The PGA Tour leveraged a spike in golf interest following The Masters with the launch of a new brand campaign that sees it cut its 20-year-old ‘These Guys Are Good’ slogan for an approach that stresses the fans as much as the players called ‘Live Under Par’.
Launched on 10 April and leveraging peaking golf interest driven by The Masters,
Concrete jungle where dreams are made of.#LiveUnderPar pic.twitter.com/KE1srAPAlT
— PGA TOUR (@PGATOUR) April 10, 2018
the campaign’s ambitious objective is a transformative one as the PGA Tour’s marketers aim to reinvigorate the fan base and simultaneously draw a new, younger audience.
The key change compared with previous PGA work is that the new creative augments classic golf action-led assets that focus on the skill sets of the stars and technical aspects of play with softer, more fan-focused social and softer content.
This ranges from the spectator tournament experience to the social lives of the golfers when they’re not training or playing golf and will being the players, fans and content to audiences via their screen of choice wherever they are
The campaign, developed in harness with LA-based branding and marketing shop Troika, spans television, print and OOH, as well as living across all digital and social-media channels.
The new creative has more emphasis on audience-reaction shots in the TV spots linked to Twitter exchanges posted in real time during play.
A pair of launch films spearhead the new campaign: ‘Together’ (which comes in a 1-minute 18-second official trailer and a 30-second commercial version),
and ‘Attraction’ (which also comes in both long and short forms).
The new approach follows on from a PGA Tour audience study showing that while committed golf fans look to broadcasts for the technical content you’d expect (eg tips and advice on their own games), other demographics like Sports Socialites (who make up nearly a quarter of golf’s viewers) are seeking far more social and interactive content (eg player access and the opportunities and platforms to socially connect with likeminded others).
So, through the campaign launch first 24 hours, the Tour deployed multiple content pieces (often in partnership with asset-referenced players) across different social platforms that promoted the importance not just of social interaction but also showing that the Tour and its stars are about so much more than just golf.
Rain or shine, @BillyHurley3 and @PeterMalnati always have time for the fans. #LiveUnderPar pic.twitter.com/yowE3EF8Bq
— PGA TOUR (@PGATOUR) April 10, 2018
Friendly competitions happening everyday with these guys #LiveUnderPar pic.twitter.com/vDEcpvm86E
— Luke Donald (@LukeDonald) April 10, 2018
Moments like this keep us fighting for more #LiveUnderPar pic.twitter.com/77YxM8mqAH
— Kevin Kisner (@K_Kisner) April 10, 2018
“‘These Guys are Good’ did an outstanding service in 20 years to establish the PGA Tour as the preeminent golf league, but it had the camera locked down inside the ropes,” explained PGA Tour chief marketing officer Joe Arcuri.
“It was more of a spectator view than watching these guys practice their craft. The new campaign goes beyond competition to capture moments [such as] how they interact with fans, and charities. We pulled the camera back and are capturing all those moments that happen week in and week out.”
“The campaign is there to pivot the brand, to make it more modern, fresh and fun,” added Troika ECD Gil Haslam.
“The product was always fantastic. What we wanted to do was open it up and provide the authentic, 360-degree view.”
The new tagline itself, ‘Live Under Par’, is a dual-meaning catchphrase that links golf life on and off the course and is ‘ownable’.
One key golf USP is, according to Halsam, the fact that fans can stand very close to the players they admire compared to other sports. He argues that nothing else gets the supporter this close to the stars and to the action.
Few other sports, he says, have golf’s player proximity, few other sports enable the fan to stand on the field of play.
This is one thing he believes can be emphasised to drive home the powerful connection of players to fans.
The new work emphasises the audience experience and fan participation.
(Interestingly, it follows on from the some recent PGA Tour fan-friendly rules changes: such as changing its smartphone policy to enable fans to take photos and shoot video of the tournament action.)
Comment:
We think that mixing the fans and the players is a sensible approach to activating a sport so often considered elitist and inaccessible (although the new tagline does sound a touch elitist to us).
But showcasing the full, rounded and fun fan experience alongside the skills and passionate personalities of the players makes sense.
Plus, using an approach based on great golfing stories also seems like the right strategy.
Personally, the team at Activative would favour a significantly more revolutionary approach with stronger measures and a more complete repositioning…..but that’s just us.
Only time will tell whether this new marketing approach – surprisingly, the first in a generation – can refresh the sport.
Given golf’s ongoing struggles, the new campaign – designed to kick-start another glory era like the one spearheaded by Tiger Woods two decades ago – comes at a critical time.
Despite Woods’ 2018 Masters return and the associated ratings rise and marketing spike (see case study), the sport of golf in general is in decline (from club numbers, to TV viewers and participants) and it faces challenges everywhere it looks: from the time it takes to play a round, its slow pace and its lack of eco credentials, to its white middle class male stereotypes, the sport’s never ending set of rules and regulations and the high price of playing (not to mention how difficult it actually is to play).
The new work replaces the PGA Tour’s previous ‘These Guys Are Good’ brand platform which was launched back in 1997 and was led by a video series spotlighting star players (such as Dustin Johnson, Luke Donald, Bubba Watson and Matt Kuchar) through slow motion footage of booming drives, miraculous bunker escapes and pristine putts drained in tight focus.
The idea was that the slo-mo’s and the very close-ups offered a way for fans to see just how good these tour professionals really were.
But has the change gone far enough?
We think not!
Surely, sometime soon, someone, if not the PGA or the European Tour, will launch a revolutionary new short form, fast-paced format that adapts to the shortening attention spans of younger viewers by offering deep-seated, systematic change that spans everything from music and lighting, to prize money, accessibility and participation.
Links:
PGA Tour
https://www.youtube.com/pgatour
https://www.facebook.com/pgatour
https://www.instagram.com/pgatour/
https://soundcloud.com/pgatour
Troika
