Where Is It?

by Ed Meyer

posted on January 15, 2009 in General Discussion | No Comments >>

I am a Director of Marketing. You know, the person who gets to decide which commercial annoys you and goes where? The stuff that you read about, and then decide to go to the races. Well, that is the way it is suppose to work. But sometimes, the powers that be make it tough.

When I was a boy, I would awake and read the entries and results of yesterdays races on a Saturday morning with my dad. We would talk about who won and where. The charts looked liked the Daily Racing Form. The section was even called the “racing edition.”

Somewhere, somehow it was decided that racing coverage was for the bird’s cage. They enjoy covering: curling, next year’s cricket, local men’s ping pong, and of course high school girls basketball. All of these deserve a place, and so does racing.

So the moral of the story begins when a newspaper rep cold calls me and wants my track to advertise with the special low, low prices. “Does he have a special deal for me!”

After hearing this, I retorted with where is the racing coverage? What happened to the racing section? We have two tracks less than 10 miles apart and NO coverage. If he could bring back a fair share of coverage for our sport, I would be glad to allocate dollars to his publication.

He drew a long sigh, and blamed everybody except Iran. He said it was no longer interesting. I asked, ” who is not interested?” I am, and so are others. Is there a focus group that says nuke the racing section? I will not name the paper for having a modicum of class. I feel this is a great oversight on their part, and they are losing business. They need to compete with electronic media, and are looking for ideas. Well, I gave them, and he didn’t like them.

I asked him if he knew anything about the Internet. He asked why? I then proceeded to tell him that this may be his next stop in a competitive economy that needs to listen to the advertisers and readers. By having some yuppie in an office drinking a Starbucks grande caffe’ latte, pushing the buttons on what is covered, is a dangerous situation. I think they should ask and listen. Be more concerned about survival rather than selecting what is important to their golf buddies.

In the end, I informed the rep to bring back coverage. If he did, I would be the first call he would get that morning. Funny thing, I have not heard back to this date.