Did marketing damage GCA and the game?

[Tom_Doak]

Mike:

You left out the fact that GOLF DIGEST converted their list from America's 200 Toughest Courses to America's 100 Greatest Courses in 1969 -- and put Harbour Town in the top 10! -- which is really what encouraged all those marketers to go whole hog.

Of course, that's also what attracted the attention of a 10-year-old me to golf course design when my family visited Hilton Head in 1971.

I need to see a picture of you at 10 years old....

We can trade photos at a top secret location. 

[Mike_Young]

Mike:

You left out the fact that GOLF DIGEST converted their list from America's 200 Toughest Courses to America's 100 Greatest Courses in 1969 -- and put Harbour Town in the top 10! -- which is really what encouraged all those marketers to go whole hog.

Of course, that's also what attracted the attention of a 10-year-old me to golf course design when my family visited Hilton Head in 1971.

I need to see a picture of you at 10 years old....

We can trade photos at a top secret location. 

 

Glad you guys were in country today....just saw some photos...

[Jeff_Brauer]

Mike,

You really think golf and golf marketing started in 1969?  That Ross, Mac and others weren't celebs?  Or RTJ and DW in the 50's?  I think it was all a long, slow, and probably inevitable evolution of thinking.  Was all of it right?  Of course not.  Is it easy to sling mud at what went wrong?  Of course.  Plus, "It" isn't one big conglomerate, its literally thousands of designers, owners, people, tech, and golfers,  and literally millions of decisions on where to play golf or buy homes.

I would be surprised if you of all people here would suggest some sort of centralized planning to "steer golf in the right direction."

With over 2/3 of the courses built since your 1969 date being public, I wonder how many were extravagant and I mean real stats, not just our focus on the top end?  For instance, exactly how many of the 5-9,000 courses built since then (maybe someone can make an exact tally) actually have waterfalls?  I would say no more than maybe 100 tops, or what, 2%?

And, how exactly does housing subsidizing the construction of golf, leaving it basically to make money on ops, make it unsustainable?  Golf itself is hard enough to pay for, as a game, masquerading as a biz?

Short version, I think we should take a longer view.

[Paul Gray]

True artists don't market, and often see financial success as a humorous side effect of their work, until that is everyone wants a product similar to that already produced, and in the exact same style. For better or worse, with few exceptions, golf exists at the crossroad of art and commerce.  Once you get in bed with a capitalist, it becomes a horse of a different color.

Eloquently put.

And excellent post, Mike.

[Mike_Young]

Mike,

You really think golf and golf marketing started in 1969?  That Ross, Mac and others weren't celebs?  Or RTJ and DW in the 50's?  I think it was all a long, slow, and probably inevitable evolution of thinking.  Was all of it right?  Of course not.  Is it easy to sling mud at what went wrong?  Of course.  Plus, "It" isn't one big conglomerate, its literally thousands of designers, owners, people, tech, and golfers,  and literally millions of decisions on where to play golf or buy homes.

I would be surprised if you of all people here would suggest some sort of centralized planning to "steer golf in the right direction."

With over 2/3 of the courses built since your 1969 date being public, I wonder how many were extravagant and I mean real stats, not just our focus on the top end?  For instance, exactly how many of the 5-9,000 courses built since then (maybe someone can make an exact tally) actually have waterfalls?  I would say no more than maybe 100 tops, or what, 2%?

And, how exactly does housing subsidizing the construction of golf, leaving it basically to make money on ops, make it unsustainable?  Golf itself is hard enough to pay for, as a game, masquerading as a biz?

Short version, I think we should take a longer view.

Jeff,
I'm not talking of "golf"marketing by itself.  I'm speaking of the RE Development marketing budgets using golf as an amenity and marketing for lot sales.  Golf has never had the money for large marketing/ad budgets but when RE came along the budgets were huge.  ( just look at how much smaller the golf mags are now that RE development is not advertising)
I do think golf is now headed n the right direction.  So many "givens" have been questioned and are now common when in the past they were voodoo..(USGA greens construction being one such item.)
IMHO the golf courses created for upscale housing developments had so much built in maintenance that many were unsustainable with just ops.  So much was developed for the top end of the market and naturally it trickled down( new term ) to the other courses.  I think one of the first things to "trickle up" was ultra-dwarf.  BUT I have always maintained that golf has a silent majority who is continuing to just keep moving and all will be good.... 

Yes, we should have a longer view...
Take care...

[Tom_Doak]

True artists don't market, and often see financial success as a humorous side effect of their work, until that is everyone wants a product similar to that already produced, and in the exact same style. For better or worse, with few exceptions, golf exists at the crossroad of art and commerce.  Once you get in bed with a capitalist, it becomes a horse of a different color.

You must have read my new favorite book:

"Another attribute of the artisanal.  There is no product that I particularly like that I have discovered through advertising and marketing:  cheeses, wines, meats, eggs, tomatoes, basil leaves, apples, restaurants, barbers, art, books, hotels, shoes, shirts, eyeglasses, pants, olives, olive oil etc.  The same applies to cities, museums, art, novels, music, painting, sculpture.  These may have been "marketed" in some sense, by making people aware of their existence, but this isn't how I came to use them -- word of mouth is a potent naturalistic filter.  Actually, the only filter."

[Tony Ristola]

Beginning with Charles Frazier hiring a guy named Pete Dye and Jack Nicklaus to design Harbor Town, golf design took on a new light.  The signature professional golfer idea began to blossom and multi-million dollar RE developments were promoted based entirely on the name of a professional golfer/designer.  Entire marketing/advertising campaigns were printed/developed touting such.  It was a win/win for the professional golfer/designer because the developer was spending millions to promote his work when it would not be possible to promote such if it were just to sell golf.  Thus the professional golfer/architect began to accumulate large offices of designers and sales staff to promote themselves to other large developers.

This was the modern start point of fraudulent marketing schemes and costs associated with them. Architects and associations allowing someone who had little to add other than their name being touted as the "architect" of record. It snowballed, like the use of golf carts, and came with cascading costs.

A few quotes from Tom's "new favorite book" (which I quite enjoyed... thanks for the tip)...

QUOTE
Anything one needs to market heavily is necessarily either an inferior product or an evil one. And it is highly unethical to portray something in a more favorable light than it actually is.

...marketing beyond conveying information is insecurity.

Third layer, the even more serious violation: companies trying to misrepresent the product they sell...
END QUOTES

[Frank Giordano]

Marketing is now the biggest game in virtually every walk of American life.  From the selling of the Presidency to the t.v. commercial breaks that interfere with a team's momentum on the courts -- March Madness indeed -- to the endlessly mindless selling of the self on FaceBook, we are presented with the marketer's illusions and are led into our own delusions about what is goodbetterbest, what we need to own, what we all deserve by virtue of our ... American-ness!  There should be no surprise that the golf business has been both fostered for decades -- the "good" that marketing achieves -- and subverted in these latter years in the ways so powerfully presented on this thread. 

Having written for decades in golf magazines, for example, I have seen how the mag's need for more space for advertising has eroded the space available for thoughtful, detailed articles.  Clearly, the golf media exist chiefly because of and for the purposes of advancing the products of the advertisers, rather than the game of golf.  The Big Brands dominate the magazines just as the Big Sigs dominate the design industry.  But just like the income inequality that dominates and threatens to devastate American life, the Brands and Sigs have planted the seeds of their own demise by making golf equipment and golf courses too expensive in too many ways.  It's questionable whether or not  the inherent values of the game itself are adequate to sustain it after the hits the game and ordinary golfers have taken lately. 

[Niall C]

Mike

What you describe sounds to me like the boom bust cycle that pretty well every industry/sector goes through. I can't imagine however that it would be a good thing for every thing to remain regional for ever more as you seem to suggest in your last para (if I picked you up wrong, apologies) as that just leads to parochial or insular ways of thinking.

DT

Re Turnberry, Gleneagles and Cruden Bay, you could have added that they too used the big name designers of the day, namely Fernie, Braid and Morris. As you say, not much changes.

Niall

[Tony Ristola]

Marketing is now the biggest game in virtually every walk of American life.  From the selling of the Presidency to the t.v. commercial breaks that interfere with a team's momentum on the courts -- March Madness indeed -- to the endlessly mindless selling of the self on FaceBook, we are presented with the marketer's illusions and are led into our own delusions about what is goodbetterbest, what we need to own, what we all deserve by virtue of our ... American-ness!  There should be no surprise that the golf business has been both fostered for decades -- the "good" that marketing achieves -- and subverted in these latter years in the ways so powerfully presented on this thread.  

Having written for decades in golf magazines, for example, I have seen how the mag's need for more space for advertising has eroded the space available for thoughtful, detailed articles.  Clearly, the golf media exist chiefly because of and for the purposes of advancing the products of the advertisers, rather than the game of golf.  The Big Brands dominate the magazines just as the Big Sigs dominate the design industry.  But just like the income inequality that dominates and threatens to devastate American life, the Brands and Sigs have planted the seeds of their own demise by making golf equipment and golf courses too expensive in too many ways.  It's questionable whether or not  the inherent values of the game itself are adequate to sustain it after the hits the game and ordinary golfers have taken lately.  

I have nothing against marketing, but when fables are passed off for truths and nobody says anything???  ...It's lead golf down some unsavory roads. That's what happens when folks who should be outspoken hadn't been for decades. The result isn't optimal, and you really couldn't expect it to be in such an environment.

For a game that has truth and honesty as its foundations, the divorce between the game and the business is pretty wide, and comes with all manner of costs.

[Frank Giordano]

Tony,

The game and the business have become bedfellows, and divorce seems to be out of the question, so long as the BIG MONEY can keep them together.  As the money dries up, perhaps the game can get back to its honorable traditions and its roots among the ordinary fun-loving sportsmen.  This cannot happen until all the pumping of a "championship course in every neighborhood" runs out of air.

[John Kirk]

"It costs money because it saves money."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1slibJ52yoc

[Tony Ristola]

Tony,

The game and the business have become bedfellows, and divorce seems to be out of the question, so long as the BIG MONEY can keep them together.  As the money dries up, perhaps the game can get back to its honorable traditions and its roots among the ordinary fun-loving sportsmen.  This cannot happen until all the pumping of a "championship course in every neighborhood" runs out of air.

Frank,

My reference was the two are divorced ethically. The game demands honesty, the business...