52 Fridays is an ongoing series for equestrian professionals and equine business owners and managers, with marketing and public relations stories, ideas, tips, and resources shared here each Friday.
Image courtesy BreyerFest.com
A bunch of equine industry press releases have crossed my computer screen recently, so here’s a potpourri of some news items that I find intriguing from a marketing and/or social media viewpoint.
- Birth control for wild horses!? Yes, you read it right. If you didn’t see that headline, you can read the Humane Society’s (HSUS) news release here, where the Environmental Protection Agency is announcing they’re rolling out a fertility control vaccine for wild horse herds. The wild horse issue is a sensitive one, with passionate and vocal supporters on all sides of this topic, which makes any news or announcements particularly difficult from a public relations viewpoint.
- BreyerFest 2012 jumps on the London Olympics bandwagon with their ‘British Invasion’ theme: The 2012 Summer Olympics news is heating up, and the folks at Breyer are smart to combine a 60s ‘British invasion’ theme (and all the groovy design elements from that era) with the excitement the Olympics are going to generate for their annual BreyerFest event this July at the Kentucky Horse Park in Lexington, Kentucky. Since this year is the 23rd, I imagine these savvy marketers are already thinking about a blow-out celebration for their upcoming 25th event in 2014. What’ll it be? I’m curious to find out!
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Image courtesy Zenyatta.com
Zenyatta’s bouncing baby boy arrives, all 130 pounds worth: Rachel Alexandra might have had her baby first (on Jan 22), but this week Zenyatta’s first foal arrived to much buzz and celebration. How many racehorse owners would fly across half the country just for their broodmare’s delivery? And how many broodmares have their own ‘mare and foal’ collectible plushie? Zenyatta can say ‘yes’ on both items! You can read the ‘baby announcement’ news here at the Lexington Herald-Leader’s Kentucky.com site (love the Herald-Leader, where else does the local mainstream paper report on equine industry stuff in their business section?!), or you can read about the foal’s arrival in ‘Zenyatta’s own words’ at her very own blog in additon to details about the plush pairing at Zenyatta.com. I think the Zenyatta crew does smashingly great marketing and public relations in addition to allowing their horse her very own personality quirks rather than molding her into a box of what a racehorse ‘should’ be. Top marks all around.
- The ESMAs are done for 2012; listen to the wrap-up on Monday morning: If you’re involved in marketing or social media for a horsebiz (or even if you’re not a horsey person but you handle social media for a small business of some other kind), you’ll want to check out the 2012 PagePlay Equestrian Social Media Award (ESMAs) winners. The winners were nominated by their fans, but there was judging by a panel of experts from around the globe, and then the judges’ scores were tabulated with a popular vote to select the winners from the pool of finalists. The Horses In The Morning show on Horse Radio Network will have an all-ESMA wrap-up on Monday morning, March 12; there’s also mobile link, so you can take the show with you via your iPhone or Android smartphone.
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