Branding isn’t just for cattle anymore. But just as a rancher brands cows to show ownership, managers should own, nurture and care for their club, and claim it appropriately with a consistent and well-defined brand that goes beyond mission statements and vision, to state who you are and why you do what you do.
Editor’s Note: For many years, clubs didn’t really have to worry about branding; they could be built and members would come, drawn by the lure of exclusive access and the appeal of “designer” golf courses.
But over the past 15 years, the successive challenges brought by golf’s flattening appeal, the Great Recession, the digital age and its alternative activities, changing generational lifestyles, and now the coronavirus pandemic have put a premium on being able to market and maintain a club through a distinctive brand, not only to be competitive within a specific region or industry, but also to sell the value of club memberships vs. other options for discretionary expenditures.
In this special report, Robert Sereci, CCM, who has led one of the most dramatic brand transformations in the club industry’s history since becoming General Manager/Chief Operating Officer of Medinah (Ill.) Country Club in 2015, offers his insights into how a comprehensive and consistent focus on branding has helped to reposition his club for future success.
By Robert A. Sereci, CCM, General Manager/Chief Operating Officer, Medinah (Ill.) Country Club
Branding is not something you read or talk a lot about within the world of country clubs. But it may be one of the most important developmental functions in which any club manager, as a business leader, must take part.
Merriam-Webster’s dictionary defines “branding” as “[N.] The promoting of a product or service by identifying it with a particular brand.”
The word “brand” can be used as both a noun and a verb and has several definitions; here are some that are pertinent to this discussion:
• [N.] A characteristic or distinctive kind
• [N.] A mark of disgrace
• [V.] A public image, reputation, or identity conceived of as something to be marketed or promoted
• [V.] To mark with disapproval
• [V.] To impress indelibly
By this variety of definitions, a brand may be something desired and wonderful, or a label of ill repute and shame. Either way, your brand is something that you want to have firmly in your grasp, coupled with a grand sense of ownership. You want to be the one identifying and positioning your brand, rather than allowing others, whether they are insiders or outsiders, to define who and what you are.
Branding is a long-term proposition and should not be developed on a whim or approached with any hint of apathy. Great thought and deliberation must take place when deciding how to position your brand. When a rancher brands cows, it is to show ownership. Your club is your “cow”; you own, nurture and care for it, and should also claim it appropriately with your brand.
While all three play an important role in the development of your brand, your brand is not your values, your goals, nor your mission statement per se. Branding is the way you communicate those values and goals and your mission statement to employees, members, vendors, potential members, and to anyone else with whom you communicate. It will also be the statement of your purpose, or the reason for your operation.
Simply stated, branding is who you are and why you do what you do. Importantly, it is because of your brand that others desire to be a member of your club, or simply to be affiliated or associated with you. In successfully creating your brand, whether you are rancher or a club manager, you will also brand yourself.
On the following pages, we pose seven key questions that now apply to branding for clubs and their managers, and describe how we answer them at Medinah.
1. Why is having a club brand strategy a necessity in navigating through COVID-19 and further into the future?
While many clubs do not have a formal, documented brand strategy, most clubs incorporate some aspects relating to their brand into their strategic plan. A club’s mission and vision are also part of a brand strategy. So are public-relations and social-media policies, as well as a logo guideline.
The challenge is that all of these components are not in one document and front-and-center for easy reference. Branding is multi-faceted and deserves a holistic framework and a strategic approach. Your brand strategy is a guiding light, helping you drive your purpose and direction. Absent of these agreed-upon guiding principles, it becomes difficult for managers and Boards to make unified, important decisions.
If your brand promise is to be the employer of choice, your recruiting needs should be minimal, as attracting talented and qualified candidates is a simpler proposition. If your brand promise is that you care about your community outside your gates, providing food and supplies to first responders is probably a no-brainer.
At Medinah, the coronavirus pandemic not only put our strategic plans to the test, but also our brand promise. Your members, prospective members, employees, vendors and guests, as well as the general public, are continually formulating opinions about your club, especially during these turbulent times. None of these segments care what you drafted in your plan, but they’ll notice how well or how poorly you implement it. And when facing trying times, as in a pandemic, people may attempt to define you, whether accurately or not.
Strong branding allows you to define your club and how you are perceived, even during the most challenging times. As the saying goes, it’s a bit of “don’t tell me, show me.”
2. What have you done to enhance your brand?
Often, clubs confuse branding with recognition. They are not the same. Name recognition is not an indicator of a brand strategy. Simply stated, recognition and reputation are byproducts of your branding strategy.
We can consider Medinah Country Club’s brand position today as strong proof of this concept. By all accounts, eight years ago, Medinah seemed to have a recipe for success. Our club was a household name; we were on every discerning golfer’s bucket list, as our Course #3 is known worldwide for hosting historic tournaments; our clubhouse was the sixth-most iconic clubhouse in the world, and across the globe, people were proudly wearing our branded apparel.
With that level of notoriety, one would have thought we must have had a very long member waiting list; however, even after the conclusion of the 2012 Ryder Cup, we were still below our member capacity.
The diagnosis was a simple one. Our brand at the time was narrowly defined as a golf-centric club, with a rich history of hosting major tournaments. While true, our rich golf history was only a small part of who we are and what we do.
Stated differently, we had, over time, focused too much on what we did and not enough on our reason for being in the first place. The club was founded by fraternal Shriners and created to provide families with an oasis from the city, so members and their families could spend time enjoying a myriad of different leisure activities with like-minded fraternal brothers and their families—activities that included archery, tennis, swimming, horseback riding, fishing, boating, skeet shooting and winter sports, as well as golf.
The private club that the founders built evolved over time into a world-renowned golf facility. In essence, we recently and very deliberately rebranded Medinah as the family club it was always intended to be, and as our raison de terre, with a rich history of golf.
But telling members and prospective members who we were and what we believed about at our club was not enough. Tangible evidence was required— visual proof to support our claim.
In addition to building paddle and tennis courts, we remodeled our restaurants and pools. We created “Meacham’s Garden,” an area with a large organic vegetable garden, a chicken coop with a variety of 40 laying hens, as well as three bee colonies. We began to tap, harvest and bottle maple syrup from maple trees right on our courses.
Our food truck and golfboards are indications that we are continuing to bring youthful fun and a bit of whimsy to the game of golf as well. All of these are tangible proof of our brand, and through savvy marketing we are able to communicate that brand to those who have not yet experienced the Medinah community.
3. How do you rally your Board and employees around your brand?
Five years ago, when I first introduced the chicken coop, vegetable garden and food truck, members thought I was diminishing the Medinah brand. Absent of an explicit brand strategy, it was easy to see how they would think so. In the absence of a strategic plan, members will make up their own plans, based on their own mental models.
So, to eliminate our “cart before the horse” mentality, we repositioned Medinah as a family-centric club that also features three golf courses, including a world-famous championship course with a world-class reputation and history. Getting associates, the Board, and members to coalesce around this was no easy feat. But once I decided what our branding position should be, I knew that the next step was educating everyone on our renewed vision.
Since my arrival, I have authored over 30 documents explaining, educating and solidifying our position on a number of topics. And in almost every document, I take the opportunity to address aspects of our brand and how it ties into the subject matter at hand. In essence, connecting the dots for the readers.
To truly strengthen the brand, it is best to first start the process with your associates. Once you have secured their support, you will have a small army of brand ambassadors to strengthen your brand story. During every new employee orientation, we articulate our brand position, describing how we decided to take this chosen course.
When we chose to pay our employees during “stay at home” orders and closure due to COVID-19, we consciously related our action to our purpose and brand promise. The claim of being a “family-centric community” does not apply just to our membership, but also encompasses our associates. Paying our associates is one example of demonstrative proof of how we fulfill our brand promise. How could we continue to make the claim if we ignored the devastating financial impact that the virus would have had on our employees’ earnings? Our brand promise is embedded in everything that is Medinah Country Club.
4. What does it take to execute brand consistency in the club space?
Unless you are an MBA nerd (like me), many Board members do not find branding to be “sexy” or interesting. Most members would rather talk about golf course design, or facilities planning, because they understand those concepts, making it easier for them to contribute to the discussion.
Branding discussions are more challenging, because they require a broader mindset. The discussions are more complex and extremely uncomfortable for many. Board members would rather argue details than debate principles.
However, once you get agreement on principles, the details are extremely easy.
For example, the very first exercise my team and I did, when we started to develop a game plan to deal with COVID-19, was to discuss, debate and come to a consensus on the Guiding Principles (see box, opposite page) by which all decisions would be made. Once we had a draft, we asked the Board to approve it—which they did, in its entirety.
5. What types of communication channels are effective for communicating, or elevating, your brand internally and externally?
You must use every channel, as each market segment relies on different channels to receive information. Fortunately for us we have a Director of Communications who ensures that we are consistent, not only in our club voice, but more importantly, that we “walk the talk.”
During prospective member tours, we use specific scripts that articulate our brand promise. We use similar language when we speak to employees. We made changes on our website to clearly articulate our purpose. We developed standards for our logos, with specific guidelines for how they may be used.
For example, our brand guideline specifies that at least 60% of all apparel must have the original Medinah logo and the other 40% can be color-matched with the garment. I also use my LinkedIn profile extensively to articulate and enhance our brand among my professional community.
We also pay close attention to all of the visual clues that support our brand. Last fall, a family abruptly decided to join Medinah after months of deliberation. What was the reason for the sudden decision? On their last club tour, the spouse noticed a sign that read “Warning: Red-winged Blackbird Habitat.” Her comment was that if the club cares this much about a bird, chances are they care even more about their members.
And she is right. Our brand, by extension, naturally covers nesting birds at Medinah, too. Think about the signs you have at your club, and how they may inadvertently express unintended sentiments. Remember that everything you do is a visual representation of your belief system and an active part of your everyday brand, whether intentionally or inadvertently.
6. How can a club manager’s personal branding strategy be relevant to his or her club’s brand strategy?
I created my personal brand strategy about 10 years ago, after I noticed that my peers and my network started to only associate me with my clubs. While I am an extension of the club, I didn’t want to be so closely tied to it that I felt like I was riding on its coattails, whether that meant getting credit for accomplishments, or blamed for blunders, that were not of my own making.
That is when I decided to develop a personal branding strategy, through which I spelled out a plan for how to grow and enhance my personal brand. I developed my own professional mission statement: To improve the lives of the people I work with and work for. From there, I crafted a list of words I wanted my personal brand to represent—empathetic leader, innovator, mentor, educator, influencer, strategist, visionary, connected, and humble. I developed specific strategies and tactics to try to embody these words so that, one day, my peers and network can use them to describe me.
Many club professionals confuse their clubs’ brand with their personal brand—they are not the same, and it’s not wise to conflate the two. You are not the club, and the club is not you. If you work for a well-recognized club, it is not that difficult to leverage your club’s brand to enhance your own. What is even more challenging is to develop a personal brand that is strong enough so that your own personal brand enhances and adds value to your club’s brand. To me, that is the ultimate goal of a successful brand.
7. What books can also shed valuable light on the topic of branding?
There are so many, but the ones I enjoyed and recommend are the following:
1. Contagious (Jonah Berger)
2. Stories That Stick (Kindra Hall)
3. Crushing It (Gary Vaynerchuk)
4. Never Eat Alone (Keith Ferrazzi)
5. This is Marketing (Seth Godin)
Staying Focused
When developing your brand, make sure it is specifically defined and not too broad in scope. Resist trying to be something for everyone. Your brand must be easily identifiable, and you must have the ability to deliver on that brand on a consistent and long-term basis.
This may sound funny to hear, but our chicken coop is, perhaps, almost as important as our golf courses. It is the culmination of everything that we do and that contributes to our defining brand. Having the kids gather around to learn about raising chickens and to gather eggs is just as impactful to family life as playing a round of golf. One may ask, what do chickens and eggs have to do with golf? In our case, everything, as it is all interwoven with, and a potent reminder of, our allegiance to our successful brand.
Branding is an obvious function of any business entity. But how many organizations and individuals truly know who they are, what they do, and how they are perceived? Branding is the only communicative vehicle that answers these questions in the way that you determine.
Guiding Principles for COVID-19 Decision-Making
The Board of Directors and management of Medinah Country Club developed the following principles to guide and align their efforts while managing the COVID-19 situation at the club:
1. Governmental Compliance
a. Understand and comply with relevant federal, state, and local laws and mandates.
b. Seek and implement recommendations from accredited health professionals.
2. Member Community Safety and Engagement
a. Responsibly adopt and apply measures and plans to protect our members and their families.
b. Prepare for a safe and modified season.
c. Members are stewards as well as owners of the club.
d. Communicate in a transparent, responsible and timely manner.
e. Adjust tactics when appropriate and necessary.
3. Employee Family Safety and Engagement
a. Responsibly adopt and apply measures and plans to protect our employees and their families.
b. Pragmatically protect the employment of necessary Medinah personnel critical to the club’s success, while being mindful of our fiscal goals.
c. Prepare for a safe and modified season.
d. Communicate in a transparent, responsible and timely manner.
e. Adjust tactics when appropriate and necessary.
4. Asset Protection
a. Pragmatically and responsibly maintain critical assets during shutdown (golf courses, clubhouse, pool, etc.).
b. Defer discretionary expenditures that do not impede on member and employee safety.
5. Fiscal Responsibility
a. Adopt a long-term working capital view.
b. Preserve cash for the long run.
c. Plan for a variety of likely scenarios.
6. Marketplace Awareness
a. Continue to safeguard the club’s brand and reputation.
b. Continue appropriately modified messages and communications to prospective members.
c. Seek and implement appropriate insights from other clubs.
d. Maintain a dialogue with important local-community entities and leaders.
e. Maintain a dialogue with important vendors and partners.
f. Respond and adapt, as necessary.
C+RB
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