Canadian sporting good chain Golf Town has teamed with Rethink to bring 400 players to the tee for an activation this fall.
Along with another sports brand, Random Golf Club, Golf Town and Rethink are organizing The 400some for Oct. 6. The event, which will be held at The Club at Bond Head, Ont., will see 400 golfers sharing the same tee time. The event is set to be a world record for the most golfers teeing off together.
The activation is the latest effort in Golf Town’s “Come Out and Play!” platform, and its first project completed with Rethink.
The idea for a more interactive approach to marketing came from Frederick Lecoq, chief marketing officer and chief digital officer, who felt that the next wave of Golf Town’s brand platform felt too much like a repeat of the brand’s past marketing efforts. And while the company’s vision is to make golf a more inclusive, friendly, fun and social experience, he says he didn’t just want the brand to say this, but instead for golfers to feel it.
Lecoq says a lot of advertising involves a brand dictating to consumers what they’re all about, but he wanted Golf Town to fuel a conversation and identified Rethink as an agency that’s already excelling in this kind of marketing.
“I wasn’t looking for another advertising campaign, I was really looking for an activation initiative,” Lecoq says. “We’re going to fuel conversation without being in dictation mode. I think [Rethink] really understands that.”
The idea itself came from Golf Town approaching Rethink at the start of the year with the idea of bringing its brand vision of making golf more social to life. The agency responded with a series of marketing concepts, all of which were strong enough for the brand to likely use in the future, Lecoq says, but The 400some immediately struck the company as an idea it could implement this year.
“Let’s get out of the cliche of golf being me, myself and I versus my handicap,” Lecoq says of the inspiration for the activation. “That was the starting point. How do we bring this thing to life in a disruptive manner?”
More than being good for the Golf Town brand, Lecoq says The 400some is also key in the company’s efforts to grow the sport overall. Ever since joining Golf Town in 2016, Lecoq says he saw immediately that more work was needed to drive participation up, and get more kids and women involved in the sport. He notes that he’s heard from many consumers who feel intimidated from participating in the game, saying that it doesn’t look welcoming. A social activation like The 400some is meant to tackle this problem.
“We’re trying to grow the game, which in the end not only benefits Golf Town but also the golf courses, golf pros and golf vendors,” Lecoq says, adding that efforts to make the sport more inclusive has corresponded with increased sales for the brand.
The result is an event that’s the first partnership between Golf Town and Rethink, but not the last, Lecoq says. The two sides are working on a project-based agreement which involved creative ideation, planning and executing on The 400some, but both sides say they have interest in expanding the partnership in the future.
Rethink’s Brand Narrative division is supporting the campaign with PR, while Genuine Media is overseeing paid media. Golf Town’s own internal teams are managing digital media planning and implementation. The event will be leveraged through paid social media, digital billboards, OLV and connected TV. Lecoq specifically highlighted Reddit as a social platform the activation intends to utilize, because of how it centered conversation.
