotus Advertising is not bidding on the latest contract.

Milwaukee-based Mortenson Safar Kim has the Hoosier Lottery’s creative contract. That deal runs through mid-2018.

Hoosier Lottery officials signed a 15-year contract in October, 2012 with private manager Gtech Indiana, a subsidiary of the Italian firm Lottomatica.

The winning ad agency will sign its deal with Gtech Indiana.

Since the Hoosier Lottery still handles some public relations, promotions and marketing in-house, Arango said “it’s a combination effort” between the ad agency, Gtech and lottery officials.