It Gets Bettor

For a sport that increasingly promotes its complexity, horse racing should claim something this simple as a marketing slogan.

Look, I love the process of handicapping races, but the approach to cashing tickets is as simple or as elaborate as each of us makes it. For what it’s worth, the people who win by picking colors or birthdays seem just as happy as those who spend hours pouring over data and running every conceivable race scenario through our brains.

Complexity in anything can be a turn off. That’s why most of us don’t get involved in threesomes or options trading. If something can’t be explained in five steps or less a lot of people lose interest. Profitability through Simplicity. That’s something that would resonate with whoever racing is trying to reach, right? Seriously asking, because I’m not well versed in the habits of those demographic groups.

It would be akin to saying “Hey, at any given time you can make money just by giving us a couple bucks in return for a piece of paper with the number five on it.” Or, “Like the color brown? Boy are you gonna dig our place, you crazy simpleton.” Rather than tout how much someone can do at the betting windows, why not embrace how little effort it takes to make money?

I realize there could be sensitivities to the blatant rip off (in name only) of the It Gets Better campaign. But I feel like the unwritten statute of limitations has to be nearing expiration and would allow for respectful use of a similar slogan. At least give us a shot to make the campaign work.

Racing has done some creative campaigns in the past, and I’ll never understand why they didn’t stick with “Who do you like today?” It was brilliant in its simplicity and captured the social aspect of racing perfectly.

Growing up in New York City, young mind enriched by stories of abductions, poisoned Halloween candy and stranger danger, talking money with that old, I’m guessing Greek, fella at Aqueduct in January took some getting used to, yet it was perfectly normal. “Who do you like today?” would have still worked in 2014, because aren’t we pretty much using Twitter to ask and answer the same question?

So lets snag and trademark this bad boy before some casino (legitimate threat) or riverboat Pachinko buffet (equally legitimate threat) does. We’ve got enough to kick ourselves about, lets not add missing this slogan to the list.