Hey gang, let's put on a show!

If you never saw Spanky and Our Gang on TBS reruns, you might not be familiar with the above line.

It's one the little tykes would use when they were trying be all grown-up and Hollywood 'n stuff. It was mildly cute to watch them cobble together stage lights out of rusty old coffee cans. Petey the spotted-eyed dog would patiently sit in his Director's Chair, a ratty old beret perched on top of his head. They made stages out of orange crates and curtains from burlap sacks. And, of course, they sold tickets, usually accepting frogs or cool rocks as legal tender. Ha-ha. Hee-hee.

When grown-ups do it, it's just sad.

Winston-Salem Journal

Get used to it - you'll see it a lot in the coming years.

The N.C. Lottery Commission adopted a new logo and picked a new ad agency for the state lottery yesterday - but not before some members expressed a sense that the commission is moving too quickly on some of its decisions.

"Folks, let's spend the time we need to spend to do it right," urged Max Cogburn, a former administrative-law judge from Asheville who sits on the commission.

Lottery officials first set April 5 as the date to begin selling the first scratch-off tickets and then moved it up to March 30. In the meantime, they are faced with a lawsuit challenging whether legislators followed correct producers when they adopted the lottery last year.

At a commission meeting last week, Tom Shaheen, the lottery's executive director, presented a proposed logo with a flourish, removing a sheet from a logo perched on an easel - but that clearly puzzled some commissioners.

The horror. And what was under that sheet?



Tadaa! Here's more from the Journal:

Officials later discovered that the lottery staff came up with the initial [fireworks] design using clip art that did not clear trademark protections. So they scrapped it and came up with the new design in yellow, green and blue that includes the mountains and a lighthouse. "The logo is symbolic of the state of North Carolina," said Shaheen, who arrived recently as the former director of the New Mexico lottery. "If somebody's standing 50 to 100 feet away and they see it, they know that lottery tickets are probably on sale in that store."

"Probably on sale," huh? Maybe not. Maybe they're just using the POP stickers to cover up a crack in the store window. While Shaheen says he's done this before, the others... maybe not.

Linda Carlisle, a member from Greensboro, said that the logo avoids inappropriate symbols that dwell on luck - such as the crossed fingers of Virginia's "V" logo. But Carlisle said that the image, which could be the lottery's symbol for the next 20 years, should subliminally emphasize that money raised by the lottery will go to education, perhaps with the image of stars or fireworks popping from a book.

Stars. Fireworks. Yeah, that's what I get out of The Canterbury Tales. We all know "Linda Carlisle", even if we don't know Linda Carlisle. "Inappropriate symbols that dwell on luck." Yes, that's it. We wouldn't want to give the wrong impression that this is a lottery, something vaguely to do with chance and the L-word that dare not speak its name. That would encourage--what? So, it's an Education lottery. We get it. The blunt and brutal instrument of taxation to pay for an educated public citizenry is just too much to bear. So let's gamble trust the free market. It's so much more democratic because you can opt in, or out. And hey, didn't George Washington use a lottery to fund and build canals n stuff? Didn't Ben Franklin say a lottery was preferable to taxation? Goodness gracious, yes! This isn't something for nothing or get-rich-quickism! It's part of a long noble tradition. Bring on the fireworks. More clip art please!

Give them 2 years of the white gloves and parlour talk. Then they get serious...



[828kb .mov]

Update: No the above spot isn't NC Lotto's, I just kludged it up in iMovie. It's part of a campaign pitch I concepted ooo-ons ago when Georgia was starting their lottery. (Ouch, that was Pre-Atlanta Olympics)

Hat tip to Christina at incite-by-design