HERE IS AN ARTICLE FROM THOROUGHBRED TIMES WITH WHICH I AGREE. WHAT SAY YOU?


Consultant says racing making mistake with slots

Consultant Laura Ries, president of Ries & Ries and author of The Fall of Advertising and the Rise of PR, said horse racing is doing the casino industry a favor when it adds slots to its tracks.
Ries, the keynote speaker at the National Thoroughbred Racing Association’s annual meeting and marketing summit at the Mirage Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas, said that casinos are the enemy of racetracks when it comes to marketing. She said racing needs to differentiate itself from casinos.

"You should be the exact opposite of your enemy with your advertising," Ries said.

Ries pointed out that Pepsi is the polar opposite of Coke in its advertising. But, she said Burger King makes a mistake in trying to emulate McDonald’s instead of differentiating itself.

"But what does horse racing do? It brings the enemy right into the racetrack in the form of slot machines," Ries said. "You are educating your own fans on using the enemy’s product."

Ries suggests horse racing do things to get the casinos to build bigger and nicer race books so they’re teaching their customers how to play the horses.

"Public relations is more consistent with the way successful brands are built," concluded Ries. "You should protect the main brand, promote the core product, which is horse racing."

Ries preaches "public relations first, advertising second" and pointed to such products as Botox, Viagra, the Volkswagen Beetle, Red Bull, Google, and JetBlue as successful case studies of running a public relations campaign first.

She said the right message for horse racing is, "the stars, it’s celebrity driven." She pointed to recent examples of Funny Cide and Smarty Jones. The problem with that strategy, Ries acknowledged, is keeping the horses on the racetrack, instead of the breeding shed.

Ries said that when a three-year-old horse like Smarty Jones retires early in his career, it’s like Brett Favre, Barry Bonds, Andre Agassi, Shaquille O’Neal, Jack Nicholson, or Clint Eastwood retiring at age 21.—Richard Eng