L&K: Win With Phil Case Study

The Client: Golfsmith

In 1967, Carl Paul was an established engineer at the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in New York City when he fell in love with the game of golf. His professional background and desire to make things work better led to his interest in repairing golf clubs. The more involved he became, the more Paul realized that he had discovered an untapped niche in the golf industry — the design and distribution of custom-fit golf club components for golf club repair shops nationwide.

With the help of his wife, Barbara, Paul converted their two-bedroom suburban home in New Jersey into a virtual factory. He traded in his wife's “green stamp books” for an electric drill, his first club making tool. He designed machinery to manufacture wood club heads and contracted a forging company to build iron club heads to his design and specification. Barbara took orders and managed the business during the day while Carl commuted to his “regular” job at the EPA. In the evenings and on weekends, Carl grew his golf components business, helping transform repair shops across the country into custom-fit golf club makers. Carl and Barbara printed their company’s first golf club components catalog; the catalog itself was comprised of two, typewritten pages by Barbara and hand-drawn pictures by Carl....

Today, the company offers tennis equipment and apparel with the acquisition of six San Francisco-based Don Sherwood Golf & Tennis stores and began offering a wide selection of tennis merchandise online and in many of the already-established stores soon thereafter.  In-store kiosks were added to retail locations nationwide in 2004 to enhance the guest experience by providing access to Golfsmith’s entire golf and tennis inventory to local retail shoppers. On June 15, 2006, Golfsmith made its Initial Public Offering (IPO) and today is traded under NASDAQ symbol GOLF.    

From October 2002 to July 2007 Golfsmith experienced unprecedented growth, with the number of retail stores more than tripling in that time period. During that span, the company also added several new catalog titles for women golfers (Drive), tennis players (Center Court) and a comprehensive 200-plus page annual Buyer’s Guide for all golfers.

Over the last five years Golfsmith has further shown its commitment to putting Guests first by providing a world class experience for online shoppers. Golfsmith.com now features enhanced navigation, more product reviews and many other shopper-friendly services like in-store pickup.

Golfsmith celebrated its 40th anniversary during the spring of 2007.

The Objective:

1. Build Brand Loyalty.
2. Increase Retail Sales.
3. Create Brand Awareness.
4. Generate buzz and excitement.
5. Maximize retail traffic to entice further purchase.
6. Create promotion that can be adapted beyond the Masters Tournament in the future.

Marketing Overview:

Golfsmith has a well-establised online and direct mail presence, but retail is where the entire golf accesorizing and customization comes to a unique experience. The majority of Golfsmith's stores have full service club repair and customization centers with similar capabilities to the tour vans found on the PGA Tour. Their professional technicians can take care of most any club needs such as regripping, reshafting, length changes, loft-lie adjustments and more. Golfsmith wanted to reintroduce these amazing services to their current and future customers.

Strategy & Tactics

In keeping with this hands-on relationship Golfsmith prides itself on, what a better way than to offer a chance for the consumer to win if one of the best golfers in business won the Masters Tournament? Consumers were invited in to any retail location try out a Callaway golf club, purchase the club and send their store receipt; if Phil Mickelson won the Masters, each customer that participated, would receive a complete refund for that purchase during the promotion period. For legal reasons, we also provided a non-purchase method.

Summary

The media, fanfare, blog posts and WINNERS resulting from this was phenomenal. You see, Phil Mickelson won the Masters, so lots of consumers were right there to Win With Phil! I'm sure people were kicking themselves for missing out on this one - we're sure that won't happen the next time!