Brittany Graham has always had a great love of horses. She is involved in her family’s harness racing business and has an A-Grade trainer and driver licence. So when the time came to narrow down where she wanted to do her Griffith University Work Integrated Learning placement, she knew she wanted to aim high.
“I’ve always known about Magic Millions because of my family industry,” she explains. “They’re such a huge part of the industry. When I was thinking about doing an internship I thought I would like to do it somewhere where I already have an interest.”
Her parents tried to ensure their daughter’s expectations were realistic. “When I told my parents about it they thought it would be great if I could do it but said it was such a big company and busy and probably too hard to take on an intern. When I got it they were all really excited as was I and it’s been wonderful.”
And Magic Millions Marketing Manager Val Hayward wasted no time giving the Bachelor of Business student plenty to do, and was very pleased with the results.
“I’ve given her things and projects that I thought would take from the day she started right through until the end of her internship, and she’s basically completed everything!” Val said. “She’s been a star.”
The biggest project Brittany has had to work on in her time was a sale of two-year-old horses in training to be attended by Magic Millions boss Gerry Harvey.
Val charged her with coming up with marketing slogans for different demographics and was thrilled with the outcome, deciding to use all her ideas in the official campaign.
“I’ve just given her carte blanche to come up with headlines and slogans and catchy taglines… Something that would probably take me days to mull over and get it right, and she just comes up with them!” Val enthused. “In about an hour she had 20 of them and they were perfect. So she’s very good.”
Gerry was reportedly also extremely pleased with her work. “There are people out there with a heck of a lot of ability,” said the business mogul, who employs more than 20,000 workers across his businesses. “They don’t know they have got it, no one else knows they’ve got it and they can go through life and nothing ever happens. And then others, they discover themselves or are discovered by others.
“I think they discover themselves and they achieve wonderful results. But it is mostly in an area that they have some sort of passion for,” he explained. “It is just very satisfying when you see that. You say, “Wow, you have surprised yourself, you have surprised me and everyone around the place,” and their self-esteem goes through the roof. It’s one of the more pleasurable things when you are an employer seeing those sorts of things”.
He was apparently rather impressed with Brittany’s whole campaign for the sale, dubbed the “breeze up” sale, where she came up with the slogan “Make buying a breeze”.
Gerry continued: “There are different forms of marketing but at the end of the day it’s being able to relate to that public out there or that section of the public in a way that they respond to, and you’ve got to be able to tap into them.”
Brittany’s ideas were used in print and digital such as daily newsletters, industry websites including Racing Australia, Breeding & Racing, Breednet, the ANZ Thoroughbred Daily News, as well as in all Racing Calendars across Australia and Bluebloods magazine.
Val says she’s brought fresh ideas for the marketing of the business and for that, she’s very thankful. “From my perspective she’s been a massive help to me at a time when I am very short staffed and she really didn’t need any hand holding, she’s just come up with some brilliant ideas all on her own.”
For the Griffith student, she says it was surreal to see her own work distributed so far. “It’s a bit weird! I got the magazine at home when it came out and showed mum. I know I didn’t make the ad itself, a designer did that but, everything that went into it I came up with it. It was like: ‘Oh, ok this is kind of a big deal. Everyone in the industry in the country has seen this now!’”
Brittany has indicated that her dream job would be able to continue in the horseracing industry in whatever capacity possible. “The horse industry is my passion first and foremost, but being able to work within marketing on top of that is something I would love to make a career out of,” Brittany emphasised. “This experience has made me realise this position is the sort of job I would like to have in the future.”
And of course, she says it was both what she’s learnt at Griffith and her support from the staff that helped her come to that realisation. “The lecturers at uni have a really keen interest in making sure you know what you need to know to succeed,” Brittany says. “That’s what you need, that little push to tell you, ‘This is what you gotta know.’”
Story created in collaboration with Lynlea Small.