We are a golf marketing firm specializing in communications, strategy, products and services

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Wednesday, April 27, 2011

Just what do all those golf acronyms stand for?

I get asked almost every week by someone...Who really runs the game of golf? Who makes the money?, who makes the rules and why are there so many governing bodies for one game. All good questions and this White Paper posted in google docs gives you most of these answers, along with a few snippy observations! You can read it here.

Thursday, April 21, 2011

April News Out Today

The MacDuff April e-news is out today. It has information about a great new book featuring the wonderful writing of Herbert Warren Wind on The Masters, an update on Annika's new baby and after extensive research my take on the best iPad 2 cover. You can read it here.

Wednesday, April 6, 2011

Augusta doesn't get much more fun than this

One of my most fun days ever on a golf course and I wasn't even playing - caddying in the Par 3 Tournament.

Tuesday, April 5, 2011

The Golf Industry Embraces Social Media...er, no they don't!

I was at the Golf Inc. Conference last week at the Innisbrook Resort. Since being taken over by Sheila Johnson and her Salamander Company the inside accommodations at the Tampa resort are dramatically better, though the outside of the buildings are as dreary as they ever were. (more on that in another blog)

The conference was a 2 1/2 day affair and many of the movers and shakers from the public and private management side of the business were present. There was also a smattering of superintendents and architects and some outliers, marketing folks like me! (oh and Charlie Rymer, who was as vocal as ever). One subject that came up again and again was social media - I must have heard the expression 50 times in a number of presentations.

Is the golf business about to adopt current communications tools and technologies that other industries have been using for a couple of years now? No, of course they aren't. But man, do they like to talk about it. Over the years we have heard about the game embracing women, juniors and now social media as the new silver bullet to cure golf's ills. There was nodding and shaking aplenty that FaceBook and twitter will enable struggling clubs (and there are plenty) to pull themselves out of the mire. Surely by simply signing on and pressing send will do the trick right?

Wrong...it won't. There are two main reasons why. One, the golf business loves to talk about embracing new ideas and then it gets back to the norm - focusing on club technology, traditional print advertising and then continuing to ignore the consumer and developing a relationship with them. And two, the key is not communicating more...the key is creating communications that connect.

We enjoy helping companies in and around golf make these connections using social media as well as more traditional marketing communications tools. And, we don't just talk about it - we make winning connections for companies with their customers and if that sounds interesting to you then please call us.