A Q&A with Adam Borden, VP of Digital Marketing at Live! Casinos

When it comes to blending hospitality with high-performance marketing, Adam Borden brings a rare balance of strategic depth and practical empathy. As VP of Digital Marketing at Live! Casinos, he’s helping redefine what tech-forward guest experiences can really be—especially in a space that isn’t exactly famous for moving fast.

I had a chance to sit down with Adam to talk about where digital marketing in gaming and hospitality is heading, from mobile app wins and AI test runs to what casinos are nailing and where the gaps still exist. What stood out most? How grounded he is. He leads with strategy, sure, but never loses sight of the guest.

Q: Tell us a little about your background and your role with Live! Casinos. What brought you into the gaming and hospitality space, and what excites you most about your role today?

A: I started in the gaming industry 4 years ago at Live! Casino & Hotel and brought with me over 20 years of skills and experience as a marketer and general manager primarily in the food industry. I started out of college as a management consultant and then ran a mail-order caviar business. I went back to school at the University of Michigan to enhance my business knowledge and leadership skills with an MBA. Afterwards, I started a food industry consulting and investment firm that led me to Hershey and McCormick where I managed brands. Running brands like Hershey’s Kisses and McCormick black pepper taught me the importance of consumer research, gave me experience managing large advertising budgets and honed my P&L responsibilities. These skills are the same as what you need in the gaming industry– understanding the customer’s needs, strong communication, strategic thinking, managing the P&L, making sure the operations deliver, creativity, adaptability, an innovative and entrepreneurial mindset, brand strategy development, and leadership.

At Live!, my team runs our marketing tech stack – websites, search engine marketing, mobile app, social media listening, DAM and hotel marketing. Importantly, we work collaboratively and partner with our individual property teams as internal clients to enable scale, serve as an additional resource and trusted consultants. I work closely with our advertising agencies to identify best practices and implement test-and-learn opportunities. I own our mobile app so am responsible for developing its roadmap and partnering with our bricks-and-mortar marketing teams to activate promotions. And don’t forget the other duties as assigned! I love the always changing nature of our industry and that Live! is willing to invest in new ways of doing things, constantly trying to achieve better performance through innovation.

Q: What are the biggest trends you’re seeing in digital marketing for gaming and hospitality? Which trends are making the biggest impact right now, and how do you see them shaping the industry in the next few years?

A: A lot of non-casino marketing innovation is happening with technology, but our industry is notoriously slow to catch on. We just launched mobile hotel check in and mobile key, which allows our guests to skip the line and go right to their hotel rooms. Guests increasingly want self-service, which a mobile app can do, but we need to demonstrate its value to them. Through a concerted effort communicating our app online and on property, offering app-only promotions, creating an incentive contest for our hosts to engage our top customers and constantly measuring our performance, we were able to generate 59% more customers using our mobile app vs 2023. Consumers rely on mobile apps for their airline, bank and cup of coffee – now it’s our turn to catch up as an industry.

I struggle with how to apply AI as a casino marketer. While we have been conducting some predictive modeling to test offers and response rates, the results are still inconclusive. Our social media listening platform allows us to easily draft AI responses to our guests that speed up our community management timeframes. That being said, we have not been able to effectively reduce the time our paid search team needs to draft compelling ads. AI will continue to bring new opportunities to reimagine our digital marketing and ways of doing business.

Q: Where are casinos winning in digital marketing, and where is there still room to grow? What strategies are working well across the industry, and what common missteps do you see? Why do you think that is?

Casinos are winning by using digital marketing to facilitate self-service and greater responsiveness. We are moving more and more into promoting offers primarily in a digital way vs the traditional core mailer. Digital delivery allows for faster receipt, quicker turnaround and a more dynamic presentation. Many of us are experimenting with trying to find the right cutoff point to stop traditional mail delivery in lieu of email only. Patrons are now conditioned to check our websites or mobile app for their offers which reduces demand on our guest services teams and contact center. A number of us are offering app-only offers to reward patrons for using our app. Mobile check in and mobile hotel key avoids long lines at the front desk. We’re regularly asking our guests for feedback via email surveys and QR codes in our restaurants. There is still so much more that can transition to a digital solution which allows greater tracking, faster turnaround and ability for automation.

Our industry systems are clunky and awkward, but we put up with it as consumers because we’re conditioned to expect it. One of our competitor’s mobile hotel check in process involved me having to go to a kiosk to complete the “mobile” check in where the kiosk then spit out a traditional key. Another competitor offers a mobile wallet that requires disclosure of all bank account activity including mortgage balance, fees paid, interest earned, etc., all without much tangible benefit to just using an ATM or bringing cash. We can leverage technology to deliver a better product or experience but have to prioritize this for our guests and show them how they benefit.

One area we all seem to be doing a pretty good job at is using social media to engage our audience. Our teams regularly compare their social media performance to our market competitors, and I see all of them to some extent pushing out content and contests. Some are creating compelling offers on social media, using it as a way to showcase other parts of the resort or celebrating big jackpot wins at the property. Better outlets are differentiating content based on the platform.

Q: Marketing moves fast. How do you stay ahead without getting caught up in every trend? What’s your approach to balancing innovation with strategy, ensuring you’re staying cutting-edge without wasting resources on fleeting fads?

A: I have made it a point to read broadly across both the casino and digital marketing industries ever since starting at Live!, something I encourage my team to do as well. They regularly share articles of interest and put on a digital marketing learning series, so our colleagues can learn from them. Our team compiles their wish list of development opportunities as part of our budgeting process, and I am usually able to secure one conference per year for each of them. They’re required to share what they learned afterwards which they also usually incorporate into their learning series and day-to-day marketing activities.

We regularly get approached by a number of new marketing platforms or opportunities. If the platform capabilities align with our overall strategies, we evaluate it to see which of our casinos would be the right fit for it. Like everyone, we have limited bandwidth for new approaches because they take time and attention to make successful. I am cautious about not throwing too much at our teams for fear that it can easily distract them from more important activities. That being said, we look to our agency partners like Good Giant to help with A/B testing to keep our copy and graphics sharp. If we find something works on one platform, we try hard to extend it to other places to expand the impact.

Q: Looking back at the past few months, is there a campaign or initiative you’re especially proud of? Can you share a recent win that showcases what’s possible when great strategy, creativity, and execution come together?

A: Project management is so critical to marketing – it’s easy to think of an idea, but it’s hard to execute many of them. We have been operating our existing websites for 5 years and need to overhaul them for a couple of key reasons. First, we have expanded from just our flagship Maryland property to now four operating casinos with two more on the way. Second, website technology has evolved in the intervening years while we have not taken advantage of it as much as we could. At the same time, our website architecture was built around operating only a single casino which we have replicated for the others as they have opened. This means we have duplicate pages for some of our content and no landing page that welcomes someone to our brand.

We kicked off a couple of months ago the first phase of this change, moving our web presence to the same domain that we use for email – livech.com. We will collapse a number of these duplicate pages, reducing agency maintenance hours and potential errors on the webpages. This new landing page will also allow us to tell our brand story more fully and encourage cross-property visitation. With our web agency, we have started scoping the next phase which will better bring to life the brand energy and vibrancy while hopefully delighting our guests even more. Stay tuned over the coming months!