The idea to launch a 2010 advertising campaign praising the Massachusetts State Lottery as well-managed may have been hatched by a campaign operative for former treasurer Timothy P. Cahill soon after a focus group showed Cahill’s role overseeing the lottery was a selling point.

At two focus groups for Cahill’s gubernatorial campaign held in July 2010, Washington, D.C.-based media consultant Dane Strother noted the strengths and weaknesses of Cahill’s campaign, which had been battered by Republican Governors Association ads knocking him for his management of the lottery and the state pension fund.