OK everyone, you can breathe again – he won and his knee didn’t give in. Last July I wrote a blog about the effect Tiger Woods’ absence from The Open would have on golf, and on his return I thought it would be interesting to see just how much the sport has missed him.

The world’s economy has of course changed dramatically since Tiger picked up his last trophy, impacting on all sectors, including sponsorship in North America, where companies are expected to increase spending on sports, arts, cause and entertainment marketing by just 2.2% to $16.97 billion this year, compared to 11% growth the year before (IEG). On top of this, viewing figures were down by almost 50% across eight tournaments minus Tiger compared to the year before (Nielsen).

Put the two together and it adds up to one big ‘Welcome Back Party’ for golf’s most vaunted star with more then a sense of perfect timing. The significance of this return can be measured by the eagerness of marketers to crash the party.

He may have lost one of his sponsors - Buick – in the downturn but his other backers are wasting no time in heralding his return. Gatorade, Tag Hauer and Nike (it’s brilliant – watch below) have all launched new campaigns this week with Cindy Davis, President of Nike Golf summing it up well – “We knew when Tiger returned it would be a big, if not the biggest, sports story of the year. We wanted to capitalise on that.”.

Need any more evidence? Well some of the loudest sighs of relief have probably come from the governing body of the sport in North America, who even launched their own ‘Tiger Returns’ micro-site (http://www.pgatour.com/tournaments/r470/video/tiger_returns.html).

It’s somewhat unlikely that even Tiger Woods can turn the world’s economy around (if only), but he does provide some much-needed distraction. I just hope that knee is well fixed – it has a huge corporate responsibility to support.

By Dominic Curran on February 26th, 2009

Tags: Brand marketing, Golf, PGA Tour, Tiger Woods

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Marketshare isn’t an issue for Footjoy, which won its first shoe count on the PGA Tour in 1945, and which has been ’The #1 shoe in golf’ for many years.

But with the introduction of the new SYNR-G, it won’t just be new ambassador Padraig Harrington wearing Footjoys this year.

Where do we sign?!  

By Tim Crow on January 9th, 2009

Tags: Default, Golf, New Product Development, PGA Tour, Sponsorship, Synergy

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If you get the product right, everything else follows.

So General Motors has inevitably parted company with Tiger Woods. Some commentators have claimed that this somehow proves that endorsements of this type don’t work. Nonsense. In Tiger’s case, Nike and Accenture in particular disprove the point. Tiger may be a miracle-worker, but not even he could have saved GM from its current predicament. The problem isn’t Tiger, it’s GM.

Also this week, the PGA Tour announced the FeEx Cup’s third format overhaul in as many years. As I wrote back in September, in this case, the problem is also the product – the Cup format. Only time will tell if, this time, the PGA has got the product right.

Which brings me to the latest example of NPD on the PGA Tour, the Kodak Challenge. Like both the FedEx Cup and the Red Bull Final 5, it’s a competition-within-a-competition, its USP being to link great holes on different courses, with $1m going to the player who posts the lowest score on the Kodak Challenge Holes over the season.

Again, only time will tell if Kodak has got the product right – on which point I suspect they’ve missed a trick by not adding a cause-related overlay to counter-balance the $1m prize  - but there’s a lot to like here, in particular the integration of Kodak’s ‘Kodak Moments’ heritage; the opportunity to leverage the wonderful imagery that great golf courses provide; and the season-long campaign platform. What I most like is that, as the Kodak blog reveals, Kodak planned their activation upfront – one of the keys to successful sponsorship.

By Tim Crow on November 28th, 2008

Tags: Branded content, Default, Experiential marketing, Golf, New Product Development, PGA Tour, Public relations, Sales promotion, Sponsorship, Tiger Woods

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I’ve posted before about the fact that NPD has been one of the key drivers in modern sponsorship, with virtually every week seeing new platform and property models being unveiled. NPD being what it is however, they don’t always work out, and the most recent example of this is golf’s FedEx Cup.

Launched by the US PGA Tour two years ago as an attempt to reinvigorate the final weeks of the Tour and counter audience migration to the start of the American football season, the FedEx Cup has had a difficult start to life.

For two years in a row, the Cup has been won anticlimactically early, last year by Tiger Woods (remember him?), this year by Vijay Singh, who has only to finish the final tournament of the season this weekend to claim the title. As one columnist from the National Post put it:

‘Under the current FedEx points system, Singh would have to step in a gopher hole or assault a rules official in order to lose the event. He could play all 72 holes with a belly putter and a persimmon three wood and still take the title, even if his card went into three-figures four days in a row.’

And despite changes introduced this year by the PGA, the format and credibility of the FedEx are still being roundly criticised by the media, in pieces with headlines such as ‘Once again, playoffs are a snoozefest’ and ‘FedEx Cup ending with a whimper’.

Tim Finchem, Commissioner of the PGA Tour, admitted that it was a case of back to the drawing board for next year in a recent media conference, although I suspect what he said will have done little to reassure the players, the media and most of all, his sponsor (whose current tagline is ‘Relax, it’s Fedex’).

Using the analogy of golf course designer Donald Ross and his work on the famed No. 2 course at Pinehurst NC, Finchem said that even a second set of format changes to the FedEx might not get it right:

“[Ross] made 213 or 220 changes in the first 12 years of [Pinehurst No. 2's] existence. Sometimes to get perfection, you have to keep working at it, and we intend to do that.”

Let’s hope, for the sake of FedEx in particular, it’s a case of third time lucky in 2009.

By Tim Crow on September 25th, 2008

Tags: Brand marketing, Default, Golf, New Product Development, PGA Tour, Public relations, Sponsorship, Sponsorship consultancy, Sponsorship consultants, Television audiences, Tiger Woods

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With perfect timing in the week when the Large Hadron Collider became part of the global zeitgeist, a new sponsorship category was also unveiled to the world: Dow Chemical has become the ‘Official Chemistry Company’ of the PGA Tour.

Sponsorship has been adopted by a myriad of product categories in the modern era, but ‘Chemistry’ is a new one on me. Let me hasten to add, I think Dow has done a very clever deal with the PGA, creating a perfect showcase for its agroscience and technology products. And I’m sure that the guys at Dow and the PGA thought long and hard before landing on ‘Chemistry’. But it does lead your imagination in some interesting directions…

Talking of which, the scientists involved in the Large Hadron Collider project have taken a break from attempting to discover the ‘God Particle’ to star in their own hit viral video. The ‘Large Hadron Rap’ has become a favorite on YouTube.

By Tim Crow on September 12th, 2008

Tags: Branded content, Digital marketing, Golf, Media, New Product Development, PGA Tour, Sponsorship, Sponsorship consultancy, Sponsorship consultants, Viral Marketing, YouTube

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