THE SUNSHINE COAST NEWSPAPER COLUMN - THOUGHTS ON THE 'WE RUN AS ONE' PROMOTION CONCEPT

By Graham Potter | Sunday, July 28, 2013

Graham Potter writes a weekly column for the Sunshine Coast daily. Due to demand from those having trouble accessing the paper these columns are now also published on HRO courtesy of the Sunshine Coast daily

Damned if you do. Damned if you don’t!

Racing Queensland officialdom must be living that sentiment after the initial promotion of their ‘We Run As One’ campaign.

Authorities are always being challenged to take the initiative and be proactive in changing the game-face of racing from a negative to a positive, but whenever they do put their heads above the ramparts and come forward with a new idea, they are immediately caught in some vicious cross-fire seemingly intended to bring them down and scatter their plans in the dust before they can gain any traction.

Whatever the rights and wrongs of that situation it does highlight the minefield that the Racing Queensland’s ‘We Run As One’ campaign has to negotiate in the coming weeks if it is to serve its self-stated purpose of being ‘a game changer for the racing industry here in Queensland.’

The Racing Queensland statement also reads, ‘By taking guidance from our mission statement CARE (Collaborate, Assist, Regulate and Enable), the campaign is about engaging our 30,000+ strong base of stakeholders and encouraging them to become brand ambassadors for our great sport’.

Now that is some mission! No small steps here
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While the ‘We Run As One’ campaign is laudable in its intent, I do worry about its feasibility in its current form.

My concern rests firmly and squarely with the fact that the campaign is a tri-code venture.

I am a big advocate of the belief that gallops, greyhounds and harness are separate entities that simply should stand or fall on their own ability to promote their cause as a financially viable racing code … separately.

I want them all to succeed, but on their own merits.

They should not be joined together at the hip in any way. If they were not, the weak would not be able to drag down the strong, so I think that might already be an inherent problem in that mix.

Also, if you can’t get the same absolute interest group to pull together (as has been the case with the near fatal fragmentation in the horse-racing side of things for several years), can a plan possibly work, from a gallops point of view, where you add two new dimensions (greyhounds and harness), and all the extra turbulence they bring, into an already unstable mix?

I’m just asking the question.

I personally don’t see any middle ground.

To me, embracing a tri-code marketing strategy will ultimately either translate into a ‘stroke of genius’ or ‘a fatal flaw.’

As I said, I have concerns it will be the latter, but I would be very happy to be proved wrong and I am open-minded enough to see value in giving the option a full go.

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For the second week in a row there will be no Sunday racing at Corbould Park today.

When action does return to the track next week trainers and riders will be starting with a clean slate statistic-wise as they launch their respective 2013/14 racing season campaigns.

The curtain came down on the 2012/13 season at the track last night which means congratulations are now in order for local Premiership winners Robert Heathcote (Trainers’ Premiership), Damian Browne (Jockeys’ Premiership) and Geoffrey Goold (Apprentice Jockeys’ Premiership).

The Sunshine Coast once again proved it attracts the state’s top participants as evidenced by the fact that Heathcote is a multiple Brisbane Premiership winner (a title he again annexed in comfortable fashion this year) while local hero Damian Browne also added his best ever Brisbane Premiership return this season to his list of credits when finishing second behind Michael Cahill (who, in fact, finished second to Browne in the local standings) in that title chase.

Congratulations to all concerned on a job well done.

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