A radio campaign created by the National Thoroughbred Racing Association (NTRA) has been inducted into the Clio Awards Hall of Fame. The NTRA campaign, entitled, “And They're Off,” was produced by the New York city-based agency DeVito/Verdi and first aired in 2002.
The Clio Awards recognize and honor creativity and innovation in advertising. The organization's judges honored two specific ads within the NTRA “And They're Off” campaign. The commercials that comprised the NTRA campaign all followed a similar approach: a fast-talking announcer provides running play-by-play of an everyday outing or happening with the same brio as if he were calling a horse race. Invariably, all of these events fall short of the excitement and thrill of visiting a Thoroughbred racetrack. The spots ended with a 15-second tagable bed for tracks to localize the messages.
The two spots from the campaign that earned entry to the Clio Awards Hall of Fame were “Dinner Date” and “Walk the Dog.”
“This campaign communicated the special allure of horseracing in a unique and humorous way that resonated with listeners in media markets all across the country, from New York to Seattle and Los Angeles to Miami,” said NTRA Chief Operating Officer Keith Chamblin, who was the organization's senior vice president of marketing at the time the ads were created. “Much of the credit must go to DeVito/Verdi, which presented the creative to us with live reads in true racetrack announcer-style way back in 2002. They had us at, 'And they're off.'”
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