Targeted technology is helping get positive horse racing stories in front of a new audience
Tina Bond, president of the New York Thoroughbred Horsemen’s Association as well as president of the National THA, has added on yet another responsibility to go with what had been full-time work as a racehorse owner and breeder. Bond, wife of veteran New York trainer H. James Bond, is the force behind The Heart of Horse Racing. The venture is a marketing strategy for the 21st Century with a heavy reliance on technology to get the message of a fun and exciting sport — where an entire family can attend for less than the price of a single ticket to many pro games — showing up on the social-media feeds and internet of people who aren’t race-goers but share some interests with those who are.
Bond said too often racing just responds to negative stories, which she believes is a losing strategy. Instead, horse racing should share its heart-tugging stories and passion for the horses.
“We have to have a one sport brand,” Bond said. “We don’t have that. The NFL has it. Major League Baseball has it. But we don’t really have that. We have Kentucky, we have New York, Florida. But we don’t have a horse-racing brand, and I think that’s where we’re missing the mark. It’s important to all of us, but we need to take it to another level. We all need to do our own share of marketing. But we’re still missing that one brand, what can we do to entice people to come and be part of our sport instead of going to other sports. This campaign isn’t about fixing a broken narrative. It’s about creating a new one. That new narrative is going to carry us through.”
While the racing industry has done other campaigns designed to tell the sport’s stories through the eyes of participants, the difference with The Heart of Horse Racing is its digital technology, said Bond’s collaborator, Jimmy Chaffin, the managing partner at Integrated Marketing, which specializes in creative strategy and visual storytelling. Chaffin has shaped through his award-winning work such diverse global brands as Jack Daniel’s, Bridgestone, the Jamaica Tourist Board, Goodwill Industries, Dollar General and the Nashville Predators.
“You have so many stories to tell, and we’re just getting started,” Chaffin, a racing enthusiast who lives outside of Nashville.
The presentation included video interviews of trainers, jockeys and fans at Saratoga, multi-purposed into long-form story-telling, short-story telling, and 30-second clips. Keeneland and nearby breeding farms are up next.
Of course the key is getting those stories outside of people already interested in racing. That’s where the campaign’s targeted technology comes in.
“We’re talking about a laser-paid focus,” Chaffin said. “We take that ad, there are codes on that ad that make it unique. If we take that, and send it to a landing page that has its own original footprint, these two things are now talking to each other. The page is creating analytics based on where the ad originated, who opened the ad, the demographics connected to the person who opened the ad, including the town or city they’re in. We do what is called look-alike audiences. It creates heat maps and look-alike audiences of people in that same area.”
