Finchem Declares Rap Music Interesting; Rebranding Hits Snag When Talk Turns To Value Modules

I get a medal don't I for sitting through alll of Tim Finchem's "roundtable" with Rosaforte, Dorman and Lerner?

You may recall that what started out as an attempt to soften Finchem's image turned into a dress alike contest (Dorman was DQ'd for the khaki and Rosaforte for that bluebloodish navy under-mock), turned into an over-40 softball session covering Finchem's childhood, golf game and musical interests.

Everything was fine until Lerner asked something serious. Finchem forgot he was on television instead of in a sponsor's meeting.

To save you the trouble of sitting through the entire thing, here's a transcript. And no, I did not make this up... 

In the marketplace there are three value streams that flow to a title sponsor. One is the value, what we call the branding exercise, which is the entitlement to the tournament. The value of the commercial inventory that's presented to that sponsor. And half of that inventory is rolled into other tournaments. You may and probably do see Sony advertising at Buick and San Diego. That's the value of the package, the television platform. That's why when we put an event on like a World Golf Championship it raises the value of the overall platform. It's not just that week.

The second value stream is business to business out here on the property. Week in and week out that value is significant and unique in many ways. There's hardly anything else that compares to a business to business experience than a pro am experience  on the PGA Tour for a business enterprise. You just can't name it. You can give men or women tickets to sporting events, or to go see a show and it doesn't compare to this out there.

The third thing is that companies can align themselves with charitable causes which impact what we call the qualitative brand impact or the qualitative nature of their brand. And more and more companies are paying attention to that in today's world. They want to be associated with a sport like this and they want to be associated with the charitable benefits that are generated.

The companies that take advantage of all three of those streams, and you need to take advantage of all them. You have to have good creative in your advertising, you have to be smart on how you use the business to business and you have to work hard on the PR value of the charitable, they're with us a long time. If you have a company that comes in and just wants to put their name on a tournament and run some ads, they're not around very long. Or just wants to get a lot out of the pro-am not thinking about how to use the creative to reach our demographic, which is the most powerful demographic in all of sport, they're not going to be around. The ones that take advantage of all three are going to be around. To your example, Sony has worked hard to take advantage of all three and they get real value at the price point that they're at. If they didn't, given the energy that these companies put into evaluating expenditures, if they didn't, we wouldn't be making these transactions.

There was also a mention of value modulations later on, in case that was on your bingo buzzword board. 

Rosaforte wrote about the cuts discussion portion at GolfDigest.com:

Finchem had the numbers to back this up in an interview he did on Golf Channel, citing an average of 12 times a year when the players who survived the cut totaled in the mid-eighties, and it took five hours and 20 minutes to complete a round. What sent this to the Policy Board for a vote last November was that it happened twice late in the Fall Series.

"It's not the way we want to present the product," Finchem said.

And...

As for the player who matters most, you can see why Tiger Woods would not want to see the rule changed back. Since he's regularly in one of the last three groups on the weekend, he's one of the guys caught waiting on tee boxes. And it's not fair to the golf viewer when the network signs off for contractual reasons, sometimes with the leader on the course. But what is fair to a guy like Jay Williamson, who was only four strokes out of the top-10 when he was sent home early at the Buick Invitational?

So is he product too?