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Wednesday, November 19, 2014

"Superconsumers". In Terms of Bettors, That's You

h/t to Melissa Nolan, Make Your Best Customers Even Better:

" The most important thing we’ve learned in our work with companies that have decided to focus on superconsumers is that the new strategy can become a rallying cry for an organization—particularly one that has been marketing an old, slow-growing product perceived as unexciting. Like many of the best strategies, it is simple to explain, it appeals to logic, and it is easy to back up with data. “To be honest, I was a nonbeliever at first,” says Cannon Koo, the director of analytics at Kraft Foods. “I thought, How are these consumers any different from heavy users? But as we did more and more research, we began uncovering more and more insights that were quite different from what we were used to seeing from heavy users.” Today the Velveeta team uses the superconsumer strategy to plan its media buying, trade promotions, and new-product lines. The brand’s general manager says that in his nine years at the company, he’s never seen a more tightly integrated brand plan."
 You the superuser (click to enlarge). Almost six in ten of you in our survey play every day or several days a week







Monday, November 10, 2014

Dissecting the Breeders' Cup Saturday Pick 6 Standards

Horseplayer Maury Wolff and our friends at TimeformUS had a look at the change in the Breeders' Cup Pick 6 payout policy, which resulted in the first carryover into the next (non-Breeders' Cup) card, instead of paying out the pool on five out of six.

Wolff writes-

"After the penultimate race of 2014 Breeders’ Cup Saturday, will-pays flashed across screens and it became clear there was about to be a first in BC history: There would be a Pick 6 carryover into Sunday’s (non-Breeders’ Cup) card. Instead of completely distributing the Pick 6 pool on BC Saturday to those who had 5 of the 6 winners, $1.3 million of the pool was carried over to the Sunday card. The impact on those who managed to hit 5 of 6 despite Saturday’s results? Instead of winning around $375,000, five winning tickets got only about $114,000 each.

Why wasn’t the pool distributed on Saturday?

Last year, the BC quietly changed its longstanding policy regarding distribution of the Pick 6. I read about it in some fine print in a DRF story. Since there were many perfect tickets last year, it didn’t get any attention. This year, the same policy was in effect, and again I saw only one mention of it. Most of the regular horseplayers I have talked with were unaware of the change. It seems unlikely that many fans who play only on racing’s big days knew about it."

To read the rest of Maury's piece, please click here.