Our brief from Cheltenham Racecourse was to provide a public relations platform on which to build the Cheltenham racing brand in the minds of new target audiences and potential ambassadors, especially women. Cheltenham Racecourse also wanted to build on and foster excellent community relations locally and further afield.
Montpellier introduced Ladies Day to The Festival and event managed every aspect of the concept from its launch to the day itself.
Over the past five years, the management at Cheltenham Racecourse has been keen to reach out to new audiences. One key target is to try and encourage more women to attend The Festival which has notoriously had a very male dominated following.
The Festival at Cheltenham has an iconic reputation as one of the top jump racing events in the UK and Gold Cup day is always a sell out. Festival Thursday however is notoriously a quieter day and for that reason, Edward Gillespie brought in Montpellier to help them address this and try to assist in reaching out to new target audiences.
Montpellier PR put together a definitive strategy to achieve this. Following an intensive period of research, which included a fact-finding mission to Galway Races in Ireland which boasts an extremely successful Ladies Day, the concept of Ladies Day at The Festival was born. The fact finding mission included representatives from Montpellier, the racecourse plus business leaders and retailers from Cheltenham town centre who would be key to making any Cheltenham Ladies Day a success.
Ladies Day at Cheltenham also had the joint objective of trying to improve relations with local retailers who traditionally have experienced a dip in sales during The Festival. The reason for this trading dip is that Cheltenham town centre shops are very quiet during The Festival period – visitors to the town are often up at the racecourse during the day while locals avoid the town centre as they have the perception that it will be very busy and traffic in the area will be very heavy. By introducing Ladies Day, it was hoped this additional focus to The Festival would help drive retail fashion sales.
• To provide a public relations platform on which to build the Cheltenham brand in
the minds of new target audiences and potential ambassadors, especially women.
• To build on and foster excellent community relations locally and further afield.
• To provide a mechanism for local retailers to overcome traditional trading dips
throughout The Festival.
• To act as catalyst for a longer term increase in ticket sales on the third day of The
Festival.
Planning for Ladies Day 2008 (March 13) started back in July 2007. The project consisted of four major elements including brand creation, the launch event, the Ladies Day shopping weekend and Ladies Day itself at The Festival.
Brand creation
Montpellier first created a robust brand identity for the Ladies Day concept, which incorporated a logo and distinctive colour scheme. The branding was to be used across all mediums, event collateral PR, web and advertising. Working with the racecourse, Montpellier also selected a Ladies Day ambassador who could act as a media spokesperson for the event. Jacqui O’Neill, wife of top racehorse trainer Jonjo O’Neill, was selected. Two photo shoots were choreographed with Mrs O’Neill. Images were then used across an array of collateral.
Launch event
The Ladies Day programme was introduced to the retailers at a high profile reception hosted at Cheltenham’s Hotel Du Vin in October 07. The event was attended by more than 100 retailers representing stores from across the town. Montpellier was responsible for designing and distributing invitations, guest list management, venue liaison plus event management on the evening itself.
Retailer based initiatives
Having created a strong brand identity, Montpellier set about brainstorming methods in which we could help retailers benefit from The Festival and drive awareness of the event. One idea which came out from this was the idea of hosting a Ladies Day Shopping Weekend.
Montpellier was responsible for project managing the Ladies Day Shopping Weekend, an initiative designed to boost pre-Festival town centre trade. The event took place three weeks prior to The Festival.
Montpellier was responsible for reaching out to retailers to encourage them to participate in the shopping weekend and host special events in their stores. The method used to achieve this included a face-to-face communication strategy plus regular newsletter updates.
Numerous fashion shows, including a flagship catwalk event at Cavendish House (part of the House of Fraser Group), discount promotions and special events took place in Cheltenham designed to encourage women to purchase their Ladies Day outfits in the town centre.
In addition to the Ladies Day Shopping Weekend, a retailer discount voucher was produced which shops were able to distribute to their customers. The voucher entitled people who shopped in the town centre the chance to get discounted tickets to The Festival.
To aid promotion of Ladies Day across the town, Montpellier secured a sponsorship deal with Peugeot UK who supplied on loan for three months a new 4007 4WD to be driven by Ladies Day ambassador Jacqui O’Neill (wife of top trainer Jonjo O’Neill.) Adorned in Ladies Day livery, it was also located at key static sites across Cheltenham during the period running up to The Festival. Other elements to the Ladies Day project (pre-Festival) included a town centre presence of advertising lamp-post pennants plus an internet seeding campaign.
Ladies Day Fashion Awards
Montpellier was responsible for event managing every aspect of the Ladies Day activity at The Festival. This included the staging of the highly anticipated Fashion Awards. Montpellier sourced over £10,000 worth of prizes for this event from local retailers in and around the Gloucestershire area.
Due to high winds, the Wednesday of The Festival was cancelled which meant significant changes to the Thursday Ladies Day running order. The start of racing was brought forward to 12.30 which meant that the Fashion Award proceedings also had to be altered. The Montpellier team had to get all collateral reprinted within 24 hours to reflect the changes in times to the revised schedule.
Cheltenham Racecourse made it very clear from the outset that the Fashion Awards must have been presented by the time the racing started. As the racing was all brought forward by nearly two hours, the Montpellier team had just 2 hours to process all entries in the Fashion Awards, select the winner and present the prize.
Fashion scouts were out on the course from 10am when the gates opened looking for women wearing award-winning outfits. They were then given a card inviting them to attend the judging marquee and claim their free glass of champagne. A total of 122 women entered the Fashion awards in under an hour. They were photographed and had to parade in front of the judges which included last year’s winner, Rebecca Gorringe, fashion stylist Nikki Aizlewood and hair stylist Lisa Wilde.
Judges then had half an hour to make a decision. The winners were phoned on their mobile and asked to report to the Parade Ring where the presentations would be made. Montpellier not only managed all aspects of the judging but also handled all media enquiries. Extensive coverage was achieved of the fashion awards, both broadcast and print, on stations including Channel 4 and Setanta plus on Talk Sport and various national newspapers.
On top of the Fashion Awards, Montpellier was also responsible for coordinating the strategy to reach out to racegoers who were in the Best Mate enclosure and unable to enter the Fashion Awards. Montpellier put a team including a photographer into the enclosure which gave away free souvenir Polaroid photographs. More than 200 of these were given away during the afternoon.
Outcome including formal evaluation of results
The Ladies Day shopping weekend was designed to allow retailers to engage in Ladies Day and host pre-racing events in their store. Over 20 retailers (equating to over 40% of high end spend) hosted in-store events during the weekend while others including Marks & Spencers which hosted their own Ladies Day events in the week immediately prior to The Festival.
The weekend itself was kicked of by a large event in House of Fraser, attended by over 150 women in the stipulated 22 – 55 AB category. Fashion Shows and makeovers were put on by staff. This was one of the biggest after-hours events which Cavendish House has ever hosted and, according to the general manager, the most successful with till takings in excess of £15k in the two hour period!
Cheltenham Racecourse also had a presence at the evening sold some 30 Festival tickets. Winston’s Wish, the official Ladies Day Charity, was also in attendance and ran the raffle.
In the days following, a Ladies Day road show also took place in The Regent Arcade, the main shopping precinct, to coincide with the Ladies Day Shopping Weekend. This was supported by live radio broadcasts, ticket sales and branded balloons to boost awareness.
Following this Weekend, many retailers reported significant increases in sales over the two day period. The Per Una outlet at Cheltenham’s M&S – a key stakeholder - was for the second year the retail chain’s biggest earner nationwide, meanwhile an impressive 122 women entered The Fashion Awards within an hour.
Relation to objectives and cost-effectiveness
• A total of 23 retailers put on pre-Festival Ladies Day events
• Approximately 500 women were engaged in pre-Festival Ladies Day activity
through attendance of events
• Ladies Day was a complete ticket sell-out this year
• After only two years, Ladies Day at The Festival attracted more than 125 women to
enter the fashion awards. This was even with the amended timetable of events
as a result of Wednesday’s Festival cancellation.
• Over 200 free Polaroid souvenir photos were given to racegoers in the Best Mate
Enclosure
• Advertising Equivalent surrounding Ladies Day was in excess of £250k with
extensive coverage in local media plus national TV and radio, including Setanta
Sports, Channel 4 and Talk Sport.
Creativity/Originality
Montpellier had earlier conceived the concept of Ladies Day, organised a fact-finding trip to Galway Races, and on the strength of this formula for success the consultancy was commissioned to extend the reach to stakeholders in the local business community and the race going fraternity. A sceptical client was won over and convinced by the case made by Montpellier in the need for a Ladies Day, which has now catapulted Cheltenham into an extended Festival benefiting from additional income streams.