It’s Our Party Too!

How do you turn the best two minutes in sports into a two-week-long party? The Kentucky Derby Festival has the answer, hosting over 70 events in the 15 days leading up to the Kentucky Derby.
CurrentMarketing has the delightful job of orchestrating all of the advertising and marketing materials, television and radio campaigns, and outdoor and social media messages for all of these events! The first project begins in early June promoting the miniMarathon and Marathon. It’s followed by numerous projects from November all the way up to the Basketball Classic in March, and usually ends with the Republic Bank Pegasus Parade in mid-April.
Our agency completes roughly 450 projects from beginning to end in a short nine-month period. Much like birthing a child, it ends with the complete JOY of a wonderful Festival season filled with colorful programs, advertisements, clever radio and television commercials and more. The KDF marketing team consists of about 15 members that are 100% dedicated to working on the Festival and making sure everything is polished to perfection for the coming year.
Each year, on the Tuesday before Derby, our agency holds a mini-event for ourselves (no promotional materials required). The entire KDF team attends and, along with the CurrentMarketing Team, raises glasses for a celebratory Festival Toast. We also pray to the rain gods to hold off (most events are weather permitting), and then pat ourselves on the back for a job well done. It is our party and we will celebrate if we want to! It’s our culture — our birth rite, if you will.
It truly takes a village to make the Festival run. 30 employees, 75 board members, 4,000 volunteers, multiple photographers and videographers, numerous media outlets, hundreds of city officials and our 15-person in-house KDF marketing team!
Cheers to a successful 2010 Festival, cheers to a wonderful team at CurrentMarketing and cheers to Louisville, KY! Where else can you stretch a two minute sporting event into a two-week-long party?!