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Australian Turf Club launches year-long campaign to raise profile of horse racing

The Australian Turf Club has used the lead up to the 2014 BMW Sydney Carnival as an opportunity to launch their 2014 campaign ‘It’s Going to Get Racy’.

It will run through the year as the Turf Club aims to raise the profile and perceptions of live experience of horse racing.

The Glamazon (1)The Pretty Young Blings (1)The Punter (1)The Real Horsewives of Turf County (1)The Stray Cat (1)The Aristocats (1)

It follows on from research commissioned by the ATC in 2014 which identified four key target markets of racegoers or  potential racegoers.

ATC marketing manager Debbie Morton told Mumbrella: “From that we discovered some key target markets that we needed to appeal to in order to bring more crowds to the track and some of the key target markets were people who were interested in social and sporting events but hadn’t necessarily attended race day specifically or maybe attended one or two race days.

“We used that knowledge and worked with MJW, our agency, to develop a campaign that spoke to the type of people we need to speak to in terms of new race goers to the track.”

The new campaign  introduces  “colourful characters”, that have been developed to align with they key target markets,  set against a rendition of ‘Peaches’ by the Stranglers.

The campaign, produced by creative agency MJW, features 30, 60 and 90 second TV commercials as well as print, outdoor and digital executions. The commercial can be viewed on the website as due to music rights the ATC were unable to share it with Mumbrella.

“It is a little bit tongue in cheek, it’s to make people think about which character they or which character their friends are or which characters they’ve seen at events and get that conversation going in the social media space,” Morton said.

“We know that this is going to be somewhat polarising, we have a rather traditional fan base and we have a non-traditional fan base so we know its going to be talked about.”

The campaign has created specific characters for specific race day events, with ‘The Real Horsewives of Turf County’ associated with the upcoming Celebrations Ladies Day at Rosehill Gardens in March.

“We have our specific people for specific times, you’ll see the Show Pony in Spring, you won’t see him in Autumn,” said Morton.

The campaign will continue to roll out over the year introducing additional characters for the Spring Carnival.

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