Conor McGregor and The Pegasus World Cup

Conor McGregor and The Pegasus World Cup

The Pegasus World Cup is the world’s richest Thoroughbred horse race!

With just 85 days until the event, I led the pitch team that ultimately won the campaign.

As with any major entertainment or sporting event, branding and awareness was the cornerstone of our focus. The unique challenge with the Pegasus World Cup was that it was a first-of-its-kind horse race and that the millennial audience’s awareness for horse racing does not exist.

As part of our pitch and the campaign, I came up with a concept that would tell the story of a new jockey who was leaving his comfort zone of acting/comedy/or sports and now is determined to win the 12 million dollar Pegasus World Cup.

The original concept was called The Lucky 13th. It now goes by the name of The 13th Jockey and stars UFC MMA double champion Conor McGregor in his first acting role and Saturday Night Live alumni Jon Lovitz.

There are four episodes total in the series and the reaction to them was an overwhelming success. All four live online and on social channels. Episode 4 made its world premiere during the race on NBC, just before the event broadcast.

A full branding exercise was done to create a unique and elegant face to the brand.

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The campaign didn’t start or stop with The 13th Jockey-that was simply a tactic in the campaign. The branding and style guidewere leveraged to elevate the event to encompass fashion and embrace Gulfstream Park’s tropical location in Miami.
Another tactic the client wanted to use to attract a new audience was to advertise in several local lifestyle magazines, Ocean Drive and VOGUE Latin American. Our approach to these ads was to avoid traditional horse racing imagery. We wanted to grab the attention of this new audience and let them know that this event is bold and beautiful and a “can’t miss” social engagement.

To round out the complete campaign, we also did a full out-of-home campaign, sweepstakes, multi-platform banner campaign, social activation campaign and day of event graphics and way-finding design campaign.