Kids Summer of Racing Brief

For the 3rd consecutive year Country Racing Victoria in conjunction with the Victorian Government ran its ¨Kids Summer Racing Campaign¨ aimed at driving families to 40+ country racing meets across Australia from Boxing Day to Australia Day.

The concept for the campaign in 2017/18 was the same as previous years, to give out a Free backpack of goodies to all kids that came along to the races, to in turn drive gate sales and give strong brand awareness to the Country Racing Victoria and Victorian Government’s involvement, however this year they had a specific theme to coincide with the special guest Chris Humphrey from the Wild Action Zoo that would be featured at many of the events around Victoria.

As an agency, we set to work to think of how we could incorporate an animal theme into the packs that we would be putting together for the campaigns.

The key elements for the items included in this year’s pack were:

• Merchandise will be provided to 40 clubs and will be distributed to kids between the ages of 2 – 14 years

• Something they could use during the day and continue to use long after the event, while also give great brand awareness for Country Racing Victoria

• Incorporate animal theming across the product selections

• Items that were different from those in previous events

 

After a series of in-house brainstorming session, we developed a series of animal slogans and designs to place on the items which the client selected WE LOVE ANIMALS. The team at Country Racing Victoria shortlisted their range of items to include in the backpack:

• Custom colour backpack

• Sunglasses

• Drink Bottle

• Sunscreen Satchet

• Trucker Cap

• Floating Horse Pen

• Kids Binoculars

To top the results from the previous years was a true sign that this campaign really working and engaging with the local communities and now the backpacks were an established part of Summer Races. Many clubs have sold through the kids packs in the first hours of the gates opening.

It is anticipated that between 75,000 – 100,000 patrons attended the 40 kids summer race meetings during the campaign.

The overall performance on the CRV Kids Summer Campaign shows attendance up by 9% on previous year and gate revenue up by 23%

Many clubs used social media to promote the Free Backpacks to promote the success of their race days.

As an agency, we were also then invited to participate in a general marketing conference for all clubs involved in with Country Racing Victoria and discuss the benefits of using merchandise and signed a 2-year exclusive partnership agreement to work with Country Racing Victoria across their merchandise requirements.

• https://country.racing.com/
• https://country.racing.com/kids

“The Country Racing Victoria Kids Summer campaign was very successful with good growth in both attendance and gate revenue.”

– Darren Galley. Marketing Manager