Golf Business Monitor

Golf rocks tennis' TV audience in US

I was surprised to read in the latest edition of The Economist (June 11th 2011) that in US people prefer to watch golf over tennis. I started to check worldwide ranking of US tennis players where I had to realize that there is no US tennis player in the TOP5 in the ATP ranking (men). Although Rafael Nadal, Wiliams sisters and Roger Federer are playing very well it will not attract sufficent size of audience in the US. It is no brainer to say no advertiser will consider to sponsor such tournament where his brand cannot get sufficient exposure.

But why golf is getting bigger viewership in televisions? Why beneficial to sponsor a golf tournament in the US? Especially when we know golf is more expensive to broadcast than other sports (networks need an army of cameras covering an immense outdoor space) If we check from taxation point of view then it is easier to understand the situation (I still have not found on www.irs.com the right answer). Since Deane Beman (headed PGA Tour between 1974 and 1994) corporates can account for golf tournaments as charities. I cannot believe that the US Tax Authority can be fooled so easily. Such PGA Tour event sponsorship is arround 7-8 million USD, but at the end the exposure will worth up to 55 million USD. Thus the cost of 1 GRP is even cheaper (+ add quantity, agency and other special discounts that advertisers get)

Still why Americans prefer to watch golf? I have couple of answers:

1. More successful American players: Tiger Wood, Phil Mickelson, Bubba Watson, Jim Furyk etc.
   
2. Winning Ryder Cups
3. Our society is still chasing such nobel values of honesty, integrity, respect, confidence, responsibility, courtesy, preseverance etc what golf is standing for. Well, some of these values have not seen in the last to years from Tiger Woods, but these values that we really esteem.

The current business environment is/was not in favour of PGA Tour's business model thus total direct revenues fell from 486 million USD to 461 million USD between 2008 and 2010.

TaylorMade is reinventing POS communication

TaylorMade recently came up with a witty solution to engage sauntering potential customers by placing touch screen TVs in golf pro shops. It is a great help to those who do not know how to buy and what are the differences between golf clubs. As far as I know in 40 US stores were installed these touch screen TVs.

The idea came from a small digital agency called Hello Design. From there website we cannot know whether they utilized the touch screen TV to collect personal data for future communication or bluetooth technology to reach those who are passing by these stores...It is a good start...

Anyway, all my respect to Taylor Made and Hello Design!!

TaylorMade Touch Screen from Hello Design on Vimeo.

Over communication of golf equipment brands

Many people are giving different interpretation of over communication, in my case it is about exaggerated frequency of communication. In marketing communication text books you will find chapters about the desired number of frequency of communication messages. They say if people meet 4-5 times with your brand/product/service message, it is enough to be able to remember.

How this is connecting to the golf industry and within it to golf equipment brands' communication? As loyal reader of Golf Digest and Golf Magazine, I am getting sick and tired of meeting with well known brands (Callaway, TaylorMade, Titleist, Nike Golf, Cobra, Cleveland Golf) double and single page ads in every single copy. I can tell you in advance of a year what kind of print ads will be in Golf Digest and Golf Magazine, so you do not have to by Kantar Media's service media monitor. LOL.

What I want so say is advertisers will not gain the desired reaction (higher awareness, brand preference etc.) rather the opposite. At the very same time I do not see the utility for such companies as SkyGolf to advertise in print media. But this is different issue. In case of golf fitting systems like Mizuno's the same ideas apply. Since these products and services are more technology focused than a golf club or a golf ball. To transmit product features and to enable the prospect to compare with others it is easier online than in print media. Just think about video ads...

EA's social media power with Tiger Woods

Do we remember that EA (Electronic Arts) "Walk on Water" spot with Tiger Woods from 2009?

The ad went viral and generated 4,682,727 views (8/3/2010) within less than a year. How much it would cost to reach such a big number of potential customer via TV, print or even "classic" online media? From my computer I cannot tell how many of us forwarded or embedded this spot. Let's say at least cca. 10 million people at least saw the video from their free will in total. With this smart step, EA directly engaged with the influencers in a creative way to stop the chatter about possible issues, turned it on its head and immediately into his/her favour. EA not just saved millions of dollars, but gained credibility among potential customers. I do not want to repeat myself about social media importance. It is a smart way for golf courses to promote themselves during the golfing season and in off-season period.

Why do I highlight this issue is because while many Tiger Woods sponsors are abandoning Tiger Woods, but their ads with the golf player is still alive in social media. This will not stop until they remove these videos from YouTube or any other video sharing portals. And even they remove they cannot be sure that nobody will see his brand with Tiger Woods.

I think this is what these brands like Gatorade, Accenture, AT&T forget, that they cannot control everything especially not on the internet and within in it social media.

PGA.com's weak attempt in social media

Recently I came across with PGA.com's Facebook brand page. While I analyzed this brand page, I was thinking about the goals and obejctives of it. What I know from my work  that companies are launching brand pages for many reasons. Here are the 5 main reasons:

1. Grow a brand community of loyalists and advocates;
2. Extend your brand into the social life of your customers;
3. Extend the relevant reach of your communication; 
4. Build reputation and trust via conversations;
5. Build brand preference, loyalty and action through relevant
   engagement

"The PGA of America is the world's largest working sports organization. It is the official organization of golf professionals who are the recognized experts in growing, teaching and managing the game of golf, while serving millions of people throughout its 41 PGA Sections nationwide." (source: www.pga.com)

At the same time when I am talking about PGA of America we should not mix up it with PGA Tour which is another organization with far better social media performance (KPI: number of followers, referrals etc.). Just on Twitter PGA Tour has 19,423 followers. PGA.com has 4,336 followers on Twitter and 14,904 fans in their Facebook brand page.

For first and second and many sights this brand page looks like a selfish and not engaging brand page. It talks only about itself and not with us. This is not engaging and definitely not driving action. PGA of America can be grateful those ardent golf players who joined this brand page. Among them myself, but for professional interests.

This brand page would be useful if:

• it would host discussions and provide useful resources (see above 4.: reputation and trust)
• invite fans to upload contents
• provide branded materials that are useful in PGA professionals' everyday life (see above 2.: extend the brand into customers' social life)

I hope PGA of America did not created this brand page due to Tiger Woods' scandals. The real challenge is how we can make golf attractive to the next generation where Wii, Farmville (on Facebook) and extreme sports are more fascinating then putting a small white ball in to a hole.

Finally, if PGA of America will not insert some action into this page (e.g.Providing applications
that drive purchases or donations; and applications that enlist ambassadors etc.) then it will be really waste of money and fans will get bored.

SEO lesson for Nickent Golf and others

I was reading Golf Business Development's summer edition where I found an article about Nickent Golf. At the end of the article I found URL of the brand: www.nickentgolf.com. Immediately I typed the URL into my browser where I found the following:

I think here is an obvious SEO (search engine optimization) mistake, namely the page does not tell us what is the problem. After a while I found out in Google that they changed their website's URL to www.nickentgolf.net.

From the picture below we see further SEO mistake: poor meta tag description. The meta tag description is displayed in the snippet and can influence us to click on a link or not. In this case it is not crucial since they finished their business last year, but a big lesson for others to take seriously SEO. 

If you type in the phrase Nickent Golf, you will get the following result in Google (see below): 1st place: Nickentgolf.com (snippet: "This Account Has Been Suspended. Please contact the billing department..."), 2nd place: Nickentgolf.net (Nickent Golf. Content on this page requires a newer version of Adobe Flash Player. Get Adobe Flash player.).

Accenture without Tiger Woods

The Tiger Woods saga entered to a new chapter. Accenture has just launched its first print ad (by Y&R) without Tiger Woods in WSJ :

In Bali I met couple of very talented (trained) elephants (Java elephants are disappearing, only few thousands are living), however I am not convinced that elephants can replace Tiger Woods or anybody with such capability like Tiger Woods. For those who might forgot previous Accenture ads with Tiger Woods, here is a nice example:

I am sure that there are many examples of high performance beside elephants. How can they compare a performance of a human being and an animal???? Not to mention that without Photoshop no elephant will stand on a surf. :)

In spite of the above print ad I found on YouTube that we can still meet with Accenture ads with Tiger Woods at the airport:

How to destroy reputation on Twitter?

One of the great merits of Twitter is that your followers can communicate directly with you. In other words communication turns to be very intimate and personal, only in one case if you allow people to send you message. This is a good way to influence the influencers. Such communication can lift your reputation. Otherwise your Twitter account will be just another "broadcasting station". And this is what today people will neglect and hate. Here are some examples of misuse of Twitter:

• Andrew Snook,Piranha Golf USA, CEO: http://twitter.com/andrew_snook. Here I also miss re-tweeting and active participation in community life. Plus background design is missing... :( 
• Egan Golf: http://twitter.com/EganGolf
• Bridgestone Golf: http://twitter.com/BoomClub
• Golfsmith HQ: http://twitter.com/GolfsmithHQ
• Yonex Golf: http://twitter.com/yonex_golf
• TaylorMade Golf (official Twitter account): http://twitter.com/taylormadegc - they have 3270 followers who have no opportunity to ask questions from TaylorMade Golf. It is a missed opportunity from one, and from the other side frustration...
• Nike Golf: http://twitter.com/nikegolf
• Troon Golf: http://twitter.com/troongolf

If you do not let people to ask you personal questions how do you expect from them to prefer your product and brand? It is a little bit arrogant isn't?

Ryder Cup results on your mobile

I am getting more excited as the next Ryder Cup is getting closer (1st - 3rd October 2010) and this time I am really because it will held in Wales in Celtic Manor Resort. I hope my boss let me go on vacation in those days. I am also preparing to a worse case scenario. So I looked for some kind of mobile solution to be able to follow up the Cup. But first let's see what is going on in the mobile applications' market:

The market for mobile applications hasn't reached mainstream adoption just yet, but is poised to hit the $9 billion mark by 2011; device makers, service providers, and software vendors all may contribute. The market, which is expected to reach $3.8 billion this year, is set for double-digit annual uptake into 2011; the company predicts that U.S. annual growth rates for mobile apps will stretch from 20 percent to 37 percent from 2006 to 2011.

Those who would think that a mobile application is merely a new gadget or hype they are wrong. We should think about mobile application beyond as an individual results tracking solution and tournaments' results (e.g. eGolfScore.com, iGolfSystem.com, thecaddie.com), but also to extend relationship with golf course members (e.g. tee time booking). It can bring new color in golf course member communication. It is a way to engage golf course members and give more control over tee time booking management, membership renewal/subscription. This can be very attractive for private golf courses where discretion is crucial.

How to lose potential magazine subscribers in a day?

During the Golf Expo 2009 that was held in Munich, Germany, I came across with Golf Business Development, a start-up golf business magazine. After reading couple of copies of the magazine, I decided to subscribe to it. I followed the instructions on their website: http://www.golfbusinessdevelopment.com/subscriptions.html.

Now I am here with no idea what is going on. In light of the latest print media trends, when newspapers and magazines are closing, I do not believe that such start-up golf business magazine can afford to lose any potential subscriber. It seems to me that there is at least one, who can afford it Golf Business Development.