The Cheltenham Festival runs for four days every March. Culminating with the prestigious Cheltenham Gold Cup, it is regarded as the pinnacle of the jump racing season.

Considered as the race-lovers festival, Cheltenham is an annual pilgrimage for race fans across the UK and Ireland. With over 200,000 people in attendance across the duration of the festival, it’s become one of racing’s most iconic events.

As part of their strategic plan to create standalone brands for their three marquee events, The Jockey Club were looking to develop a new brand for Cheltenham Festival that would build equity in the event and help drive their sponsorship ambitions.

‘Four Days of Extraordinary’ was a proposition that had been developed by The Jockey Club marketing team. Thisaway’s brief was to translate this idea visually and verbally into a brand that positions the festival as an unmissable sporting event.

For race-lovers, the Cheltenham Festival is the highlight of the racing calendar. Over the years its heritage and prestige has meant it has become more than a racing event. It has transcended into a lifestyle.

The event has become synonymous with high fashion and premium brands. Tweed jackets and elaborate hats are worn across the four days, and commercial partnerships have been made with premium brands such as Boodles and Bentley. Thisaway’s idea was to elevate the brand to reflect this aspirational lifestyle and the premium cues associated with it, and ensure the brand has an extraordinary element at every touch-point across the customer journey.

Taking inspiration from the world of race tags and pin badges, Thisaway developed a set of beautifully crafted emblems that look to put a modern spin on traditional crests. The range of badge designs represent the four unique days of the festival as well as some of the qualities that make the whole event so special.

Thisaway also worked with Chris Mitchell at Epic Icons, to develop a new logo that brings all of the badges together and acts as a timeless mark of quality for the festival.

In the run-up to this years festival, Thisaway built upon the ‘Four Days of Extraordinary’ positioning and created a campaign that used the idea of ‘time’ to communicate a series of extraordinary moments and memories from across the event.

The new brand was rolled out at this years event (held two weeks ago, March 14th – 17th), and will be used across all marketing for next years event, which includes the one hundred year anniversary of the Gold Cup.