TALK
SUNDAY BEST Marketeer Tamra FitzGerald explains how working with International Polo Club Palm Beach on a powerhouse campaign raised not only its profile but its revenues, too
When John Wash, the former president of the International Polo Club, called me in 2012 and asked if our company would be interested in handling the marketing for the IPC, I hesitated. Although I’d lived in Palm Beach County for 24 years, I was not familiar with the club. In fact, I’d never even seen a polo match. And neither had nine out of 10 people of my acquaintance. Polo? I’d heard of Ralph Lauren. And Nacho Figueras – wasn’t he the model for the Ralph Lauren Polo brand? Did he really play polo? The IPC viability was under threat, but it’s just this type of challenge that we like at Venue Marketing, so we agreed to create a strategic marketing programme that would fortify the club’s position as America’s premier polo facility.
28
28 29 TALK Palm Beach Sunday GW EOG RVN.indd 28
As we began to prepare for the club’s 10th anniversary in 2013, it became clear to us that people who follow polo absolutely love the sport. Readers of Hurlingham are those people. However, the majority of Americans are not. It was obvious to me that our goal had to be to introduce polo and, more importantly, its lifestyle, to the non-equestrian world. So, how did we go from having fewer than 1,000 people at a Sunday match to averaging over 5,000 spectators during the 2016 season? Well, we developed and executed an aggressive public-relations programme, crafted new messaging that ignited fresh enthusiasm for IPC’s tournament matches, and steadily cultivated new markets to engage people in the
excitement of the sport and the polo scene itself. In short, our campaign introduced Palm Beach County to the ‘game of kings’. We communicated the athleticism of both players and ponies, the rules, the game-day traditions, even the fashion. We targeted a non-polo audience, while still reaching polo enthusiasts through both paid and earned media. The IPC was absolutely everywhere: on TV, radio, in newspapers and magazines, on billboards, and at the airport – not to mention all over social-media platforms. We also aligned the IPC with Florida’s powerhouse tourism agencies and captured a slice of the audience share of the 95 million travellers who visit the region every year. Our efforts were recognised in 2013, when
hurlinghampolo.com
03/10/2016 15:31
