The British Horseracing Board’s ‘Racing Spirit’ initiative last night won the ‘Best Financial and Corporate Campaign’ at the Campaign Media Awards in London.

Now in their seventh year, the Campaign Media Awards are designed to recognise excellence from both media agencies and sales teams.

BHB teamed up with BrandConnection and The Sunday Telegraph to produce the ‘Racing Spirit’ campaign, and saw off competition from within the Financial and Corporate category from the likes of IBM for their ‘Wimbledon on Demand’ campaign and RBS 6 Nations.

The ‘Racing Spirit’ campaign involved a photography competition that challenged students across Britain to capture the spirit of racing and ‘get under the skin’ of the sport. The twelve winning entries were all published in The Sunday Telegraph, and formed the basis of a calendar that was used to promote the 2004 Fixture List. An exhibition of the photography also visited a number of British racecourses.

The calendar was redeemed by 32,000 Sunday Telegraph readers and also distributed to existing members of BHB’s customer database. The ‘Racing Spirit’ campaign was also shortlisted for ‘Best Promotion of a Sport by a Governing Body’ at the Sport Industry Awards earlier this year.

BHB Marketing Director Chris John said: “This award recognises the hard work put in by BHB, BrandConnection and The Sunday Telegraph on the ‘Racing Spirit’ campaign. The photography competition will hopefully have helped to inspire the next generation of racing fans, while the calendar itself reached a wide audience of both racing enthusiasts and newcomers.”

More information on the Campaign Media Awards can be found at www.haymarketgroup.com.