The Jockey Club Magnificent Racehorses Best Campaign - Racecourse Association
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The Jockey Club Magnificent Racehorses Best Campaign Proudly partnered by
Objectives
To develop and execute a cut-through PR campaign to get more people to consider engaging with and attending British
horseracing, particularly at Jockey Club Racecourses.
Internal research showed that younger people were less engaged with the sport and would not consider themselves “fans”. Our
objective was to start to reverse this trend and make horseracing relevant so that more people would fall in love with the sport,
and ultimately help protect its long-term health.
There have been multiple events and successes in making horseracing a great day out, but there was still room to help create
“fans” of the sport and give it a boost in popularity, inspire a new generation of fans in the process.
Research and analysis highlights that fans are not necessarily created through attendance alone, but by caring about key players
and plotlines. For example, a football fan may never have been to Barcelona’s Camp Nou, but all would know about Lionel
Messi. For horseracing to resonate more deeply, it needs to be famous, which means the profile-building of its jockeys and top
horses is so important. Put simply, we need to share stories about racing’s stars to provide a reason to care about our sport.
Our data analysis showed that TV and film stars, for a younger audience, were as relevant as sport stars, which was an
interesting insight. We could create a campaign not simply about sport, but one which had a wider cultural relevance. The
creative challenge was how to tell the stories of Britain’s top jockeys and racehorses in a distinctive, unique and compelling way.
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Delivery
With a creative mission to introduce “horsestars” within popular culture, we looked at the biggest entertainment franchises and,
ranking highly in terms of awareness and relevance, was the Disney Marvel-juggernaut, Avengers. If we could creatively borrow
some of the Marvel Universe’s relevance to tell the stories of horseracing heroes, we felt we could get noticed and inspire a new
generation to fall in love with the sport and its characters.
Magnificent Racehorses, the world’s first comic and content series, would tell 10 of the most legendary horseracing
stories, to help broaden the profile of racing’s biggest stars and reach new audiences, was born.
• Hosted a poll on social to select the nations favourite 10 racehorses & recruited a team of Marvel artists (illustrator, inker,
colourist and scriptwriter) to turn the horses to superheroes in their own comic book, all in just 10 weeks.
• Illustrations were designed to provide media collateral as well as for the 24-page comic. These included iconic horseracing
scenes from Frankie Dettori jumping off Enable to Red Rum’s third Grand National victory (important hook for the launch), as well
as news-friendly strips including The Queen with a prized racehorse and celebrity fans from Chris Hughes to Ronnie Wood,
instantly creating shareable content.
• A press release told the story of the comic to increase the profile of the sport’s greatest stars and sport with behind-the-scenes
content of Marvel illustrator, Martin Griffiths, captured (stills and video) for use.
• The comic was seeded to key media and influencers ahead of the story being released in the build up to the Grand National
• The comic was delivered across all The Jockey Club platforms (social, ecomm, website) with competitions running online to win
limited edition signed copies by Sir AP McCoy, Ed Chamberlin and the RHGN winning jockey and owner.
• To continue the hype and exploit the momentum of the story in the media, we created an exclusive strip for the Daily Star
predicting a historic moment for Tiger Roll (which came true!).
• The comic lived on, following Altior’s victory weeks after the Grand National, BBC Journalist, Richard Conway, and Queen of the
Celebrity Jungle, Georgia Toffolo, both posted Altior’s heroic image on their social channels to 2 million fans.
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Results
The Jockey Club used insight and data to identify a new way of using PR to attract potential racing fans and help to protect the long-
term health of the sport. Magnificent Racehorses was a unique and compelling way to tell the stories of its superstar racehorses,
and its use of celebrities, in helping to spread the news to make it an effective PR and engagement campaign.
100+ pieces of coverage
Including live broadcasts on BBC Breakfast, where the comic itself made an appearance and was discussed on the sofa, and ITV
News, page leads in The Daily Telegraph and Daily Star and in-depth pieces on BBC Sport, Mirror Online and sports industry
publications. This all led to thousands of views and downloads of the (free) Magnificent Racehorses comic. And perhaps most
importantly, an omnibus poll found 62% of 8-15 year-olds who saw the comic felt it made horseracing immediately more relevant.
60m social reach
The social media content reached more than 60 million people and generated over 200,000 individual organic engagements on The
Jockey Club’s online channels. Social posts from celebrity horseracing fans, Love Island’s Chris Hughes and Georgia Toffolo, alone
reached more than 5 million people. The Jockey Club also responded to BBC’s Frank Keogh’s tweet requesting a t-shirt version!
Phase 2 of
the
campaign
will be
revealed in
early 2020!
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Supporting Information
View the webpage here: https://www.thejockeyclub.co.uk/the-racing/magnificent-racehorses/
View the comic here: https://online.flippingbook.com/view/164389/
60-second clip of ‘making of’ and BBC Breakfast coverage: https://vimeo.com/329543323
Coverage:
BBC Breakfast with
Sally Nugent
Chris
Hughes
BTS
video 5
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