Last week I heard that Golf Pride is planning to build a new purpose-built facility in Pinehurst Resort, North Carolina. The manufacturer of Golf Pride is expecting from the new place to accelerate new product development and manage the global fulfillment of product around the world.
In addition to its global management and professional teams, the site will include an R&D lab with rapid prototyping capabilities, as well as a new consumer grip fitting studio. The exclusive grip fitting studio will replicate the services available to professional golfers on Tour. It will be an appointment-only experience that offers an “inside the ropes” personalized concierge-quality service that all avid golfers will want to enjoy.
The development process will start with Pinehurst Resort making a proposal to the Village of Pinehurst to rezone the land. If that proposal is approved, The Kuester Companies, who is signing a build-to-suit lease with Golf Pride, will submit a permit application with the goal of breaking ground as early as December 2017.
Golf Pride plans to move into the new facility in early 2019. The new facility, which will be located within the gates of No. 8.
Let’s put Golf Pride in the new context!
The cooperation between Golf Pride Pinehurst Golf Resort is not a new one. It is actually since 1969. In a very old-school way, Golf Pride is trying now to strengthen its reputation as the #1 golf grip choice of golfers. Notably, Golf Pride wants to believe that the new place will enable them to be the grip of choice for decades of golfers to come.
Yes, it is true that if people see the Golf Pride logo in the Pinehurst Golf Resort it can be good for both brands.
However, this is not how marketers should think in 2017 and onward about brand building. The traditional ways we used to build brands are not working like they used to.
Today, we are dealing with hyper-empowered consumers who don’t trust ads, companies and brand messages. I see 3 major forces that are changing consumer behavior:
- Reviews,
- User-generated content,
- Influencers.
You can ask, what is left in the hands’ of marketers like Golf Pride. I tell you what: cooperate with these forces. This is why I recommended to golf courses for the same reason in September to utilize and manage golf course review sites.
Marketers should think about:
- Nurturing their relationship with their customers;
- Reward their customers;
- Exceeding their expectations (e.g. by providing answers to customers’ questions in real-time in those moments what Google calls “micro-moments“).
We need to maximize technology to connect better with our customers (e.g. chatbot, mobile application, wearables etc.). These technologies can help you also to understand better your customers (e.g. where are they at a specific moment in their customer journey) and personalize your product/service for them.
It is very clear that we are moving from mass marketing to highly personalized offers and products/services. If you disregard the needs of the hyper-empowered consumers, then you are simply out of business!
The bottom line is, Golf Pride will not be able to build in every major golf resort such a facility that they will do in the Pinehurst Golf Resort.
What they need is to learn how to integrate into their lives and become their “support division”. The funny thing is that you have got at your disposal those technologies that can help you to achieve this goal.