CASE STUDIES
Adams Golf Campaign
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CASE STUDIES Adams Golf Campaign |
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The Overview: In the fall of 1995 Adams Golf founder Barney Adams created a design for a golf club called the “Tight Lies®” that both looked and performed like nothing the golf industry had ever seen. The company faced many challenges initially bringing this club to market including the look of the club, resistance at retail and the fact that Adams Golf was a relatively unknown golf company. We were fortunate enough to have met Barney early in the process of launching the infomercial that would ultimately change his company and the golf industry as a whole.
Anyone who has ever had the pleasure to meet or work with Barney Adams will tell you that he asks direct questions and likes direct answers, is very passionate about what he does and expects the people he works with to be the same way. He would rather have a good hamburger and a cold Molson while watching the Dallas Stars than be taken out to gourmet restaurant for a 2 hour dinner. He was our dream client.
He made sure his long time friends, instructor Hank Haney and host Jack Whitaker had a presence in the show, creating instant credibility. He also chose to work with us to create and implement the media and marketing strategy that ultimately proved to be a game changer.
The Marketing Objectives:
In order to create a successful marketing strategy for Adams Golf, our team had to design and implement a program designed to accomplish the following objectives:
The Action Plan: Our team immediately implemented a media strategy that focused on placing the Tight Lies® show in time periods where our target demographic could be found. This included broadcast markets after golf tournaments, the Fox Regional Sports networks and National Cable networks including CNBC and The Golf Channel.
The infomercial performed very well and once the show was in full “rollout” we implemented the next phase of our plan by entering into a sponsorship agreement with The Golf Channel whereby we leveraged the amount of half hours we were willing to spend for the year in exchange for a sponsorship package on “Golf Central”.
The idea was that in order to make the consumer think of Adams Golf in the same light as a Callaway or Taylormade, we had to create the same type of brand image and advertise in the same areas. The good news for Adams Golf was that unlike their competition who had to spend money solely for the sponsorship opportunity, our team was able to leverage the dollars already being spent on highly profitable half hour media for the very same thing. This allowed Adams Golf to compete with the likes of Callaway and Taylormade without paying extra for it...
Retail proved to be a challenge at first. Despite educating retailers that the infomercial was their friend, many retailers viewed the Tight Lies® infomercial as competition and either resisted stocking it or wanted to sell it for less. That all changed once people starting coming in droves to the retail golf shops asking for the Tight Lies® by name and knew more about the features and benefits of the club than anyone else in the store. The most important thing the consumer knew that mattered the most to the retailer was THE PRICE and that consumers were fully willing to pay it. This strategy created a paradigm shift in the way retailers viewed infomercials and allowed Adams Golf to finally get the retail penetration they vitally needed to grow the company.
The Result: In 1996 Adams Golf had total revenues of $3.5 million. After the launch of the Tight Lies® infomercial in 1997 total sales were $36.7 million. The Tight Lies® became the #1 fairway wood in golf according to golf data tech and Adams Golf was not only considered a legitimate player in the golf industry, but an innovator. The company grew from 18 employees in 1997 to 250 three years later and had 33 distributors in 39 countries around the world. Today, Adams Golf is a publicly held company that continues to introduce new innovations to the golf industry including their new IDEA Hybrid Irons that are currently the best selling irons in golf and named to the Golf Digest 2008 Hot List... |
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The Team at Competitive Edge helps Barney Adams and the “Tight Lies®” fairway wood turn the Golf Industry Upside Down.
Barney would be the first person to tell you that he didn’t know anything at all about the direct response industry prior to getting into it, but the thing that all good entrepreneurs do is to sit down and write out the things your not good at, find people who are and plug them in and that’s exactly what Barney Adams did. He chose Script to Screen to produce the show, although he took a very hands on approach to the production, often times re-writing the script and making sure the product was showcased the right way. 