As the home of the Dubai World Cup, the world’s richest horserace, Dubai Racing Club had a bit of a dilemna; how can they harness the immense interest they receive for that one big race day into an a sustainable, thriving business opportunity.

AGORA was tasked with an important project: Create a stand-alone identity that would promote Dubai Racing Club’s conference & banqueting facilities while taking advantage of it’s established brand values. We knew first hand that Dubai Racing Club offers conference and banqueting facilities in a retreat – like atmosphere with 5-star catering, world-class business services and the added value of combining race nights within any given program of events. That’s the first rule of experiential marketing; experience the brand from the customer’s perspective. The rest is made easy once these insights are achieved.

So we put our business hat on. And in so doing, devised a comprehensive, integrated campaign across all the brand touchpoints. The home of the world’s richest horserace effectively became the home of many-a-business-conference.

10,000.

That was the extra number of partigoers that the organisers of the Dubai World Cup, the world’s richest horse race,  wanted to enter partizone 2008. No easy task, considering that was on top of the 45,000 people that attended the year before.

Our scholastic experience taught us that it was 10 times more expensive to get a new customer than it was to grow current ones. Luckily, we’re also good at math. We tapped into the eager race-going socialites that attended the Dubai World Cup. Everyone wanted a great party. So we gave out CD mixed by our partizone DJ. We placed key messages at key venues, related to the general vibe. In short we built it, and they came. Sales went through the roof. Good thing, as we seemed to have brought the roof down. After all, growing attendance by 10,000 was no easy matter. So we when the party ended and the receipts added up, we were surprised to know that we exceeded the target by 4,000. And that’s when the celebrations heated up.

Dubai Racing Club recognised Silks’ appeal had been slowly diminishing over time.

With one year to go before moving to a new state-of-the-art venue, they approached us with a dilemma: Do we write off the current year and launch something spectacular next season or do we make this year the cliffhanging season finale? We chose drama.

To feed their clienteles’ enthusiasm while luring new members to the fold, Silks had to live up to their brand values. To do this, we had to reinvent each touchpoint to truly reflect the aura of this exclusive members club. In other words, we had to show that they could walk the walk.

Research revealed insights into the brand’s identity and how it related to members emotional as well as rational wants. We set about filling these gaps by updating every single touchpoint and linking them all into the Silks legacy.

To reflect the revitalised image and positioning, core brand touchpoints became the hallmarks of the refreshed branding program. The entire customer experience was reshaped and glorified. In addition to the new communications campaign, members benefits and totally updated members lounge, signature Silks welcome drinks and canapes were created, thereby cementing the exclusive nature of this aspirational club.

Once we were able to get the experiential touchpoints right, we then focused on the communication touchpoints. The campaign was developed to touch our varied audience in language that they could relate to, in a forum they feel they belong.