Golf's "Social Network"
Time was--and it wasn't that long ago--when the marketing
of golf equipment focused almost entirely on the technology of a
product. In the early 1990s when that master marketer Ely Callaway
started pushing his innovative new clubs, he even was often accompanied
by an animated version of arguably the most important scientist of all
time, Sir Isaac Newton.
Today, however, while
research and development is the largest line item in most major golf
equipment companies annual budgets, the marketing of those products
seems to be less about physics and engineering and materials science
than it is about brand affinity. It is more about building a community
of true believers than engaging in Pepsi Challenge-like technology
battles. It is also about less-traditional approaches to advertising in
less-traditional golf places. Last year, TaylorMade bought space on a
foul pole at San Diego's PetCo Park, home of the Padres, to tout its
then-new R11 driver, while Callaway was offering club fittings last
weekend at the famed Saks Fifth Avenue in New York as part of a Men's
Luxury Weekend that also included master tailors, cigar rolling
demonstrations and a straight-edge shaving experience.
The
new idea--for golf anyway--is to pursue guerilla marketing, the
off-the-grid approach to building company or even product awareness. And
it has very little to do with logos on shirt sleeves at PGA Tour
events. Instead, you need to think differently. It's about Facebook
pages and Twitter accounts, much more than spring-like effect and moment
of inertia. Golf's top three brands each have more than 40,000
followers on Twitter: TaylorMade (51,847), Callaway (42,797) and
Titleist (56,195). But Nike dwarfs them all with more than 436,000
followers.
But while Facebook and
Twitter and other forms of social media are almost a requirement today,
there are increasingly more extreme examples popping up. Here are a few
of the latest non-traditional marketing efforts coming your way:
Acushnet,
who is no stranger to off-the-grid marketing ideas (FootJoy's Sign Boy
and Titleist using John Cleese to portray a golf purist named Ian
MacCallister, for example) recently
conducted an online sweepstakes asking for what phrases should be
engraved into Scott Stallings new wedges being made for his use at the
Masters. The company polled Team Titleist, an online community
of nearly 200,000 Titleist followers who share stories, hold internet
chats on their favorite Titleist players and their equipment and
pre-test products being developed (including Titleist's latest line of
four new balls). More than 1,700 ideas were submitted in the Stallings
sweepstakes.
Callaway,
which debuted a glitzy, high-production-cost television ad campaign set
at night in Las Vegas with many of its top players to launch its newest
products this year, is going decidedly low-budget in a series of YouTube videos featuring Phil Mickelson's long-time caddie Jim "Bones" Mackay. The clips have a decidedly ESPN SportsCenter ad campaign feel to them.
TaylorMade CEO and President Mark King will appear on the CBS reality television program "Undercover Boss" on
the Friday of Masters week. It is the first time a sporting goods
manufacturer, let alone a golf company has been on the program.
What's
it all mean? Does it mean technology doesn't sell golf equipment
anymore? Or is this just a new way of identifying and growing the
pyramid of influence that golf companies have talked about for years?
Might it not be possible that in a social media/tech savvy world, golf's
new pyramid of influence isn't only the top players in the world or the
best golfers at the club, but the ones who are plugged in to your brand
both on course and perhaps even more importantly online?
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