Tone Deaf Marketing: Out of Bounds
A Distributor Channel Marketing Moment
🕒 5 min read
By Desiree Grace
My sister's mother-in-law is not known for her tact or her situational awareness. The Good-Good golf guys, however, make her look like Miss Manners. If any of you have been following the debacle that was their video riffing on "Obsession," you'll know that the "star" of the video on their YouTube channel shoved a woman to the ground with a comment about "Don't touch my new Callaway club!" I'm paraphrasing, but in today's day and age, when the world of golf is courting more females to take to the sport, this video could not be more tone-deaf.
When it comes to marketing, as
in the case of Good-Good, it's always better to err on the side of caution and
do some test marketing. Sadly, both Callaway and the Good-Good team approved
the video. Callaway was smart to partner with a popular YouTube channel and
group of influencers. What was not smart was not running the video past some
members of their target market, i.e., young male and female golfers.
Callaway can join the dump heap
of misfired marketing ranging from Bud Light to New Coke, just to name a couple
of examples. What sounds amusing in the conference room does not always
hit a hole-in-one with your audience. A lot of reputations and money could be
saved if organizations would simply do some test marketing.
Here are the reasons why you
should test the waters, stay out of the sand trap, and out of trouble:
Reduce Risk: Running a campaign
on a small scale allows you to get real feedback from real people, reducing the
chances of a PR nightmare like that faced by Callaway.
Lower Costs: That small-scale
pilot campaign won't cost nearly as much money as a full-blown advertising
campaign, and, of course, allows you to make adjustments before launch.
Fine-Tune the Target Market:
The bros from Good-Good Golf likely did not intend to offend. They forgot that
a lot of women golf and would not take kindly to a visual of someone shoving a
female golfer to the ground as a way to highlight the appeal of the new
Callaway club. A test campaign would have reminded them.
The cost and consequences of
this particular miss? Dick's Sporting Goods has dropped Good-Good products, as
have other retailers. Both Good-Good and Callaway have had to spend money and
time apologizing repeatedly. The PR nightmare rivals that of Tiger's team doing
damage control after his most recent DUI.
All of this could have been
avoided if both organizations had invested in test marketing. While my sister
cannot avoid her mother-in-law for the holidays, we all know her tendencies and
let them slide. But none of us have money and reputation on the line. In the
name of family, we'll let a foot wedge or dubious scorekeeping slide. Customers
or prospective customers? Not so much.
Whether your business is
industrial distribution, golf equipment production, or repairing wind turbines,
reputation matters. Take the step to test the market and keep your reputation
intact.
River Heights Consulting can't
save your golf swing, but we can save your reputation. Need some help with
communications and marketing? Get in touch with us, and we'll help you keep your
reputation solid, on and off the course.
TL;DR
Good-Good Golf's viral video
backfired spectacularly because they didn't test their marketing message with
their actual target audience. Before you launch any campaign, run it by the
people you're trying to reach. The cost of skipping that step? Retailers
dropping your product, reputation damage, and endless apologies.
About the Author
Desiree Grace is a Senior Consultant at River Heights Consulting. She's equal parts strategist
and storyteller, the person you want in the room when a great idea meets a
skeptical audience. She knows that what looks like a hole-in-one in the boardroom can become an unforced error in the real world. When she's not helping organizations communicate like they
mean it, you'll find her observing real-world marketing disasters so she can
turn them into teachable moments (and occasional cautionary tales).
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