Go Racing Marquee at National Ploughing Championships

This is the front on the "Go Racing" Marquee at the Ploughing Championships in Tullamore this year (Sept 25th - 27th). This photo was taken on Thursday just after the front had gone up, so still plenty more to be added!



This is HRI's fourth Ploughing Championships and we'll be following a similiar tried and tested formula to that of the previous years. Hector O hEochagain will host on the Tuesday and Wednesday and we have Brendan McArdle for Thursday. We'll be following the same format of three workshop events each day at 11am, 2pm & 4pm part of which will be interviews with the country's top trainers and jockeys; confirmed so far we have Ruby Walsh, Mouse Morris, Frances Crowley, Davy Russell, Jimmy Mangan, Pat Smullen, Eddie Harty, Robert Power, Paddy Flood & Garret Cotter (-many more to confirm over the weekend).



With over 40,000 people from all over Ireland attending the Ploughing each day this is a great opportunity for the racecourses to promote their winter meetings, and most will be in attendance providing information and offers to the public. We'll also be joined by Tote Ireland, the Irish National Stud and RACE (Racing Academy & Centre of Education), who will be on hand with their race simulator giving race riding demonstrations to budding jockeys.

It's a hard few days but well worth the results - let's hope it stays dry!!!

Engaging Consumers Through Social Networking

Social networking sites (SNS) such as MySpace and FaceBook are growing at an incredible rate, with a huge number of consumers having set up profiles on one or more of these services. But this Web 2.0-based phenomenon is yet to be fully understood or leveraged by most marketers, according to advertising trends publisher ConnectThru.

According to Forrester Research, 69% of 18-21 year olds, along with 47% of teenagers and 20% of adults, have a profile on a social networking web site. Recent research has also shown that these online community members also want to engage with brands through this channel. For example, the movie 'X-Men: The Last Stand' connected directly with more than 2 million users through MySpace.

What's most valuable? To help maximise the marketing impact of social networking campaigns, viral downloadable elements tend to achieve the best results as users often view these from their friends' profile pages. If they like what they see, they will tend to re-post the same element on their own profile pages, and the viral process continues.

A recent Marketing Evolution study found that over 70% of the marketing value of SNS campaigns comes from the momentum of the viral impact that these types of campaigns inherently possess. Along similar lines, according to Microsoft, 64% of Europeans surveyed said they had visited a web site because a friend linked to it through their social networking profile.

The HRI Racing Group on Facebook

Encouraging brand engagement As ConnectThru reports, a brand must use this approach to inspire communication or action on the part of the end-consumer - which means that a brand that consumers feel passionate about will succeed more easily than one that does not invoke real emotion.

It is vital to have a clear objective and strategy when marketing through social networking sites, such as a focus on encouraging brand loyalty or customer retention. And marketers need to make sure that it is incredibly easy for consumers to join the brand's social network, which means cutting down on the number of data fields to complete initially. In cases where people are less inclined to feel passionate about the brand, incentives or awards may also have to be in place to encourage people to engage with it.

Horses for Courses
In cases where a brand has profiles on several social networking sites, ConnectThru recommends that each site should be treated differently, according to the target market of consumers being reached there. For example, Pontiac has a "Pontiac Underground" network on Yahoo!, while the brand caters to a much younger audience with its "Friends with Benefits" campaign on MySpace.

This article is copyright 2007 of http://www.thewisemarketer.com/

Second Billboard Campaign for Dundalk Racecourse -Floodlit Racing

The latest poster for Dundalk sells night-time racing with an eye-catching visual and copy line - 'No More Dark Horses'. The first two evenings on Sept 27th and 28th are ticket-only following the sell-out the opening day on Sun 26th August

This campaign includes a 6 sheet execution (left) and a 48 sheet poster (below-click to view large format )- both posters are concentrated in urban centres from Newry to North Dublin.This covers two 'cycles' running from Sept 10th to the 1st October

Press coverage of the opening day at Dundalk was overwhelmingly positive and it will be interesting to see how far the momentum will carry. The facilities are among the best in racing anywhere but the task now is to devise a longer-term marketing communications strategy to keep the demand going through the winter months.

Images from the opening day :