David Thiselton

Tawanda Taruvinga was named Racing Personality Of The Year at the recent KZN Racing awards.

This was most appropriate as this Digital Marketing Strategist’s youthful vibrancy appeals to the younger generation in a sport whose fan base had been tending to have an older and older average age and his go-getting style is a perfect fit for the new Hollywoodbets-owned Race Coast operator.

Tawanda does not view himself as a stand out personality and explained, “I just think it’s my confidence, my respect and my smile because I’m always trying to make people feel good. I just always try to be a good person and spread some positivity and optimism.”

His feel-good videos and directorship of the popular racing podcast In The Box Seat do just that, not to mention his input in marketing strategies.

Tawanda became familiar with racing as he actually lived within the boundaries of Hollywoodbets Greyville.

His father Edward is the Race Coast Buildings and Facilities Manager and has a house on the racecourse.

Tawanda was not particularly interested in racing in the beginning, but his creative mind attracted the attention of the Gold Circle media team.

He had taught himself how to make online videos by watching YouTube tutorials and was hired by a forex company to produce some video content, which he did by interviewing random people on nearby Florida Road.

Edward saw the videos and showed them to Warren Lenferna of Race Coast Publishing. Graeme Hawkins then offered Tawanda a position in Gold Circle to produce similar content for horseracing and provided him with some basic equipment.

The videos made an immediate impact and a podcast that began as an audio only entity slowly metamorphosed into the In The Box Seat podcast with Warren Lenferna and Andrew Harrison.

Tawanda said, “Podcasts are very, very good, it’s something I would advise for anybody trying to grow, whether it’s a business or a social media following, because if you invite industry leaders that sort of indirectly brands you as an expert as well. You’re adding educational and entertainment value and that’s why I knew In The Box Seat was going to grow.”

Tawanda went the extra mile by buying his own state of the art equipment, a laptop, camera and microphone.

He said, “It’s like I knew one day I was going to resign and start my own agency.”

His frustration at his videos not being published timeously led him to explore social media.

He then began posting his own videos.

He said, “That then made me want to learn about how to make my videos get more views, I started learning about how to grow views and engagements and that just led me down a rabbit hole of learning about social media, learning about copyrighting, learning about hooks and even learning about graphic design.”

A hook is something also used by musicians that “hooks” people into the content and makes them want to watch for longer.

Tawanda said, “Now, especially with all this short-form content, you need to hook a person in the first three seconds.”

He added, “What I realised is stuff that really goes viral are celebrations or content that the public don’t usually see. A flying dismount, that’s an interesting video, or a punter or trainer just going crazy shouting, and also jockeys being asked funny questions that are not really horseracing related. Following top trainers goes viral, so if you have a podcast with Justin Snaith that is going to go viral.”

A fascinating video produced by Tawanda and his team on Hollywoodbets Durban July day was of the favourite Eight On Eighteen’s connections following the race. The raw roller coaster of emotion on their faces was a reflection of exactly how the race unfolded.

Going back to his early Gold Circle days, Tawanda was drafted into the marketing department and ended up working for them by day and doing his social media work and research by night.

The 16 hour day did not phase him and he revealed, “I was inspired by Ken Twedell and Precious Mbatha when i was in marketing – I was in awe of Ken’s work on the Durban July and the Loerie award he received for it. “As somebody who had always wanted to be an entrepreneur it inspired in me a vision of having a starting point outside of the company and then expanding.”

Tawanda started Vinga Media during Covid in 2020 and is especially grateful to Gold Circle’s marketing manager Steve Marshall for providing him with an office that was being unused near the judge’s box on the West Wing. The rental costs were offset against work done for Gold Circle.

Tawanda has employed a number of people and even has a satellite office in Cape Town.

As Tawanda’s expertise has grown, he has been able to incorporate techniques used by the business world into horseracing as he believed horseracing had been behind in this sphere.

One of his role models is Gary Vaynerchuk, an American businessman and entrepreneur also known for his work in digital marketing and social media.

Today Vinga Media does social media, graphic design, videography and creative direction and strategy for Race Coast.

Their strategising experience led to them formulating and submitting this year’s Hollywoodbets Durban July theme, “Marvels Of Mzansi”, in opposition to other submissions from various sources. It was virtually an automatic choice, because as Tawanda said it must be one of the best July themes ever, not only due to how versatile it was and the special meaning it had to South Africans, but also due to the inspirational advertorial design that accompanied it. Tawanda is confident of winning a Loerie award for the theme, having entered it.

Of the future, Tawanda wants to get into animation and wants to create TV productions with horseracing themes.

Meanwhile he has never stopped learning about the sport of horseracing and views this as a vital continuous learning curve.

He concluded, “You can’t add value into an industry that you don’t know, especially with horse racing. There’s so much context that you have to have before you can create the content. Good context gives you good content.”