America's Best Racing will launch a national bus tour next year in an effort to heighten interest in Thoroughbred racing's biggest days.
America's Best Racing, which is housed at followhorseracing.com and was created in the wake of recommendations by McKinsey and Company in 2011, will begin the tour in March 2013, officials said Nov. 14. The 45-foot-long "ABRV" will visit "high-traffic areas and strategic locations within each destination city, seeking to attract a younger audience to horse racing," according to a release.
ABR is looking for six "brand ambassadors" to make the trips and provide content for the ABR website and Twitter feed.
"Our mission is to promote the exciting lifestyle and competition that occur around our sport's best events—highlighting the fashion, celebrity participation, travel opportunities, gambling, and racing—and we believe this is a great way to introduce a younger audience to the sport," said Jason Wilson, vice president of business development for The Jockey Club, which commissioned the McKinsey Report and has implemented various recommendations. "We decided to take our compelling story on the road and to directly interact and engage with the millennial generation on their turf."
While the "ABRV" tour will focus on promoting racing's biggest events throughout the year, the bus and its brand ambassadors will also appear at mainstream events such as top sporting, pop culture, and entertainment venues around the country to further interact with the target demographic. The complete tour schedule will be released in the future.
America's Best Racing also recently hired Leverage Agency as its marketing sponsorship sales and partnership agency. The Jockey Club said the company has expertise in creating marketing partnerships through branded packaging, sponsorship sales, content creation and distribution, public relations, social media, digital, experiential marketing, and asset valuation analytics.
Leverage Agency is based in New York City but has an office in Los Angeles.
