Listowel Races' Bold New Ad Turns Heads Ahead of Harvest Festival

Johnny Ward has hailed the marketing team at Listowel Races ahead of the Harvest Festival next month.

The team at Listowel, led by social media manager Gerard Mulvihill, have produced an advert with the tag line ‘Be Part Of The Dream’, and cleverly teased the appearance of Racing TV’s Frankie Foster.

'Just A Lovely Thing'

“I loved it actually,” Johnny Ward said of the advert.

“I have to say I’m not working at Listowel this year, we’ll see if I make it down or not. I was there last year and it was definitely an experience, the Harvest Festival.

“They have a young lad, Gerard Mulvihill, who is in charge of their social media team.

“Listowel, I know it’s a bit different because they’re working off a good base with the Harvest Festival, it’s a massive tradition.

“I was actually working the other night (for RacingTV), I hadn’t seen the ad before, and it just came on before I was about to come back from a break. I’d never seen it before and was watching it for the first time. I thought it was really, really nice — just a lovely thing.”

Innovation At The Core Of Listowel’s Marketing

“They’re innovative at Listowel. They had that big teaser about Frankie coming to Listowel and instead of Frankie Dettori, it turned out to be Frankie Foster from Racing TV, who I met recently.

“It’s kind of a sign of Listowel embracing the way things are moving with TikTok and social media. That will work. It’ll actually get people in, and it’ll promote the idea of Listowel.

“I thought that was a great idea. They teased it as if it were Frankie Dettori, but it was a guy who might actually have more of an effect on the crowd in some respects, or certainly in the long term, in Frankie Foster. And then the ad itself was just lovely. I thought it was a lovely idea.

“I’ve made this point before: I think a lot of racetracks don’t care about getting people racing. They’ve dropped their guard and relied on media rights money too long.

“That’s all well and good, but long term, if you go racing and it’s dead, with no atmosphere, you’re inclined not to go again. And that’s a vicious circle.

“Listowel, like many meetings, is very reliant on weather. And in Kerry, you don’t know what you’re going to get at that time of year. But I thought it was great stuff.

“I interviewed Pat Healy at Killarney and they just love Listowel, they love the festival, and they’ve done great promotional work for it.”

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