The clever casino gimmicks you didn’t even know you were falling for.
Every industrious business uses marketing tactics to attract clients, sell products, and/or promote their services to a target clientele. We see and hear commercials every day – on television, on the radio, on our phones, billboards, etc. But for some industries, the majority of marketing occurs not over myriad media channels, but within the business itself. The most notable of these are casinos. You may not realize it but, if you’ve ever been to a casino gambling hall, you’ve already experienced some of these marketing tactics. Every casino uses them. From the small-town locals casinos, to the mega-gambling resorts of Las Vegas and Macau – they all use the same methods. And it’s not just about getting players in the doors. That’s the easy part. It’s about keeping them there. |
#1 Casino Chips: The Biggest Gimmick of All
Of all the casino gimmicks out there today, the use of chips is the most coercive of them all. Everyone knows those chips represent cash value, but once we exchange actual money for hard, round plastic, our brain tells us otherwise. We consider chips to be money already spent. Thus losing them doesn’t have the same impact on us as losing real cash.
#2 The Absence of Time
Take a look around, and you’ll find that there are no clocks in a casino. There aren’t any windows either. If you can’t see or perceive the time of day, you will never feel an urgency to get back to life outside the casino.
#3 Those Gaudy Carpets
It would seem casinos have the worst interior decorators on the planet! Why are the carpets so gawd-awful ugly? So many bright colors all swirled together in mind-stabbing patterns; they paid good money for that? Yes they did, and here’s why. Those gawdy patterns are meant to assault your brain so that you will not look at them. They want your eyes up, looking at the games around you, absorbing the ambiance they’ve created with flashing and chiming slot machines. Which brings us to…
#4 So Many Lights & Sounds
All those flashing lights will direct you straight to where the casinos want you to be – the slot machines. Once you’re anywhere near them, you’ll notice their incessant chiming. It’s the same chime you hear when a machine wins. When a game is not in use, it runs through its demo play, which continuously makes the same winning sound effects – repetitive dings followed by canned coins falling from a virtual hopper. this creates the illusion that many people are winning, and makes us feel like we can win too.
#5 Free Booze for Players
Not all casinos give out free alcohol. It’s actually illegal in Canadian casinos. But in major gambling resort cities, it’s the oldest trick in the book. Give them free alcohol, and not only will they stay to get more free booze, they’ll be a lot more liberal with their spending.
#6 Online Casinos Do it Too
An online casino can’t give out free alcohol, and they don’t have carpets, but they do use much the same techniques as land-based casinos. They use high-energy music and slot machine sound effects. They use digital casino chips and display account balances as credits, rather than cash.
Online casinos are also know to promote far larger bonuses to new and existing members. This is one casino gimmick we can actually appreciate. No land-based casino will trump up your first chip exchange with a 200% bonus or more, but online casinos do it all the time. It’s not just free to keep, though. They attach hefty wagering requirements so that a player would have to get extremely lucky to keep any of that money, but it does afford a lot more entertainment bang for your buck.
