Santa Anita Looks to Connect With Social Networking

If you can’t beat ’em or join ’em, might as well turn to new alternatives.

That’s why marketing department has launched a high-tech media campaign involving social networks, as well as its own website and others. It’s the Arcadia racetrack’s response to the decreasing amount of coverage in the mainstream media, particularly the Los Angeles Times.

In our last Patch dispatch, we discussed the Times having cut back on its horse racing coverage, particularly since laying off its last full-time racing writer and its longtime handicapper in July 2008. That writer was me, the handicapper was Bob Mieszerski.

I was told at the time that, because of space limitations and financial considerations, the newspaper would no longer print a handicap or results and only major races would be covered.

Santa Anita didn’t take that lying down. A group of officials that included marketing chief Allen Gutterman and media buyer David Beanstock met with a group of Times corporate executives and tried to convince them that virtually ignoring horse racing was a mistake. They made some headway by pointing out that Santa Anita spends quite a bit of money advertising on Tribune-owned KTLA Channel 5. The Chicago-based Tribune Co. also owns the Times.

The Times ended up offering Mieszerski his job back, but he declined, opting to take a buyout package. The Times then began using a syndicated handicap that most horse players find confusing and hard to read. And it prints race charts, but in an abbreviated   form.

However, with no full-time horse racing writer, the amount of editorial space devoted to horse racing has diminished significantly.

The Pasadena Star-News and other members of Los Angeles Newspaper Group devote more space to racing than the Times, but overall newspaper coverage is a far cry from what it used to be.

Now, heading into Sunday’s opening of the winter-spring meet, Santa Anita has social networking to help fill the void. The new media campaign includes the use of such things as YouTube Flip Cam interviews, Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, Linkedin, Tycoon Mobile, daily Santa Anita blogs, e-mail blasts and online contests.

Santa Anita, which has beefed up its own website, can also reach customers through two local news websites--our Arcadia Patch, which is new, and arcadiasbest.com, which has been around for several years.

The websites and social networks can be used for not only distributing hard news and race results but also information about special promotions. Newspapers generally ignore Santa Anita’s promotions, such as the calendar giveaway on opening day Sunday. Every paying customer will receive a full-color calendar entitled “Santa Anita on the Silver Screen.” It features that have been shot at “The Great Race Place” since it opened in 1934.

Now Santa Anita has new ways of getting the word out about such things. But that doesn’t mean ignoring the old ways.

“Television advertising is still the most useful way to get the word out,” Gutterman told Patch. “Direct mail seems old school, but it is still phenomenally productive and permits us to reach our customers for very little money. And we still have to service those who don’t have Blackberries or iPhones or are not Web savvy."

“With the social networks, maybe we’re only reaching 8 percent of the population, but the world is continually changing and we have to stay out in front,” he added.

Delving into such new areas as social networking can be a daunting task, particularly for the older set. Gutterman credits his staff in general for pulling it off and in particular singles out Chris Quinn, the head of sales.

“My secret is that I have a terrific staff–most of them at half my age–and they make me look very smart,” he said.