Match marketing

March 18th, 2010 by Donn McClean

I may have missed it, but this marketing drive that we were promised on the back of tomorrow’s Kauto Star versus Denman potential epic, The Decider, the most anticipated equine match since the heady Arkle/Mill House days, the vehicle that was going to bring all these peripheral racing people into the fold and educate them about the wonders of this great game in order that they would remain within it, and bring their friends and families with them – where is it?

I have seen the Kauto Star scarves and the Denman buttons, the window dressing stuff, but where is the substance, the meat and drink ‘marketing’ campaign, such as it would be? Where was the competition to name The Decider, the efforts to bring in the non-committed, the fan clubs, the advertising, the PR drive, the rolling out of the personalities involved, equine and human, Walsh v McCoy, Findlay and Barber v Smith, The Tank v The Whatever Nickname The Public Would Have Given Kauto If They Had Been Asked?

In fact, the best efforts to promote The Match have, quite ironically, been made by Betfair, with the Clive Smith and Harry Findlay television advertisement conversations. That’s good stuff, but the objective of the ad campaign is to promote Betfair. Was it left up to Betfair to do the marketing job on this hugely anticipated (or at least hugely anticipated within racing and among racing fans, the already committed) race? Betfair’s job is to promote Betfair, they are a commercial organisation, and any benefit that the race or that Racing Inc gains from it is surely purely bytheway. Understandably so as well.

Wasn’t there supposed to be a marketing drive? When the question was tentatively asked in January, when it was getting a little late, a little close to Gold Cup day, when no real evidence of any mass communication message about what was going to be the horse race of a generation appeared to be forthcoming: why haven’t we heard much about the Kauto/Denman match, weren’t we told that, as soon as Denman had run his prep race in the Aon Chase at Newbury, the marketing drive would begin? Surely the result of the Aon did not result in the scrapping of all the marketing plans and the marketing strategy and budget that had been undoubtedly so painstakingly formulated, did it?

Like I say, I may have missed it, I may not have been reading or watching the media on which a significant budget has been spent promoting this match, I may not have seen the magazines in which the competitions ran, I may not have been watching the television or listening to the radio at the times when the advertisements were broadcast. Because I am certain that every possible effort was made to promote this race, to strive to have kids proclaiming their support for either Kauto or Denman, we’re going to hammer you on 19th March, can we play you every week, your AP wouldn’t lace our Ruby’s boots, that kind of thing, to have housewives choosing allegiances, grown men, sports fans, not racing fans, beginning to care. There is no way that Racing Inc, and the people who are paid and charged with the task of promoting racing, bringing racing to the people and the people to racing, increasing racing’s interest-base and endeavouring to ensure that it survives and thrives into the future, would have missed or fully exploited an opportunity this big. Because an opportunity like this will probably never present itself again before the next solar eclipse.

Match marketing

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