Thursday, June 10, 2010

Press Release Party!

So my internship is a little bit different. I'm working as a marketing/advertising/PR intern at the Montana Lottery, which is actually part of the state government if you didn't know. So far (I started May 20) its been pretty slow but I have done a few cool things. Every time a winner comes into the headquarters the other interns and I interview the person and write up a press release that is sent out to a list of newspapers and stations in Montana. The week after I had sent out my first release I checked my email to find that Shaun Rainey had received it at his news station! So for those of you working in MT this summer, you should be getting a lot of press releases from me! The biggest winner we've had so far was a $200,000 Powerball winner from Bozeman and today we had a $190,000 Montana Cash winner from Great Falls who was so funny. He and his wife are both in their eighties so he told us he plans on spending all his winnings instead of saving any or sharing it because "there's not much time left." Actually, that sounds really morbid now that I've typed it out but it was funny at the time....maybe you had to be there.

For the marketing/advertising side of the job I got to sit in on a meeting with our ad agency Citrus and discuss ad campaign choices the Lottery will be starting soon. All I'm going to say is that if you see the commercial that uses the word 'bling' in it I fought hard to get that idea thrown out but the people in charge thought it was a fun word to use. Don't blame me for how annoying that commercial will be.

And lastly we interns had to design a marketing campaign to encourage people to play the game 10 Spot and the head of marketing really liked my idea so now there will be posters sent out to every Lottery retailer in Montana with copy that I wrote! I was excited, I'm just bummed they wouldn't give me a crack at the whole graphic design part!

I hope everyone is getting off to a good start for the summer!

-Kaelyn

2 comments:

University of Montana Radio-Television Department said...

Keep working hard and finding out what everyone in the office does. Don't just be happy with your press releases--see everything and learn as much as you can. Hope you're having fun.
ray

Sarah Grant said...

Chisel (where I'm interning) is actually doing the commercial for Montana Lottery this week! We've been working with Citrus. Small world. I'm hoping I get to help on the shoot!