Posts Tagged ‘avon walk for breast cancer’

By Ray Paulick

One of the Thoroughbred industry’s biggest challenges may also present one of its greatest opportunities. The challenge, brought to the fore this year by a series of widely publicized events but always lingering just off center stage, is the issue of animal welfare. How the industry deals with this subject may be one of its last, best opportunities to derail our slow but steady march toward irrelevance in the eyes of the general public.

The death of Eight Belles in this year’s Kentucky Derby, from all indications, was a freak accident, one of those incidents that could not have been prevented by anyone. But her demise, along with revelations about the routine administration of anabolic steroids to many of the sport’s best performers, shined a spotlight on racing that revealed to the general public some of its darkest truths.

Foremost among those is the question of what becomes of a Thoroughbred when it is no longer useful as a racing or breeding animal. Some owners and breeders take great measures to insure either a productive second life for their horses or dispose of them through humane euthanasia. Too many horses slip through the cracks, however, and end up on meat wagons headed to slaughter houses in Canada or Mexico, or are simply abandoned.

The perception of our sport is shaped by media reports of the cruelty of slaughter or abandonment of Thoroughbreds, and it does not present an image attractive to many Americans, especially a younger generation that is more in tune with animal welfare issues.

That is the challenge.

The opportunity lies in the numerous programs and untold number of volunteers who work to find second homes for Thoroughbreds as riding, pleasure or performance horses, or as therapeutic animals used in programs for the mentally, spiritually or physically challenged, and in prisons where they have helped rehabilitate hardened criminals.

It’s time for the racing and breeding industry to fully embrace programs like the Thoroughbred Retirement Foundation, CANTER, Rerun, Tranquility Farm, Thoroughbred Charities of America and others, instead of pretending the issue of unwanted ex-racehorses does not exist.

Last week I heard a presentation on how our sport can energize its “brand” from marketing expert David Aaker at the Asian Racing Conference in Tokyo, Japan. Aaker, an advisor to Japanese advertising giant Dentsu and professor emeritus at the Haas School of Business at the University of California-Berkeley, talked about how some other businesses have energized their brands by hitching their wagons to something outside of their core business that it is interesting, relevant and compelling to their customer base.

Avon, one of the oldest cosmetic brands for women, was cited as one very good example. There was little the company could do to energize itself by making better lipstick, Aaker said, so it found an issue with great relevance and interest to its female customers: breast cancer. Avon put enormous resources into a breast cancer awareness campaign, created a foundation to support breast cancer research, and promoted an annual Avon Walk for Breast Cancer throughout the world. Breast cancer research and other social issues relevant to women were foremost among Avon CEO Andrea Jung’s program to rebuild and re-energize the Avon cosmetic brand. It has been a great success.

What social issue is of great importance to current and potential racing fans? I think that’s a no-brainer: it’s the humane treatment of the animals that give us so much pleasure and entertainment.

Look into the eyes of any fan when a horse dumps its rider in the post parade and takes off on a perilous solo run, or when a horse breaks down in a race or is carted off on an ambulance. It’s not just the champions our fans care about, either, it’s those low-level claimers they’ve followed in the first or last race on any day at any track.

Racing is fortunate to have people who are animal lovers and do what they can to protect them. Just today, Madeleine Paulson Pickens is reported to have come up with a plan to rescue from death the tens of thousands of wild mustangs who have roamed the American West and are so much a part of our culture. The late Paul Mellon bequeathed a most generous gift to the Thoroughbred Retirement Foundation that will benefit former racehorses for years to come. John Hettinger dedicated the last years of his life to ending slaughter and protecting our horses.

But it’s time for racing, as an institution, to understand that what’s good for our horses is good for our sport, to face this challenge and embrace it as an opportunity. The Jockey Club realized this with its recent announcement that it will give to horse retirement causes and offer breeders an easy way to donate funds to this cause whenever they register a foal. Suffolk Downs officials established a zero-tolerance policy against trainers sending horses to slaughter and a few other tracks have followed their lead.

But the clock is ticking. Voters in Massachusetts banned dog racing in that state Nov. 4 because of concerns over animal welfare. It’s not a stretch of the imagination to see similar measures taken against the racing of horses. Think about that for a minute.

We have some very bright people in this industry, people who can understand what marketing expert Aaker was talking about with Avon and apply the same principle to help both the horses and the business of Thoroughbred racing. We can energize the Thoroughbred racing "brand" by taking on one of our biggest challenges and viewing it as an opportunity to sell our sport to a new generation.

Copyright © 2008, The Paulick Report

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By Ray Paulick

To hear Carl Pascarella tell it, you’d think corporate marketers would have lined up from Louisville, Ky., all the way to New York’s Madison Avenue to bid on the Triple Crown sponsorship that Visa USA dropped in 1995 after a 10-year run. The relationship between the Triple Crown and Visa ended the same year Pascarella retired as the credit card giant’s chief executive officer.

Pascarella, speaking at a Tuesday afternoon session on Marketing & the Customer Experience at the 32^nd Asian Racing Conference in Tokyo, used the familiar introduction from ABC’s “Wide World of Sports” to describe sponsorship of American racing’s highest-profile series, which begins with the Kentucky Derby on the first Saturday in May, continues two weeks later in the Preakness, and concludes three weeks after that with the Belmont Stakes.

First, there is the “thrill of victory,” Pascarella said. “From a sponsor’s standpoint, nothing gives you more of a thrill than the Kentucky Derby winner driving down the Preakness stretch with a three- or four-length lead and knowing, as a sponsor, that you’ve got legs, with another three or four weeks to promote in and outside the world of sports. It was something we could use from April on through to June.”

On the other hand, he said, there is “the agony of defeat. In six of eight years we had horses that won the first two legs and didn’t win the Belmont.” That defeat eliminated the possibility of further promotions congratulating the winner of the Visa Triple Crown Challenge and the accompanying $5-million bonus, as well as any additional races the winner might compete in, including the Travers Stakes or Breeders’ Cup.

The Triple Crown was one of several world-class sponsorships for Visa in the sports and entertainment world. “Each one of them,” Pascarella said, “had a common focus on a couple of very important things: understanding who their fan and audience was; and secondly, they understood how to drive value to that fan base. They had an unwavering commitment to both things. At Visa, we looked more to sports as being the pinnacle of entertainment for fans, or our customers. No other form of entertainment brings the same kind of excitement or elation as sports does.

“The sports that are best for our sponsorship,” Pascarella continued, “put the fan in the center of the activity. They create deeper relationships because it’s a fan-centric approach. They give the fan a way to get into the event itself.”
 
Pascarella recalled how much value he was able to give to Visa’s best customers — bankers and merchants — who would come to Louisville for the Kentucky Derby. “We’d bring them on a backside tour of Churchill Downs on the day before the Derby,” he said. “They’d see the horses who would be racing in the Derby the next day, meet trainers like Bobby Baffert and D. Wayne Lukas, and these people felt like they were part of it all. We were giving them something special because of a sponsorship that was invaluable. That’s what we were paying for, that extra feeling that allowed our customers to get inside the sport.

“We’re not looking at fan numbers, we are looking at fans who are engaged, fans who will be engaged with us and our products and services,” Pascarella said. “We look at selecting and evaluating sponsorships based on being able to drive consumer behavior. How have we lifted the brand, how have we changed behavior, how have we made the consumer closer to us as a result of the association? The more we win, the more we put into a sponsorship. But it’s not just about the money. It’s about the relationships you can build with your sponsor and what you can give your sponsor in return. You need mutually beneficial objectives.”

Interestingly, while Visa dropped its sponsorship of the Triple Crown, it entered into a five-year agreement with Churchill Downs to sponsor the Kentucky Derby. No company has stepped forward to sponsor the Triple Crown since Visa’s exit from the series. One reason may have been a decision by the New York Racing Association to end its association with NBC Sports, and put the Belmont on ABC/ESPN. Another may have been fragmentation within the three tracks that comprise Triple Crown Productions and a power struggle over how sponsorship revenues were divided. Currently, of course, they have nothing to divide from a Triple Crown title sponsor.

 Pascarella, now an executive adviser to TPG Capital, also cautioned racing associations that the current economic climate will cause nearly every major corporation to reevaluate its advertising, marketing and sponsorship budgets. “Every economist projects a very deep and long recession,” he said. “That means your sponsors are going to be under a great deal of pressure. You need to reach out to them, even though your revenues also are going to be under pressure. If you reach out to them, and say, ‘How do we work together to get through this?’ that will go a long way.”

BRANDING GURU DAVID AAKER , professor emeritus of marketing strategy at the Haas School of Business at the University of California-Berkeley, talked about how racing can build its brand.

At a time when brand trustworthiness and quality perceptions of most brands are down significantly in the minds of the public, Aaker said there are opportunities to improve branding through increased energy. He cited the Nintendo video game brand as one recent phenomenon in the branding world. Five years ago, Aker said, Nintendo ranked 165^th among brand names in Japan, moved up to 65^th three y ears ago, fifth two years ago, and now ranks as the country’s leading brand, thanks to the energy created by the Nintendo Wii platform and games.

He cited five other very diverse brands that have energized themselves in recent years: 1) the Memphis Redbirds minor league baseball team; 2) the Indianapolis Motor Speedway; 3) PGA Tour golf; 4) Harley Davidson; and 5) Avon cosmetics.

All of those brands used one of two methods: energizing the business itself, or finding something with energy that is interesting and involving and attach it to the brand. “Both options are really powerful,” Aaker said.

The Memphis Redbirds, Indianapolis Speedway and Harley Davidson energized their brand by engaging their customers in multiple activities that built on the customer experience. The PGA Tour and Avon tied themselves to something with energy. The PGA Tour used Tiger Woods to its best advantage, and Avon linked its products to a breast cancer crusade and created the Avon Walk for Breast Cancer, with millions of people engaged each year. Similarly, Aaker said, Lowe’s home improvement stores attach their brand to Habitat for Humanity. In the case of Avon, he said, “Breast cancer is so important an issue and involving to the target audience that it provides Avon a way to get energy that it could never do through their products and services.”

Aaker said companies seeking to strengthen their brand should “find role models, companies in related or unrelated industries…someone who’s done it well with a brand people are talking about. What can you learn from them?”

In addition, he said, self-reflection is necessary. “What about the customer experience is boring or unpleasant? How can you mitigate that? What can be added to en rich and improve the customer experience.”

To find what he calls “branded energizers” like Avon’s breast cancer campaign, Aaker said companies should examine “what existing program has energy that fits your brand and can be connected to your brand…programs that aren’t part of the experience people are currently buying? What new program with energy can be developed that fits the brand and can be connected to the brand?”

“You have one of the most exciting events in sports and entertainment,” Aaker said. “But you need to ask yourself, ‘How can I add energy to my brand?’”

TELEVISION ADVERTISEMENTS PROMOTING RACING around the world were shown to the group and  audience members were asked to vote on their favorites. The ads were divided into five categories: Celebrating the Horse; Sex and Glamour; The Punt; A Good Laugh; and The Buzz.Most provocative were ads from Australia promoting sex and glamour. Other countries featured included France, Turkey, Japan, Hong Kong, Germany, Ireland and the United States (two ads from Santa Anita were featured). Details tomorrow on the winning ad.