The Ontario Lottery and Gaming Corporation’s (OLG) horse racing campaign, “Let’s Hit the Track,” aims to drive traffic and measurable conversions among the province’s sizeable Chinese and South Asian communities.

Developed in partnership with Balmoral Multicultural Marketing, the campaign features three rap videos – one each in Cantonese, Mandarin and Hinglish, a mix of Hindi and English – to spark awareness and appeal to a younger demographic.

Puneet Ahuja, VP of media for Balmoral Multicultural Marketing, tells MiC that the creative execution brings together audio-visual storytelling, cultural relevance and music. In other words, targeting those communities goes beyond language, he says.

“For both current and past campaigns, we’ve layered in behavioural, interest-based and contextual targeting to ensure our messaging reaches users most likely to engage and convert,” Ahuja says. “These communities represent a significant portion of our audience base, and by making cultural and contextual in-roads, we’re able to build deeper brand resonance, improve engagement and ultimately drive more qualified visits.”

Fifteen- and 30-second OLVs, plus six-second social-media cutdowns, along with video display and programmatic banners were launched this week for the campaign that will run through August. South Asian and Chinese audiences will be targeted through over-the-top and connected TV advertising on YouTube, Meta, Instagram and in Sing Tao Media.

Ahuja says Balmoral’s media strategy has matured significantly over the years. “What began earlier as a simple awareness-led campaign using Meta has now evolved into a full-funnel strategy focused on driving traffic and measurable conversions,” he explains. “Media investments are now more performance-led and strategically allocated. We continue to prioritize channels that demonstrate strong ROI and alignment with our objectives.”

Key to the campaign was positioning horse racing as the preferred entertainment choice, over other multicultural entertainment options like movies, concerts, gaming and community events, Jeffrey Almeida, managing director at Balmoral Multicultural Marketing, said in a release.

“So our approach and strategy were simple – use entertainment to sell entertainment. It also had to be truly rooted in the values, behaviour and lived experiences of these multicultural audiences.”

OLG selected Balmoral as its vendor of record for Indigenous and multicultural communications after a competitive review in September.