Long ago, in our distant past, probably around 60-70 years ago, some ingenious man or woman had an epiphany. That person’s life must have been a perfect storm leading up to that moment. A real dance around the moral high grounds of not exploiting human tendencies to gamble and providing people with a fun time. It’s, literally, all fun and games until you start marketing it as a business.
That is, kind of, how our material capitalistic world works. We take fun things that have a targeted audience, invest, manage and advertise our venture causing our customer base to increase, our market to grow, and finally our investment to repay itself. Nowhere has this been more prevalent than in the gambling industry, but I’m getting ahead of myself. Let me start over, from the beginning.
On March 19, 1931, a little ripple was caused in our timeline. That day, a butterfly flapped its wings and created a hurricane. What happened on this date, you may ask? Well, Phil Tobin introduced legislation to permit “wide open” gambling in Nevada. This decision caused an opportunity to be presented. Unfortunately, the wrong people invested in this market so it was stained, but nonetheless, it was a huge market.
When the Nevada State Commission legalized gambling, it opened the doors for gamblers everywhere, to come and conquer and give Nevada’s casinos a run for their money. The biggest direct product of this legislation was, by far, Las Vegas. Las Vegas was built on bricks of casino chips. It was, probably, for all the wrong reasons but it’s hard to argue with the results. One of the biggest markets in the world. An iconic place on earth built for a singular purpose: to have fun and gamble. There is a reason why I am taking Las Vegas, in particular, as an example of the power that is held in the hands of the gambling industry.
More than half of a million people live in Vegas and every one person of that population is, directly or indirectly, living and surviving because of the gambling market. When Phil Tobin passed that bill, he, inadvertently, caused the creation of one of the most profitable cities in the world.
Think of it like Disneyland, but for adults. And the magic of Las Vegas is, that it doesn’t even have to be marketed. Through movie culture and the rise of the internet, Las Vegas has popped up in every corner of the world, at one time or another. So, Phil Tobin legalizes gambling in the State of Nevada and, sure enough, here come the New York mobsters that have been operating in underground casinos for decades.
They buy most of the land there, build huge hotels and casinos, and create a market that they could not comprehend. To top it all off, because we humans are a very logical kind, the fact that the casinos were owned by mobsters kinda interested us. It was all covered in mystique. Everybody just had to try it.
That is dear reader, marketing 101. Create a product that has its own aura, its own personality. A product where people are drawn in because of the product, and not the marketing.
Now, everything that I said up to this point, is from a point-of-view of a person who is a bystander.
In my head, it’s all mobsters and fun and James Bond-like people gambling for stakes money can’t buy. That is not the reality of the gambling industry. Imagine working at a hotel that is “booked” all year round. Every day it seems like you have more customers than yesterday. The market is constantly growing and you have to invest to build more hotels to have more capacity to have more guests to grow the market more and it just keeps getting bigger and bigger. And how do they grow the market you may ask?
THE TRUE MARKETING 101 OF CASINOS
This is pretty straightforward. We live in a time where data is pretty much worth its weight in gold. People like to hang out with people who are more like them than not, so by that logic, people who gamble are more likely to socialize with other gamblers. One of the tactics of casino marketing is, that people who use casino wi-fi are, whenever they send a cute picture or text something nice about the casino to someone, that person becomes a potential customer.
Keep in mind, that casinos are in the money business, and they understand that sending somebody a voucher for 20$ in the mail is probably a great way to hook them. But imagine the trade that you are making. You are getting a 20$ voucher, that you can only spend in a casino so you are probably going to :
- Get something to eat
- Gamble with that money
Either way, the casino wins. Even if you walk in and out in under a minute to grab some chicken wings and something to drink, if by chance your wi-fi was on, they get some of your data, they get new customers, they expand, they grow. There is an allure to gambling that casinos are aware of, so they play smart about it.
They don’t bombard us with advertisements and try to stay in the public eye. No, they play it cool. They send you a voucher every year, and chances are, you go, you gamble with the voucher, you gamble with your own money. They get the voucher back, they get your money, and they get your data. Like a real mobster would do it.