Building The Brownsbarn Brand
Newsletter #65
George talks…
Firstly, welcome to all the new subscribers, we had a big influx of converts over the last couple of weeks, the Cheltenham factor I presume!
It seems as though the marketing books were correct. The reaction I’ve received from the last newsletter has led to me labelling one dropbox folder as fan mail! We will keep this newsletter along a similar theme, describing our week to week of building a horse racing syndicate.
Hopefully, similar to last week, you guys will find it interesting!
Building a Brand
Getting your name out there, getting the brand in the forefront of people’s mind, is an easy task to set yourself but difficult to actually execute upon. Marketing as I’ve learned over the past 23 months, is a fine balance between shouting from the roof tops but then allowing your actions do the talking for you. Amongst us three (Charlie, Thomas & myself) at Brownsbarn, there has always been some friction between us as to how much we should be shouting about ourselves, especially when we haven’t actually achieved that much to be boasting about. While I’m all for subtle self promotion, we ultimately want to be judged on winners, stakes horses, the big days out, impact and ultimately our owner’s experience. But you do have to start somewhere.
A sales director once said to me in the past:
“A closed mouth catches no flies” or “the loudest pup gets fed first”!
I once heard Michael O“Leary explain his marketing strategy to an interviewer, to paraphrase:
We had no f**king budget, so all I had to do was say wild s**t and act like a monkey. That got us onto the papers and then we had a €10 seat sale to capitalise.
I would be an admirer of O’ Leary, if we could have half the impact upon the sport as he has had, we would be very pleased.
Like Ryanair in those early days, we have a limited marketing budget. But there is a difference between building a budget airline and a horse racing syndication company. I don’t think it would fit well as a brand for us as brothers to pose as Batman and Robin while driving the Bat-Mobile or for us to do what Ryanair did in Belgium, maybe google that one!
But we must push the gospel according to Brownsbarn out into the world. Tell our story and preach about what we offer.
With the last newsletter, I went into detail on how we terminate our syndicate (check it out here), now, we will go through the first step in forming a syndicate.
I.e. meeting interested people.
The reason we set up this syndicate was to meet new people, win races, unearth stakes horses and bring others along with us.
The germination of this idea happened when I was selling beef over the phone at the Goffs bloodstock sales, Naas, Kildare. While Andrew Nolan was proudly auctioneering in the background, I was questioned by my international clients, was I at a cattle mart?
Somewhere between shocked and intrigued was the response, when I informed Giulio from Italy and Jan from Spain, I was at a horse sale.
Similar to most people, they found the 5 minute synopsis I gave them on horse racing and bloodstock completely fascinating.
After this happened repeatedly, between Arqana, Tattersalls and Doncaster a handful of the brave clients threw their hands up to buy into a racehorse.
Why not they thought?
I then became known at the beef trade shows of Europe as the Irish beef guy who raced horses. I’d imagine it helped me stand out. With several European meat wholesalers along with some of our friends on board to buy shares, we kicked off Brownsbarn Thoroughbreds back in April 2021 and haven’t looked back.
Building a brand on the back of clients, friends and family kindly supporting us, was never going to be sustainable. We aren't a group of scouts selling cakes at the local village fair.
We felt with our combined experience nationally and internationally throughout the horse racing and bloodstock industries that we could provide a unique offering.
But the reality of starting anything is, nobody knows you and nobody really cares. You must go out and make a dent in the world and spread that word by sheer will! I’m back sounding like O’ Leary now!
There are multiple ways that we tackle this “I never heard of you issue”, I won’t go into all of them today but I’ll focus on two things we did in the last couple of weeks that helps put us in front of interested people.
Cheltenham Preview Night
Our first major event of the year was held a fortnight ago in The Claddagh Ring. A little bit off the beaten track in the north of London, it’s a fantastic venue away from the hustle and bustle of central London. We had a packed night with well over 120 people attending the event.
We had a presentation of our horses throughout the venue with flyers, banners and a meet and greet desk for us to chat to potential new owners who wished to speak to us about ownership with Brownsbarn.
It’s the personal touch of meeting someone face to face that always makes the difference. Buying into a syndicate, if you don’t get a feel for the people involved in managing the outfit, then you probably won’t enjoy the experience.
It’s not like buying a chocolate bar, if the shopkeeper is rude, you will still enjoy your Dairy Milk with your coffee in the car.
A syndicate manager and owner are married for the medium term!
All our club members and owners were catered for on the night with a drinks tab and food. It was a proper night for everyone where all the notebooks were furiously filled, all night long. Looking after people who have joined the team and supported us is paramount, we wouldn’t be where we are without them.
Events are the fabric that binds our experience together, although they are time consuming to plan and organise. When you do organise an event, you hope you grab people’s attention when they attend, you hope they enjoy it, and want to come to another.
Luckily at the Claddagh we had a packed house, people in standing room and the bar was thronged. Interested people getting to meet us face to face, to talk horses. We were in our element.
Its’s all part of building that brand and putting Brownsbarn in the spotlight.
Cheltenham Sweepstakes 2023
While the preview night was a face to face event, this next project that we ran last week for Cheltenham, was online based.
We set up the BBT Racing Club before Christmas as an introduction to race horse ownership. It’s an inexpensive way to get to learn about how we operate, how we do what we do.
Everybody likes to keep an eye on Cheltenham, everybody will watch the big races. It’s one week that captivates the audience annually, beyond horse racing purists.
We went out on a limb for Cheltenham and put up €500 in cash prizes ourselves, and close to €1000 in Brownsbarn prizes for the sweepstakes for Cheltenham.
It was a belting success, many thanks to all who emailed in telling us how much they enjoyed the week. It means a lot.
We had 3 winners of decent cash prizes of €300, €150 and €50 going the way to Mitch, John and Anthony followed by Matthew, Ollie and Matt taking home the remainder of the prizes.
We learned a lot about running the competition, so we decided to make some changes going forward that we think will improve the experience overall.
We will now make the sweepstakes open to for anyone to enter. This will help us keep the numbers up and will give people a chance to foster a love of watching racing.
We will have different entry fees for Club members compared to a non-member. Members enjoy a 50% discount on entry to the Sweepstakes.
E.g.
Member Entry = €10
Non-Member Entry = €20
With the competitions open, we hope to have an increase in the prize funds.
Four Prizes
1st cash 60% - e.g. €300
2nd cash 30% - e.g. €150
3rd cash 10% - e.g. €50
4th Annual BBT Racing Club Membership
We will make the sweepstakes keep the large format with at least 10 races per competiton, including a NAP per day.
The next competition is due to take place 13th/14th/15th April for The Grand National Meeting at Aintree.
Check out the rest of the dates for the year below.
Sweepstakes Calendar
Aintree Grand National Weekend 2023
Newmarket Guineas & Kentucky Derby Weekend 2023
Royal Ascot Week 2023
Irish Derby Weekend 2023
Irish Champions Weekend 2023
ARC Weekend 2023
Breeders Cup 2023
Leopardstown, Kempton etc. Christmas 2023
Dublin Racing Festival 2024
Cheltenham Festival 2024
If you would like to join one of our syndicates the details of both our current racehorses are below. We are close to being sold out on COVERTLY our 3 year old filly in training with George Boughey.
The flat racing season has now begun, this filly has received her handicap mark and is in training with a classic winning maestro.
Our Dandy Man filly is close to being sold out after Kevin’s report last week with a handful of existing owners taking a larger position in her.
Feel free to give Thomas, Charlie or myself a call to organise a viewing and meet the Brownsbarn team.
Contact Details here.
The BBT Introduction to Horse Racing Ownership
Connect with us on Social
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RT @georgyallen1: Horse racing social media lives on Twitter 🐎 Here are several of my favourite horse racing related Twitter accoun… https://t.co/qFqSAHkaz0 -
Our next Festival Sweepstakes will be for the Aintree Festival including The Grand National Our Cheltenham compet… https://t.co/ObBoc9Yv9i
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Who will be champion apprentice 2023? The British Apprentice jockey championship begins May 6th 2023 & ends on Bri… https://t.co/d1J2BjRBPN