hi listers

last october the spanish lottery filmed their new tv commercials here in
new york city.
i played the  lottery salesman in the commercial.  it was a lavish
production.  i had lunch with the dancers for the spot and they all said
that the production values for the commercial were far above standard
spots.
i spent two days filming and had a blast.

this article just reminded me to get a copy of the commercial since i have
never seen it since it only shows in spain.

pete


On Fri, 25 Feb 2005, Mark Senk wrote:

> I found this old article and wanted to share it with the list.
> www.once.es is the group's website (in Spanish)
>
>
>
> SPANISH BLIND GROUP THRIVES ON LARGESS OF LOTTERY
>
> By: CIARAN GILES
>
> Editor's Note: The following article is re-printed from the Associated
> Press, May 29, 2000.
>
> MADRID, Spain (AP) - The Spanish Civil War killed and maimed hundreds of
> thousands of soldiers and civilians and left much of Spain in ruins.
> Yet, for one disabled group, the war's legacy has had advantages.
>
> No one knows how many people were blinded in the 1936-39 conflict, but
> eager to rid himself of the problem, dictator Francisco Franco ordered
> them to form a national organization and take care of themselves. To
> encourage them,
> he granted the right to create a national lottery. Six decades later,
> with Franco long dead and democracy fully restored, the National
> Organization of
> Blind Spaniards has blossomed into one of Spain's most successful
> businesses and one of the world's most dynamic disabled support groups.
>
> "There's no doubt about it, if you're going to be blind, be Spanish,"
> quips Miguel Callejas, a blind man who has sold lottery tickets the past
> 28 years for ONCE, the Spanish acronym for the organization. Lottery
> drawings,
> staged every day except Saturday, bring in the equivalent of $2.3
> billion a year.  Profits enable the organization to guarantee employment
> for nearly all
> of Spain's 60,000 blind.
>
> "I know of nothing even comparable to the ONCE in the entire world,"
> said Edwin Vaughan, a blind sociology professor at the University of
> Missouri who has studied how countries view and treat blind people. "In
> nearly every
> country, the United States included, blindness is associated with
> begging and the blind are virtually totally dependent on welfare
> assistance with employment
> opportunities severely limited," he said. "In Spain, it's the opposite."
>
> In the United States, unemployment among the blind rarely falls below 70
> percent, while in Spain, it's hardly ever above 5 percent, Vaughan said.
> The European Blind Union says its latest figures, for 1995, showed that
> out of 41,000
> blind adults available for work in Germany, only 9,000 had a job. In
> France, only 7,000 of the 18,000 working age blind were employed. ONCE
> receives no
> government subsidy and its board is independent and elected every four
> years by its members, all blind or sight-impaired. The growth of the
> lottery allowed
> ONCE to gradually build up a business empire with stakes in everything
> from hotels to construction. In the 1980s, it branched into the media,
> founding a
> private national TV channel, a national daily newspaper and a popular
> radio chain. But sensing expansion was tarnishing its more-important
> image as a
> caring group for the disabled, ONCE sold off its principal media
> holdings -- at a profit.
> Nowadays, ONCE is as Spanish as bullfighting, sidewalk cafes and soccer.
> Vendors wearing dark glasses and carrying canes pace the streets in
> nearly every village, barking out, "Lucky numbers for today!" In the
> cities, single
> vendors sit in enclosed ONCE kiosks, selling tickets through glass
> windows.
>
> The lottery has thrived not only because Spaniards love to gamble, but
> because of clever marketing and slick advertising. Midweek coupons sell
> for 200 pesetas($1.25), offering a chance at 500 daily top prizes of 5
> million
> pesetas ($33,000) each and thousands of smaller winnings. The No. 1
> prize for the Sunday lottery pays $58,000 a year for 25 years.
>
> Totally independent since 1982, ONCE plows its profits into serving its
> members. It runs Europe's biggest guide dog school, a factory whose
> products include canes, children's Braille sets and portable
> speech-activated computers
> and social rehabilitation centers. It also works with other companies,
> such as Microsoft, to develop systems and technical innovations for the
> blind. On a more
> public level, ONCE runs a touch-and-feel art Museum for the Blind. In
> 1998, it organized an international competition in Madrid for blind
> athletes. In recent
> years, ONCE has supported projects for the blind abroad, including in
> several Latin American nations, notably Chile and Argentina.
>
> ONCE estimates there are 150 million blind people in the world, but many
> poor countries do not keep records on who and where they are. "The
> ONCE's idea is that the blind should care for the blind. In most
> countries, nobody
> looks after them at all," said Rafael Mondaca, the organization's
> director of international relations. ONCE recognizes that even though it
> is private, it has a
> privileged position and the government could withdraw its lottery rights
> or grant licenses to other causes. "Fortunately, it wouldn't make
> business sense for the
> Spanish government to do so because it knows that if ONCE crumbled it
> would then be responsible for looking after the blind itself," said
> Pedro Zurrita,
> who heads the World Blind Organization, which is based in Madrid.
>
> "For the Civil War authorities, it was a load off their mind," he said.
> "Back then no one thought the lottery was ever going to be so
> successful. It's unlikely that any government would do it today."
>
>
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VICUG-L is the Visually Impaired Computer User Group List.
To join or leave the list, send a message to
[log in to unmask]  In the body of the message, simply type
"subscribe vicug-l" or "unsubscribe vicug-l" without the quotations.
 VICUG-L is archived on the World Wide Web at
http://maelstrom.stjohns.edu/archives/vicug-l.html