In September, the golf equipment maker will release a 10-minute film showing the rapper, who plays 300 rounds a year, being fit for clubs and using them on the course, as part of its efforts to capitalize on Nike’s exit from the market by making golf “a little more cool and a little less country club.”
Callaway, the golf equipment maker, will attempt to mix hip hop and golf when it comes out with a new documentary featuring rapper “Scarface,” Advertising Age reported. The 10-minute film by Vice Sports, which will debut online in September, is an example of how Callaway “is using content on unexpected channels to lure players to a game that is suffering from an image that it is not millennial-friendly,” Advertising Age said.
Callaway’s new promotional direction comes after marketing powerhouse Nike recently announced it was exiting the golf equipment business, Advertising Age noted. That followed the news earlier this year that Adidas was looking for buyers for its TaylorMade golf brand and that Golfsmith is considering filing for bankruptcy, according to published reports.
“In any sport, you’ve got to get young participation to drive long-term growth,” Brian Yarbrough, an analyst at Edward Jones & Co., recently told Bloomberg News, Advertising Age noted. “You’ve got to have a crop of younger people coming in at 20-, 25-years old who will play the game 20, 40 years. You are not seeing enough of that.”
It is against this backdrop that Callaway is striking content deals aimed at making golf “a little more cool and a little less country club,” Advertising Age reported. The Vice film will feature Brad Jordan, aka “Scarface,” getting fit for golf clubs and other equipment at Callaway’s Southern California headquarters and using it on the golf course.
The former member of the Geto Boys rap group is apparently an avid golfer, Advertising Age reported. “He plays 300 rounds of golf a year, which is a crazy number,” said Harry Arnett, senior VP-marketing and brand management for Callaway.
Golf and hip hop “typically wouldn’t go together,” Arnett conceded to Advertising Age. But “Scarface really shows that golf is really a sport that transcends demography and transcends what your normal expectations would be,” he added.
Shattering golf’s stuffy stereotype is also behind Callaway’s partnership with Red Bull Media House, the content arm of the energy drink brand known for its extreme sports positioning, Advertising Age reported. The deal includes an upcoming video series called “Distance Lab” that will feature renowned golf instructor Hank Haney teaching Red Bull athletes, including wakeboarder Steel Lafferty, BMX rider Corey Bohan and skateboarder Alex Midler.
“It has the Red Bull storytelling aesthetic and tone. But we think it will be a cool thing for people to see these conflicting worlds coming together in a different way to look at golf performance,” Arnett said. “These are athletes that you typically aren’t used to seeing in a golf context, even though they are avid golfers.”
The three-episode series will run on Red Bull’s channels as well as on Callaway TV, a channel the marketer launched earlier this year for Apple TV and Roku, Advertising Age reported. The channel is home to “Callaway Live,” a weekly interview show about golf hosted by Arnett. The show has included appearances by celebrities such as pop star Adam Levine and business leaders like David Novak, former Chairman-CEO of Yum Brands.
Callaway is also active on teen-friendly Snapchat, Advertising Age reported, with content that has included a video of Pittsburgh Steelers quarterback Ben Roethlisberger hitting golf shots at Heinz Field during the week of the U.S. Open.
The initiatives are aimed at “creating an avenue for a new audience to think about Callaway,” Arnett told Advertising Age. The preconceived notions people have about the game of golf “were definitely preconceived notions that people had about Callaway,” he added, meaning that it is for rich men.
“There is an affluency to the game that definitely is attractive and has been a foundation to our business,” Arnett added. But “we are extending ourselves to a newer, broader audience,” he said, targeting people who are “looking for that next passion-point activity. And we think golf can be that.”
Callaway is drawing encouragement for its promotions from the silver lining of the latest golf participation numbers, Advertising Age reported, which showed that while there was a continued falloff in the total number of those playing the game, the number of beginners of 2015 was 2.2 million, only slightly off the peak seen at the height of the Tiger Woods era. And the biggest group among beginners was millennials.
Callaway’s “hard goods” market share—which includes clubs, balls but not apparel or shoes—was 22.4% in the second quarter of 2015, up a full percentage point from a year earlier, the company reported. And while Callaway could benefit further from Nike’s equipment exit, Arnett lowered expectations in his comments to Advertising Age.
Nike’s equipment business “represented a pretty small market share percentage, so the direct sales opportunity is probably not one that is so direct to us,” Arnett said. But it “definitely is an opportunity for us to continue to expand as the equipment industry contracts somewhat.”
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