GB Racing doubles stake for new marketing campaign

Great British Racing, the sport’s official marketing and promotional body, is launching its largest campaign to date as it strives to bring in new audiences as well as get “casual” fans to attend more often.

“The Going Is Good” is backed by a £3.6m spend, more than double the spend of the sport’s £1.6m “Everyone’s Turf” campaign featuring former footballer Jermaine Jenas, which ran three years ago.

The digital-first activity, devised by Dark Horses, will run across video-on-demand platforms, social media, and podcasts, as well as cinema, billboards, and radio, and features influencer-style commentary and photos, interspersed with live action of horses pounding round the track and towards the finishing line. Media is being handled by the7stars.

It is designed to showcase British racing as a great day out, with the tagline “4 million memories made every year”.

The campaign is the brainchild of GB Racing de facto CEO and interim chief customer officer Simon Michaelides, the former UKTV, PepsiCo and P&G marketing boss.

He said: “For the sport at large, this will be the biggest campaign we have done, more than double the spend of ‘Everyone’s Turf.’

“So that alone means it’s going to reach a lot more people and have a much, much bigger impact, and now we have got the reassurance of knowing we have a really strong idea and advertising that is resonating really well with audiences.”

Michaelides, who has led GB Racing since the departure of chief executive Rod Street last year, said the campaign was attempting to do two things.

“We’re trying to get people who have never had a relationship with racing but who are open to it to really be inspired to come and find out more and want to engage with racing,” he said.

“The other audience then really is casual fans who have either lapsed or are attending only once a year; we’re really trying to inspire them to want to engage with the sport more often.

“We’ve treated the campaign as if we were having a conversation with our audience. You can’t ignore their questions about welfare, so we’ve baked that in.”

GB Racing will report on the impact of the campaign at the end of the year, but Michaelides would not be drawn on putting a figure on what would constitute success.

He said: “This campaign is about raising the profile of British racing and raising that consideration to actually come and get involved in the sport, whether that’s watching, whether that’s attending.

“The most important thing around the success of the campaign is measuring – are we raising profile and are we driving consideration among this target audience.”