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How Direct Response gave new life to the Bobby Jones Golf Company
The name “Bobby Jones” is synonymous with Golf. Aside from being one of the greatest golfers of all time, the Bobby Jones brand is known for timeless quality and excellence.
So in 2005 when the Bobby Jones Golf Company launched with their debut drivers, hybrids and fairways woods in conjunction with renowned club designer Jesse Ortiz, there was great hope for the new equipment company.
The company’s initial focus was to target higher end retailers relying on the practicality, elegance and Bobby Jones name to produce sales, but soon found out that in today’s golf market and retail environment a small golf company had a huge uphill battle to find shelf space.After two years of trying this approach with little success, Bobby Jones Golf and Jesse Ortiz decided to take a page from the Orlimar playbook, Jesse Ortiz former company, and use an infomercial to promote their Hybrid clubs. 
The timing couldn’t have been better with the Hybrid making Golf Magazine’s Hot List in 2006. The company decided to focus on the recovery club when launching their infomercial on The Golf Channel on February 9th 2007. This date was often referred to as the Bobby Jones Golf Company’s birthday by President Walter Rosenthal.
By the end of 2007, Bobby Jones Golf had sold well over 25,000 clubs directly to consumers driven primarily by the Infomercial, Short Form Spots, Radio, Print and Online Advertising.
Jesse Ortiz had always said we are “building a brand, launching a company.” In November 2007 Golf Digest did a Golf Awareness and Perception study of the company’s brand. While there was still a perception in the public that Bobby Jones clubs were “expensive”, overall the company ranked very well in brand familiarity. Jesse Ortiz also stood out as a leading club designer and the Bobby Jones clubs were perceived as “high quality products.”
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Here are just some of the examples of the creative and value added items our team provided in order to make the Bobby Jones campaign a huge success:
- Created a multi-platform campaign on The Golf Channel: In addition to the revenue driving infomercial, our team included both brand and DR short form as well as an online component that featured a sweepstakes. The online portion increased their database by 35,000 names, many of whom would later receive BJG E-mail blasts and special offers which resulted in additional revenue.
- TV Listings service – Our team was able to list every Infomercial airing as “The Bobby Jones Golf Company” instead of “Paid Programming” which caused increase viewership and brand awareness.
- Master’s Coverage: Our team used longstanding relationships to purchase a full page ad in USA Today including in Augusta, Georgia during the 2007 Masters Championships at a 75% savings. In addition to generating incredible revenues, it was one of the most talked about golf advertisements of the year.
- E-Mail Blasts: We created and implemented e mail blasts to our proprietary list of “Opt In” golfers as well as the Bobby Jones list that generated over $20,000.00 in additional sales each time it was sent.
- Coordinated with other agencies: Worked directly with BJG Company Creative and PR Agency coordinating ad designs, specs and deliverables seamlessly. This eliminated the need for executives at BJG to have to work with several different people and keep things coordinated.
- Executive and retail calendar: Created and maintained calendar of events between media and PR for board members, retailers and executives of BJG in order to provide everyone a snapshot of all the events, including their television media schedule.
Conclusion: The Bobby Jones Golf company was an overnight success, 3 years in the making. When you combine a great brand name, with a great product, you can create a great story. When you take that story to the marketplace utilizing a long form infomercial, you can create a great company. In today’s marketplace, it takes more than just a great story to build a great company. The Team at Competitive Edge has helped many start up companies become mainstream brands, we hope you’ll allow us to help you.
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