Marketing Department

The Marketing Department of HRI consists of an Advertising and Marketing Services Manager (Barbara White), Public Relations Manager (Tamso Doyle) and Marketing Assistant (Lorraine Page).

	Tamarisk Doyle PR Manager	Barbara White Marketing Services Manager

The marketing task is to promote Irish racing in line with HRI’s overall mission statement “to develop and promote Ireland as a world centre of excellences for horse racing and breeding”.

One of the principal measures of success for marketing is attendances at Irish race meetings, which reached 1,197,654 in 2010.

The strategy employed by the Marketing Department is to recruit new racegoers, principally from the 20-35 year old age group, to retain the loyalty of existing racegoers and to promote social and occasional racegoers to become regular attendees. The Marketing Department of HRI provides comprehensive marketing support services to the 24 racecourses in the Republic of Ireland, developing joint marketing programmes to target selected meetings for attendance growth.

The range of activities engaged in, what is generally known as the marketing mix, consists principally of:

Review of 2010 Marketing Functions

In 2010 Horse Racing Ireland’s marketing activity operated in similar economic conditions and with similar marketing objectives as in 2009.  Despite market conditions, the average attendance at race meetings in 2010 of 3,586 was the same as 2009 which was a welcome indicator of levelling off in an industry which is still feeling the full force of recession.

Attendances

Racecourse attendances were maintained by targeting key customer segments – socialisers, horse lovers, punters, tourists and corporates through racecourse marketing support and PR programmes for all racecourses. Working off a reduced marketing budget in 2010 compared to 2009, the racecourse support strategy worked at targeting the various customer segments on a regional or national level depending on the type of race meeting or festival through a variety of marketing and PR tools such as radio, press, direct mail, online, social media, event creation, promotions, public affairs, etc.

Research

In February 2010, Horse Racing Ireland commissioned Behaviour & Attitudes to complete extensive research to establish detailed demographics of racegoers and to review a range of marketing variables to help inform the design of its marketing and advertising strategy.  Specifically the following key issues were to be addressed in research:

•    The awareness levels of racing among fans and non-fans
•    The popularity of racing versus other sports
•    The profile of domestic attendees at race meetings in Ireland
•    The number of people going racing overall
•    The number of people who went racing in the past year
•    Determine their demographics
•    Why they go, why they don't go

The survey is based on a nationally representative quota sample of 1,000 adults (aged 16 years and over) and was conducted across 63 separate sampling points per survey. Quota controls are based on the most recent Census statistics of the national population.

The research concluded that:
•    Over 1 in 5 adults (22%) are interested in horse racing – interest is highest among those aged 50+.
•    Over 1 in 3 adults (37%) have attended a horse racing meeting at some point.  This equates to 1.3 million adults, which is down somewhat from 1.4 million in 2006.  
•    This change in volume of attendance since 2006 is mostly explained by a fall in numbers who have attended within the past year: 12% in 2010; 17% in 2006.
•    To socialise with friends, the visual appeal of the horses themselves and betting remain the key reasons for attendance.
•    In terms of overall rating, Irish racecourses are rated highest for general atmosphere, the sociable experience and the quality of the racing

UK Audience

In March, Horse Racing Ireland implemented a ‘Go Racing in Ireland for Free’ campaign as part of their Cheltenham Festival activity. Horse Racing Ireland in conjunction with Cheltenham Racecourse and Tourism Ireland, offered all customers who went racing in Cheltenham on St Patrick’s Day, a free ticket to go racing in Ireland at one of 14 Irish race meetings. As in previous years, Horse Racing Ireland’s marketing department managed the ‘Go Racing in Ireland’ stand for the 4 days, providing free literature on Irish racing and racecourses. Horse Racing Ireland also hosted a Press Conference on the Tuesday morning promoting the Irish focus for the festival.

Tote Go Racing Club

In May 2010 Horse Racing Ireland and Tote Ireland joined together to launch the Tote Go Racing Club. Membership of the club is free and the objective is simple - to encourage both regular and less frequent racegoers to go racing more often, while also providing greater access to the sport through informative newsletters and exclusive opportunities to see behind the scenes. To date membership of the club has been very encouraging with over 5,000 members.

Flat Ambassador

May also saw Michael Kinane being announced as our Flat Ambassador while in October Barry Geraghty took on the role for National Hunt racing. The objective of the ‘Ambassador’ role is to increase the profile of racing and to allow racing fans and the general public to get to know more about the work and lifestyle of jockeys. A key part of their role was to give an inside view of their daily routine and their general take on life inside and outside racing through Facebook, Twitter and weekly online diaries which generated much mainstream media coverage.

Online Marketing

In June, development work began on an extensive upgrade of our website www.goracing.ie along with an application version for iPhones. The purpose of this upgrade was to make the website more interactive and user friendly through ease of navigation and to offer our customers best practice in terms of content. Website upgrades were also implemented for all Horse Racing Ireland racecourses and the various websites went live in February 2011. In conjunction with this, Horse Racing Ireland developed a social media strategy for facebook and twitter which offers our racegoers instant interactive communication on an informal basis.

Publications

At the Galway Festival, Horse Racing Ireland launched their new racing publication, ‘A Guide to Racing in Ireland’.  The guide is aimed at those who enjoy the sport of horse racing and would like to know even more about what’s happening out there on the course and behind the scenes on a race day.

 Schools/Racing Education

Horse Racing Ireland recognised the importance of engaging young children in racing and with their local racecourse, so with that in mind we launched a new Schools/Racing Education initiative at Navan Racecourse in September. Over 200 children from local schools came for a tour of the racecourse which involved meeting a jockey, a trainer with a racehorse, an instructor from RACE with the racing simulator and the racecourse manager who showed the children the track and fences.

This was the first of 6 highly successful schools days in 2010 which occurred at Dundalk, Limerick, Naas, Cork and Gowran Park. The initiative will be rolled out again in spring 2011.

 HRI Awards

In December, Horse Racing Ireland hosted the 8th Annual Awards for the Racing year in the Leopardstown Pavilion. These awards recognise the excellence in the sport of Irish horse racing including a ‘Contribution to the Industry’ Award which was given to RTE’s Colm Murray in recognition of his outstanding support and input to racing.

In summary, Horse Racing Ireland’s marketing activity delivered focused and integrated campaigns in cooperation with the racecourses to maintain and grow racing attendances while ensuring an outstanding customer experience.