Marketing horse racing and what adman Don Draper might have done.

Coming from the advertising and music industries and having worked with clients like McDonald’s, MTV, Seagrams and artists as diverse as Robbie Williams, Coldplay, the brilliant Gorillaz project and Eminem, it’s always interesting to visit the horse racing business model and see how it might have changed, or even if it’s still there.

Having been introduced to horse racing through nights out in London at the gentleman’s club called Aspinall’s and those years of meeting the horse racing fraternity at Fidel’s during the Australian Spring Carnival, it wasn’t until a chance meeting in Hong Kong with Hong Kong Jockey Club CEO Winfried Engelbrecht-Bresges and which led to me creating the Happy Wednesday brand for the HKJC, did I bother to really educate myself about the pastime that’s sometimes a sport and vice versa

Let’s not forget that us advertising “mad men” never or very seldom dealt with those in horse racing. It was beneath us and part of a strange “caste system” where being in advertising even trumped being in the music industry which was seen as a motley crew of vagabonds surrounded by those with not much moral fibre.

Being the online Racingbitch for a few years as some form of weird therapy and gonzo journalistic fun helped me to understand the various politics involved in horse racing and how one size doesn’t fit all.

So, this week when a friend sent me a recent video of Channel 7’s knowledgeable Mick Guerin interviewing and seemingly auditioning for a job with Peter V’Landys, the head of Racing New South Wales, I decided to relook at horse racing outside of Hong Kong, and study how the pastime might have evolved or dissolved or is still sticking to the basics of the usual time honoured corporate narrative of serving warmed over waffles and cockles.

It goes without saying that Peter V’Landys doesn’t lack confidence. Sometimes, he reminds me of actor James Cagney getting rid of all those “dirty rats” and basically bulldozing his way to where he wants to go. There are also those times when he reminds me of a rather obscure singer named Timi Yuro and Yosemite Sam.

By taking some parts of the Pegasus slot race concept from America and relentlessly promoting the race as the Everest in New South Wales, he created a hugely successful Group 1 race that is not a Group 1 race, but is something that especially those “younger people” find attractive.

It took huge gonads for him to achieve this, and it would be churlish not to applaud him for this and turning an idea into a brand that even Don Draper would have approved.

Watching the interview, and listening to Pete, it would appear that the Everest is needed by the world, and he is very much bang on when he mentions that these “younger people” couldn’t care less if it was a Group race or not and probably think that the Pattern Committee designs nice little frocks.

With the world’s champion Hong Kong galloper Ka Ying Rising headlining The Race That Stops The World on Saturday at Randwick, at least according to Pete, the Everest has become bigger than Mr Creosote getting stuffed by a sausage on a hot tin roof.

Of course, the Everest is a winner in Australia, where many live and breathe and dine out on horse racing and it does indeed attract those “younger people” to this particular race day.

As for the sustainability of this consumer group in a down economy?

Do those “younger people” revelling on Everest day stay at home on other race days fixing their plumbing, and how consistent is their support of horse racing?

Let’s not forget that working on the Happy Wednesday brand for over a dozen years taught me much about how to make the pieces fit for the racing community and the very much newbie international youth market- mainly females in their mid twenties- who thought the same horses ran in every race.

Globally, and during the post pandemic malaise affecting many around the world these days, it’s time for some truth serum, and owning up that none of us are getting any younger.

It’s always interesting to see if the years have mellowed some of us and how we look at different businesses or might be thinking about being the big Poohbah of a Lithuanian love cult in Co

As part of a refresher course about those Changes David Bowie once sang about, in a bit over a decade, we have seen the global music industry pretty much skittled by Daniel Ek’s music streaming service known as Spotify.

Who would have thought this day would arrive after the major music companies successfully suing illegal music file sharing site Napster?

We thought we had rid ourselves of a wascally wabbit and could continue to swan around the world attending one useless conference after the next and living la vida loca.

Of course, those days are way back in the rear view mirror and we have had to change gears in order not to get stuck in reverse waiting for the traffic lights to change.

The film and television industries have also had to “adjust” their business models to survive the juggernaut that is Netflix and other streaming services coming on stream.

Earlier this week, MTV Europe announced that it was closing down- and not a minute too soon. MTV has been irrelevant for over a decade.

And now a word from my friend and mentor in advertising…

As for horse racing, well, it remains a turnover driven product, where it has to keep refreshing its image over and over again to introduce it to a new and constantly changing audience plus ways of fending off its critics while appeasing various governments and mindful of what happened to the now closed Singapore Turf Club.

To do this, and this is rarely mentioned, horse racing needs advertisers- popular consumer brands- because you’re judged by the company you keep, and where one’s brand personality is everything.

Does horse racing have a brand personality and if so, what is it and how is this being worked in 2025/26?

Is advertising and marketing even needed or would it be more cost effective to first woo popular consumer brands as business partners and piggyback on their customer bases and marketing efforts and advertising expenditure?

For horse racing, every racing jurisdiction has a different image, so when it comes to connecting with potential customers, especially those “younger people” who are its future, it can mean very different strategies.

There’s also that existing customer base and the world of horse racing is not exactly having its executives singing “We Are The World”, because this won’t be true.

The type of marketing for horse racing that works in Japan, for example, might work there, but how well does it travel internationally?

When having to look after Toshiba EMI, we managed to get a million dollar sync deal for Bon Jovi because of “It’s My Life”, but could do nothing for Utada Hikaru, at that time, Japan’s most popular artist, and the millions we spent in trying to break her into the American market.

The simple answer is that horse racing in Japan is uniquely Japanese and for Japanese racing fans and French rider Christophe Lemaire, below, who reads, writes and speaks fluent Japanese.

Sure, there are the now hackneyed copycat ideas from Japan like giving away plushies or creating plushy mascots for mainly the females in the Selfie Generation- but who is driving these copycat ideas and how relevant are they to those “younger people” outside of the land of the rising sun?

Is this Baby Boomer generated thinking for GenZ when the latter often doesn’t even know who they are?

Returning to The Guerin Interview, there is a fairly new bromance going on between the well connected Peter V’Landys in Australia, and HKJC CEO Winfried Engelbrecht-Bresges after over two decades of a war of attrition between these two heads of states- Racing New South Wales and the Hong Kong Jockey Club, respectively.

How this rift almost miraculously healed itself and is now swimming in the same whirlpool and seemingly singing “You Lift Me Up” is an interesting subject and something for another day. 

In many ways, the relationship between these two heads of horse racing reminds me of the supposed bitter rivalry between the two Simons of the entertainment industry- Simon Cowell and Simon Fuller.

Having introduced Simon Fuller and X1X Entertainment to the HKJC in June of this year, and with a partnership in place between XIX Entertainment and the Hong Kong Jockey Club, it’s still difficult to get my head around how this could work, especially as Hong Kong, a bilingual and almost trilingual city, is in the throes of massive change. But Simon and Winfried are savvy business people.

For my money, where horse racing fits in with entertainment means the type of strategic thinking that happens organically- ironically with much work behind the scenes.

Bring in research groups along with the kitchen sink and you could be part of what’s ailing the world today: Oversupply and insufficient demand.

Watching Mick Guerin continue to almost fawn over Peter V’Landys, the Yosemite Sam of horse racing played every question bowled his way with a straight bat and perfect for his audience.

Me, I was getting fidgety and not seeing exactly a clear path nor the legs to carry horse racing forward though over the past few years, I have heard about a Netflix documentary on J-Mac, legalised betting on horse racing in China and this pastime becoming part of entertainment and not just bibs and bobs of ‘live’ music in between or before and after the races.

There’s something to be said for the latter, but it can’t be done by forcing a square peg into a round hole.

Plus that’s already been done though without the necessary “mobility”.

It might also be time to understand just how different “younger people” are around the world and what they’re prepared to buy into at a time when they’re trying to see what they might inherit for their futures and find Hope and Happiness.

If these “younger people” see horse racing as part of their inheritance, THEY will make the pastime/sport/whatever work for THEM in ways many of us don’t know.

And that’s all HE wrote.

Hans Ebert from the upcoming thingy called “I Write And Therefore I Am”.

Dedicated to the smile and light and joy of Diane Keaton.

You were generous 

and honest 

You were awkward 

and so very true

You were la de dah 

And oh so la la

You were Annie Hall

And always very you

Saw you at 

the train station 

Held you tight and said 

“Please don’t leave”

Went shooting at the moon 

Something had to give

I was your Michael 

And you were my Kay

Slow dancing 

inside a rainstorm 

It still seems like 

only yesterday

Play it again, Sam

And shoot the moon

Shoot the lights out 

And fade to black 

Keaton’s gone

And she’s not 

coming back 

She’s not coming back 

Not anytime soon

But your awkward ways

and random nervousness 

They will always 

stay with me

There’s nothing 

more to say 

Except maybe 

la de dah

La de dah 

and la la 

No more searching 

and not finding 

No more looking for 

Mr Goodbar

See you soon 

And when we do 

we’ll shoot the moon 

And quietly disappear 

into the dance

Because it’s not over 

Until it’s over 

It never was 

And never is 

It never will be

Copyright ©️ Hans Ebert October 2025