It's A Sign

by Jessica Owers

Behind every event at the Magic Millions carnival is signage, and behind the signage is the Gold Coast-based ABS Signs. Jessica Owers goes behind the scenes of one of the carnival’s most critical components.

Each January, it takes more than thoroughbreds to make a Magic Millions carnival. Think advertising, marketing and promotional signage. From the polo and the races to the Ascot Court sale ring, each of the Magic Millions events is decorated with the fruits of careful branding.

But have you ever wondered about the guy that makes it happen, the man who hangs the signs, mounts the flags and prints the banners? If over half of first impressions in branding are visual, then this guy is important.

Meet Mark Pogson, owner of the locally based ABS Signs. He’s a family guy – wife Kate, three kids, a nice home in Ormeau – and he’s a cog in the carnival wheel from November to late January. Since 2006, when he bought ABS Signs, he has had the signage contract for the Magic Millions carnival. It means everything from the racecourse archway to the owners’ placards at the barrier draw, from the street flags to the sponsors’ banners on the beach.

“It’s our biggest job of the year without a doubt, and it’s such a short space of time too,” Pogson says. “There are the events themselves, but there is so much to do leading up to them. It takes a full week to set up at the racetrack for example, and that’s in the middle of everything else that is going on.”

ABS Signs has a full-time crew of five, but the payroll can swell to 12 in January. Wife Kate works full-time in the business, along with general manager and “working wife” Meghan Purton, who has been at ABS Signs for over 13 years. The guys that come in annually as subcontractors have been coming back for 10 and more years, a testament to how much they enjoy the job.

In an event the size of Magic Millions, sponsorship and branding are critical. The success of the events hangs on sponsor support, and if a sign can go here or a flag there, or a rooftop banner can make use of the helicopters overhead, ABS Signs will make it happen. After each carnival, Magic Millions reviews all of the footage to see where an opportunity might exist for the following year, and Pogson works with that. He has come to know what Magic Millions expects.

“We kick off in November with the auditorium signage, working out who is a current sponsor, who is dropping off and who is coming in. They might change the prizemoney for Women In Racing, so we might need to change that banner. We’ve got the Race Series banner which needs to have the winners updated, so we redo that skin, and then we start going to all the barns with those past winners because that signage changes every year. And then there are all the events, and those can be at the casino, at the polo fields, at the beach and at the racecourse.”

The Tuesday barrier draw, with its beach gallops, is one of the trickiest events for ABS Signs. At 3am on the Esplanade at Surfers Paradise, too late for the club crowd and too early for the gym junkies, Pogson is there with his crew. They have just three hours before the street is full, the broadcasts begin and the horses are on the sand, and, if they’re lucky, the weather co-operates. If they’re not, it can be a hell of a morning.

“The barrier draw,” and Pogson laughs. “Let’s just say it’s not the ideal time for the majority of the guys to be waking up.”

There have been years when the ABS crew has had to move 150 metres of beach railing with just minutes to spare. They’ve been chased off the beach, they’ve had rain, high winds and high summer, and yet the Tuesday dawn event is one of their best of the job. It’s fast and exciting and the television coverage excellent, so the signage needs to be on-point.

“It’s something really different for us and it’s really enjoyable. The barrier draw is probably one of the reasons why we have the same guys coming back as subcontractors every year.”

From A-frame ‘Toblerone’ signs to clear acrylic flapping from the top of The Darling, ABS Signs does them all for Magic Millions. On-hand are the tools of the trade… concrete blocks, hooks, rigging and zip ties by the hundreds.

‘With all the outside signage, and I’m a chippy by trade, making sure it stays up in the wind is critical,” Pogson says. “To this day, touch wood, we haven’t had one fall down, and we’ve had some wicked winds during that barrier draw on the beach. But we build for those strong winds so that Magic Millions can get through the event without a piece flapping around and causing injuries.”

For the rest of the year, Pogson doesn’t need to account for equine safety. It’s one of the unusual characteristics of the Magic Millions contract. One of the further challenges is the January timing of the carnival.

“It’s hard family-wise, but probably the hardest part is that the suppliers start shutting anywhere from one week ahead of Christmas to two

weeks for some of them. If we can’t purchase the materials for these jobs, it becomes really difficult. We’ll pre-empt things a bit and buy extra corflute or metal sheeting, but sometimes the only good thing is that Bunnings is open every day bar Christmas Day for all the screws and timber, that sort of thing.”

Printing 50 metres of signage overnight has become part of this job for Pogson. Sponsors can come in and out at a moment’s notice, and artwork can be late, printers can go wrong and staff can be sick. Sometimes, they deliver by the skin of their teeth, but there’s a reason why Magic Millions has worked with ABS Signs for 18 years.

“Sponsor relationships are so important and it’s why we have this business,” Pogson says.

“Everyone, at the end of the day, needs to advertise. Magic Millions capitalises massively on promoting all its sponsors and they’re really good at it, and that’s why they get so many of those big names.

“If you look at the Melbourne Cup, it’s very pretty and very heritage, but we’re a different culture up here. It’s bright, it’s bubbly and we’re out in the sunshine, and it’s why Magic Millions is such a different carnival to promote.”

Of all the jobs in the contract, Pogson’s favourite is perfecting the horseshoe archway at the Gold Coast Turf Club. The current one has been brought out and facelifted every year for the last 14 years, and it is iconic. The fact that so much of the Magic Millions signage is reused each year is a point of pride for Pogson who says that the signage business, using mostly plastics, struggles with environmental responsibility.

“So much signage just gets binned at the end of an event, so if we can reuse some of it, that’s our way of doing our bit,” he says. “Some of those Magic Millions signs are used again and again, some of them for up to 10 years.”

Branding is a careful business. Some years ago, a survey of 1000 people discovered that over 70 per cent of respondents believed good signage to be more important than social media. It’s why Mark Pogson has a business, and why that business, ABS Signs, is fundamental to Magic Millions every January.

“…we’re a different culture up here. It’s bright, it’s bubbly and we’re out in the sunshine, and it’s why Magic Millions is such a different carnival to promote.”