THE HONG KONG JOCKEY CLUB TAPS INTO THE POWER OF MUSIC

Music is a powerful tool: It can make or break any product.

It can also touch the human soul like nothing else.

It can make or wake up or have your day fade away.

It can make you fall in fall or even fall outta love.

Just ask Adele and all the music she crated from a bad romance.

We could have had it all, indeed.

Of course, finding the right music is the key. Just using music for the sake of using music can also take a product down the toilet. Which brands have used music best?

Well, off the top of our noggins, Levi’s, Coca-Cola, McDonald’s, Burberry and a fantastic campaign for Inspiring India created by musician AR Rahman.

Has a horse racing club used music effectively?

Frankly, most horse racing clubs are to even start using new technology effectively, let alone knowing how to use music as part of any ongoing marketing programme.

As we keep saying, some random ‘live’ appearances at a race club by a band or DJ, or having few hundred “views” on YouTube or some ‘likes” on Facebook and a few tweets for twits going around the online world is just a lemmings approach to marketing. And followers can only be sheep, they cannot be leaders- never have and never will.

So, when we were privy enough to watch a music video recently produced by the Hong Kong Jockey Club, we were impressed.

It combines one of Hong Kong’s most popular artists- singer-songwriter and actor Aarif Rahman, who is more popularly known to local music fans as Aarif Lee-with powerful shots of Hong Kong’s champion horses and jockeys. The musician and visual marriage works without looking contrived and, well, just plain goofy.

The artist wrote the song according to the brief from the HKJC and the music video had to be carefully edited so that all parties agreed on the end result.

Easy to say, tough to do as there is so much subjectivity at stake.

Edit in too much racing footage and the music company will dig their heels in and refuse to budge.

Have too much of the artist and the racing club will ask, “Where are our horses?”

However, the HKJC and A-Music and the Management of this Aarif Lee/Rahman have managed to work out what’s best for all and have taken a leaf from the Nike handbook and have just gone and done it.

The video is officially launched tomorrow (Wednesday) at Adrenaline, the HKJC’s revamped new Club at the Happy Valley Racecourse which opened last week is also where a revolutionary new racing product will be launched next month.

We are very serious when we say that, also being marketers, the HKJC is many lengths in front of all other racing clubs in the world when it comes to creating a viable brand for a new generation of race-goers.

The success of their Beer Garden at Happy Valley and the launch of Happy Wednesday evenings at the track was only a baby step towards what will soon usher in a new era of horse racing.

How and why? Perhaps it’s the water they drink, perhaps it’s the Kool-Aid, and perhaps it’s all to do with leadership and those with vision.

More than anything else, we think it has to do with not being content to be sheep and have a herd mentality.

Swimming against the current has always resulted in greater successes and personal satisfaction.

Whatever it is, it’s all working to make the HKJC a real BRAND and not something that can be fobbed off as being “just another racing club” and “exclusive only to old-school punters.”

With this new music video, the Club has not only tapped into the power of music. It has tapped into the future.