Golf Digest Hot List 2004 Drivers
Golf Digest Hot List 2004 Drivers License
Let me tell you a story that illustrates the shortcomings of the typical golf industry marketing strategyI just bought a new driver. Not a two-year-old discounted driver, but a shiny new model from one of the biggest brands in golf. I did it for several reasons, none very rational:. It’s been 8 years since I purchased a new club.
Ping Golf
I deserved it. A client of mine in the golf industry couldn’t shut up about this club. And he gave me a deal. I couldn’t find any consistency with my old, Adams driver.
Callaway Great Big Bertha II Driver. In the unlikely event that values do not appear for a golf club in The PGA Value Guide, a minimum quantity of transactions for the. From The Industry: (Golf Digest). 2004 Hot List - Recommended Medal.
It was market research for this article.It had nothing to do with distance. I had enough distance with the old driver. Just couldn’t find the fairway.Which brings me to the topic at hand: Golf industry marketing strategy has always revolved around product launches. And every launch promises a few more yards.But these days, only the most wonky sales reps get fired up about the frequent new product launches.Because in golf, truly relevant product innovation is remarkably scarce. And when it does come along, it triggers a race of copycats, resulting in product parity across the board.All the modern drivers are good. Adobe audition 1.5 free download zip.
- Buy all the best Drivers rated by the 2016 Hot List from The Golf Club at www.teegolfclub.com.
- The driver has a thin, hot oval beta titanium insert surrounded by an even. April, the company launches King Cobra COMP 454, 414 and 414 Tour. 2008 Golf Digest Hot List award-winners - with sleek head, mid-width sole,.
All the irons are good. And except for cosmetics, there’s no discernible difference between them. Those tiny little incremental engineering improvements are not relevant to 90% of the golfing public. TaylorMade’s original “metal” wood was a true breakthrough that every manufacturer immediately copied. “Pittsburgh Persimmon” was a brilliant positioning statement, and it didn’t come out of the TaylorMade marketing department.So when you’re in a category where there’s product parity, what can you do? What’s the marketing strategy when the marketing story’s not baked into the product?You have to shift the battlefield away from the me-too product.Take insurance, for instance.
All policies are pretty much the same, so the battlefield has shifted away from product offerings to advertising messaging.The brand becomes more relevant than the product.So you have interesting, true-life stories in Farmer’s Hall of Claims. “Been there, covered that.”You have mayhem man for Allstate, Flo for Progressive, the Geico Gekko and squawking ducks for Aflac. They’re all striving for differentiation in a sea of same ‘ol products.That’s where great advertising can really make a difference.That’s not the case in golf. Product parity seems to have produced messaging parity as well. All the brands are blurring into one.This headline from a fairly recent Cobra Driver ad sums it up: “Scientifically engineered for insanely long drives.”Sounds insanely generic to me. (Thumb through some vintage Golf magazines from the early 60’s and you’ll see the exact same messaging.)You could easily replace the Cobra brand name with Taylormade, Calloway, Ping or Cleveland, and no one would know the difference.
They’re ALL claiming the same thing: More Distance. Longer, longer and longer yet!The execs at Cobra are wasting hundreds of thousands of dollars conveying a message that applies to the entire category. So essentially, they’re advertising their competitor’s products as much as they’re promoting their own. TaylorMade and Calloway ought to thank them.In 2011 the execs at Callaway Golf recognized the need for something disruptive — something other than the next new product. They wanted to stir things up a bit, so they hired Justin Timberlake to be their “Creative Director.”He said he was going to bring some Rock-n-roll “Kickassery” to the stodgy old golf market and appeal to a new generation of golfers.Three ads were produced filmed in Vegas with lots of pyrotechnics.
Lots of flash. Starring Phil Michelson, Annika Sorrenstam and some guy named Quiros. The spots weren’t bad, but I suspect that the PR value of having Timberlake involved played better than the commercials.The Callaway spots didn’t have a compelling story woven into them. It was all sizzle.
Same old story.Don’t you think that golfers have wised up to that promise by now? How can this month’s new driver be the longest driver ever built when last month’s driver made the same claim? And the one before that, and the one before that.Give me a break.In 2016 Tim Clarke, President of Wilson Golf, turned to reality TV in order to generate some kickassery for his brand. Wilson teamed up with The Golf Channel and did a Shark-Tank knock-off called “Driver vs. Driver” where ordinary folks were invited to submit ideas for a “groundbreaking new driver.”With a $500,000 first prize it made for pretty good TV.I have to hand it to him Wilson’s not a major player in the golf club industry these days. (Not like they were back in the 60’s and 70’s.) Wilson drivers are simply not on the radar, and Clarke had the balls to try something completely different.The result is the Triton driver, which is packed with every technological bell and whistle the Wilson engineers could possibly throw at it.
It’s no better or worse than the top 10 drivers in the market, but there’s no doubt that many golfers who never would have thought of a Wilson Driver might at least give it a look. Or a few swings during demo days.The show must have worked Clarke recently signed-up for a second season. I’m not sure it’s going to ever product a breakthrough golf club, but it sure is a breakthrough marketing play for Wilson.No matter what they do for R&D, Wilson and all the other clubmakers have a hard time coming up with genuinely new innovations like what Barney Adams accomplished with his Tight Lies Hybrid club in 1995.Adams recently wrote:“The golf equipment industry is a lot more like the fashion industry than many people are willing to admit. The actual differences between products are minor and often subjective. We don’t want to copy, but we are remiss if we don’t look at what seems to be popular and decide how to position ourselves.”All the major brands now have hybrid clubs that are patterned after the Barney Adams original hybrid.
They all have 460cc head drivers patterned after the original Big Bertha. They all have adjustable drivers, patterned after the TaylorMade.So the question is, what’s the marketing strategy in the golf equipment business when all the equipment is equal? What do you do?You throw money at it.But wait. Another worthless, invisible message about distance. For a brand that’s known for its buttery feel.
Go figure.More message parity.Successful marketing strategy in the golf equipment business involves some degree of differentiation. In a perfect world, you’d have something different to say, AND you’d say things differently.Your story would be unique to your brand, AND the execution of the story would be more creative than anything else in the market. That’s the ultimate recipe for advertising success.Mizuno and Adidas both have great products with a good story to tell. It shouldn’t be that hard to come up with an ad campaign that conveys the core brand benefit in a relevant manner, without resorting to the same, stupid promise of distance.Remember the boy who cried wolf a few too many times?My new driver seems to be working pretty well.
But maybe my expectations are a little different than most I don’t expect monumental gains in distance.I don’t need kickassery. And I seriously doubt that it’ll be “Epic.”I’m content with a smaller dispersion pattern and a little boost of confidence.Want to learn more about disruption as a marketing discipline? Or e-mail me directly: JohnF@BNBranding.com.