Blackjack Branded Tables: Products & Services Communication Highway Medium [Soon to Speak Too]

Blackjack is an optional potential, even battlefield, but casino stations are increasingly becoming a multi-channel medium.

Whenever blackjack players approach their pastime area, be it online or in land-based casinos, the very first thing they spot is the table. All right, some of them might initially notice a gorgeous blond or riveting brunette dealer — after all, all tables look the same — but the settings are at the center of patrons’ interest. How many stations? Who’s already playing, any anchors here? For card game players, blackjack tables are a potential battleground and optional podium.

Similar is with the casino employees. When staff looks into the table, they look for anything that may be improved, as well as for the flaws and irregularities which might reflect on customer satisfaction and experience; above all, they look for malfunctions or anything that will result in the decrease of revenues. For casinos, tables are an optional battleground and potential podium.

And then, there are members of the entertainment industry and digital innovators that observe blackjack tables from the unique angle: potential is not optional but guaranteed, just as the battlefield is a podium for general.

To them…

Blackjack tables are the multi-channel delivery vehicle for the ultimate brand consumption and media experience.

Green baize top surfaces are the advertising space, walls behind the dealer can host huge plasma screens, space flanking the table is ideal for totalisator and screens with live sports scores, hostesses standing nearby with tablets are ready to take patrons’ sports betting tickets, 3D graphics can occupy set design with any conceivable and fully functional item, mahogany in the rear can be replaced with blue screen technology delivering limitless backdrops — all of which will eventually suck in the whole scene into the world of augmented reality.

These are just a few of many real phantasmagoric yet real-life sequences entertainment industry executives envision when they approach blackjack tables as the integrated digital podium for product and services promotions centering around card game patrons.

While all of this may sound like new Hollywood sci-fi or fictional piece of writing, it’s not. Instead, this is the insight into the existing domain of branded blackjack tables.

Relationship is Everything

To fully grasp architects’ conceptual intentions and terminus point of their vision, we have to take one step back to revisit its fundament: customer relationship management.

Starting some fifty years ago as a tool to evaluate consumer satisfaction by using annual surveys, CRM advanced rapidly with the advent of information technology and eventually ended as business ideology.

In a nutshell…

Each interaction with a customer is to be added into consumers’ history enabling staff to retrieve information from the database as necessary. By analyzing gathered data, the company can identify means to enhance the relationship with clients. Results may be used in targeted marketing campaigns to improve new business opportunities acquisition and existing customers’ retention.

As the time passes by and more data becomes available, they are to be used to provide timely information on consumers’ preferences, purchasing habits, and behavioral patterns, enabling better utilization of sales efforts, not to mention significantly improving overall customers’ experience and satisfaction.

As a peculiar but not at all accidental side benefit to companies, CRM based data are further utilized for price optimization, financial forecasts, product development, project evaluation, risk assessment, and overall enterprise management.

If it sounds complicated, the bottom line is ridiculously simple — know the preferences of the other side and your odds to sell increase rapidly, understand what the other side wants and likes and you have major advantage in structured selling cycle, use the other side’s habits and inclinations wisely and you have the holly business grail, the emotional value of the relationship.

By knowing customers’ preferences it’s practically impossible not to sell uniquely customized service which delivers the ultimate consummation experience.

In return, when the competition knocks on your customers’ door and offer the same, even with better prices, your clients usually reply — ‘thank you, but no thank you, I love doing business with these guys and they take good care of me.’

Ask the Question, Provide the Answer, Retain the Engagement

This ideology existed long before Google, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Co. became prominent envoys of CRM only to, in effect, downgrade the whole concept and granulate it into dreaded cookies, pop-ups, geolocation, data collection, not to mention resulting breaches and leaks.

As CRM layer spreads across land-based casinos and iGaming industry by innovative pioneers fully embracing the 21st-century technological advancements — on occasion resembling ambassadors of a measured approach to satisfying one of the oldest desires of humankind: the luck and skills based shortcut to a better life — it is changing the gambling landscape, delivering different perspective.

Blackjack branded tables in land-based casinos are just the front end of the system, or the final result if you will.

Notwithstanding general information about game variant (3:2, 6:5), insurance payout, and dealer’s moves, the top surface of blackjack tables are medium to be observed by players for the whole duration of the game.

To branding innovators, they are the equivalent of highway billboard in front of the driver spanning for a couple of hundreds of miles. The players’ bets and cards’ spots are separate add space; just look into Las Vegas Knights NHL franchise applications in the Sin City.

The whole space around blackjack stations is used for multi-media promotions providing not only for increased product/service visibility but connecting brand values with players’ gaming experience. It is the immersive experience of total branding based on what patrons like or want, in conjunction with numerous functional benefits.

‘Want to make a side bet on NFL match as you split your blackjack hand? You can do it right here. Why don’t you reserve an apartment for the two of you on this lovely ocean resort with that win you’ve just made? You can click here and it’s done.’

(That ocean resort is what player saw on a plasma screen for the whole duration of your blackjack game. The business concept of impulse shopping is well known to address it here, just as are the terms of up-sell and cross-sell. Of course, the other players at the blackjack table saw what interest them. Yup, the kaleidoscope.)

Now…

Transfer all of this into the iGaming industry. Over there, in the internet sphere, this is just one portion of the user screen as it plays blackjack or live dealer blackjack. The rest is space available for every conceivable functional and emotional gadget provided either by software developers or marketed by interested parties.

To notch up blackjack gaming experience further, the in-game statistics, playing history, betting patterns, and analytical set of data can be available to players — a valuable addition to learning resources.

While the initial reaction to analytical functionalities might be counter-intuitive — why would online casinos provide helping hand — the reason is simple: players’ protection and responsible gambling. Software analytics and particularly AI are very useful in detecting pathological patterns and warning signs of unhealthy dependency. (The more data casinos have to compare habits, it’s easier to spot issues in making.)

And that is where the whole circle of customer relationship management closes when it comes to the gambling industry.

At first, it may sound as the invasion of business into the pastime area. But, it is the initiative which places the players at the epicenter of the effort to provide them with premier experience and satisfaction, including protection.

Yes, the potential clients will try to deploy their products and services as they cooperate with casinos, but such is the whole environment of the gambling industry: the realm where people tend to take money either from each other or from the house.

Consequently…

As more and more respectable companies get involved in analog and digital branding of blackjack tables, the overall quality of service and experience will only increase. As technology proceeds with development and advances, new options and possibilities will emerge.

At the core of those efforts will be blackjack players, intelligent and analytical customers, possessing knowledge and discipline to try to tackle down the house.

By default, those are the traits of one of the most interesting target group to any brand. When these people employ their qualities prudently, they usually end up with high solvency, making them not optional but guaranteed potential to marketers.

Which is exactly why we can only expect more innovations at blackjack branded tables, both in brick-and-mortar casinos and iGaming industry.