Commercial manager at Coral Romford Greyhound Stadium
Romford Greyhound Stadium offered me my first ever job, I waitressed whilst I continued education. Ten years later, the stadium had had a ten million pound refurbishment and I had covered many different positions including Commercial manager.
Some of my responsibilities whilst working here was to produce all printand digital design and advertising, devised their annual marketing plans, maintain a customer base throughout the refurbishment and be part of the grand opening. Organising, delivering and hosting huge charity events and finals such as SKY nights for the stadium across print and social media, through to radio and television interviews and then finally our website that was also renovated. Keeping customers safe throughout Covid, negotiating contra deals, speaking to the press, communicating with customers to learn from feedback and maintain satisfaction. Boosting various charities and pushing our charities - R.G.O.A and The Greyhound Trust, into the spotlight were only some of the daily tasks I managed and felt were important to the running of and reputation of Romford Greyhound Stadium.
Ariel view of a greyhound race
Party pack is an offer that had previously worked throughout the years at Romford. I created a set of tear off tokens, amended the T&Cs, gave the deal a new look by bringing it into our current branding
We teamed up with Groupon to widen our audience, we offered a similar deal to Party Pack and with
a few adjustments we rolled it out on a trial period but later extended this as it was such a hit
Saturday morning racing allowed us an ideal time to appeal to families as this was often popular custom at this time of the week. Guests were able to enjoy free entrance, the chance to meet a greyhound and we were able to spend valuable time with customers one on one and discuss positives such as the retirement homes we support for retired greyhounds. The R.G.O.A. and Retired Greyhound Trust are two of the charities we support which rely on donations, volunteers and walkers to continue to run the homes. As a stadium we would often have charity events to raise funds, spread the word to boost adoptions and hopefully find retired greyhounds their forever homes
Romford Greyhound Stadium under went a ten million pound refurbishment over 18months, a massive transformation.
In preparation for our grand opening on the 6th September 2019, I designed billboards for local spaces to spread the word
Boxing Day is the biggest day of the year for race tracks such as Romford so the restaurants and general admission would often quickly sell out early in the year. Once we had reached capacity it was my responsibility to make customers aware that bookings had closed
Romford stadium would often host charity events of all types. It would work closely with the charity organisers to advertise,
arrange and organise, drum up awareness and attendance and then host the events to a capacity of up to 1600 people
We would hold seasonal events at the stadium, advertising on our website and social media was key to gain interest
Whilst the stadium underwent a ten million pound refurbishment, a lot of our regular customers and staff were reminiscing. Of the many menu layouts I designed these are two examples of my favourites. On the left, for the Pavilion restaurant, I included historic photos of the stadium's action including the cheetahs that once raced! The reverse, which showed our wine list, also included the front cover of a race card from 1934 as the background with a low opacity. This created great conversation of curiosity or remembrance for some, a great distraction as the construction work continued around the stadium. On the right, the menu layout I ran for the opening of our new restaurant, The Paddock, parallel to the grand reopening of the stadium. These were the only two menus that featured no colour
image of the traps at Romford greyhound Stadium often used as cover images for advertising
Image of the hare with greyhounds chasing in the background
Image of the refurbished Romford Greyhound Stadium
It was important for our stadium to have racing schedules made public to customers and staff so that people were aware of our calendar.
These were subject to change, as I made all of our advertising and marketing it was accessible to edits too
An advertisement to one of Romford's Category 1 races, worth £10,000 to the winner. Also advertising a charitable race worth £1,000 to the winner
Due to Covid, trainers and owners were unable to attend the stadium to watch trials, to make this accessible to them we
created a public YouTube channel and uploaded the weekly trials directly after they finished. With these trials being uploaded
to a public social media page, the trials were now accessible to the public too
I worked with the digital and marketing team in Head office at Stratford, London, to create digital illustrations to
use within our advertising, website and any other public viewing such as print work (race cards, posters, flyers etc)
Responsible for the Commercial team including reception and reservations. Daily tasks included creating all print and digital design for Coral Romford stadium and to oversee design work and sign off for another three stadiums. Annual marketing strategy for Romford within budget. Event managing, product pushing, admissions, resturant and general admission, customer and staff communications. Production from design to print of the race cards. Recognising business opportunities, bringing new business from existing and new clients. Working with other departments. Keeping ahead of the latest trends.
