Taylor Made Pledging Millions To Kickstart Game
/Just as he did two years ago when advocating a 15-inch cup, Taylor Made CEO Mark King is trying to light a fire under golf's various bodies to grow the game. Tuesday night's Apple-like PGA Show launch of the latest initiative included support from the National Golf Foundation's Joe Beditz, "noted business advisor" Gary Hamel and PGA of America President Ted Bishop, and while I didn't get much beyond basic details from media Tweets during the launch event, the essence of the push is to hear from golfers via a website called HackGolf (there's a Twitter account, too.)
For now, the site solicits ideas from golfers:
We’re looking for a few sentences to get the conversation started—you’ll have a chance to go deeper on these topics in future stages.
Shocker: too expensive, takes too long and too difficult are your early leaders in clubhouse in the first HackGolf comments posted. It's early though. Those pesky, completely optional Rules of Golf are just a few shots back and undoubtedly will make a late charge as the true villain behind all world problems.
Jim Achenbach was at the Rosen Centre hotel ballroom launch and writes:
Neither King nor the panelists offered specific suggestions for attracting new golfers to the game, although the TaylorMade CEO promised he would unveil two specific programs Wednesday. Those initiatives, he said, will be funded with $1.5 million during the next 18 months.
Kind of sorry I missed Hamel's presentation, sounds like it was packed with authentic frontier jargon and those vital phrases.
Hamel talked about "open innovation" and "reengineering and reinventing the customer experience."
Yes x 100!
Meanwhile, Michael Bamberger profiled King in the latest Golf Plus and the CEO is pretty open about his company and their goals: cater to the 750,000 or so golfers who buy 1½ drivers a year.
"To sell drivers, you have to be the Number 1 driver on Tour. That means, you have to win the driver count. Which we do almost every week. Forty to 50% of the players on Tour are using our driver. Now, if you have any kind of Tour status, somebody is going to pay you a minimum of $50,000 a year just to play a driver. So paid endorsements, they're a wash. What does that leave? Performance. The reason we have 92 Tour players under contract is because the players like the way our club performs. Now even with a big number like 92, you still need some name players. So we have Sergio García, because he drives it great and plays all over the world. We have Justin Rose because he's a straitlaced guy. We have Dustin Johnson because you know he's having a great time, and we have customers who are going to identify with him for that. That kind of thing."
Dustin's having a great time not playing Torrey Pines this week.
King is still all-for bifurcation but he clearly doesn't want to be the company that makes non-conforming equipment:
If you get to the show next week, you'll hear this guy before you see him. He's going to tell you the time has come for bifurcation, different rules for us and for them. (Do we really need a stroke-and-distance penalty for hitting it OB? Do we really need summer rules? Roll it over year-round!) He's going to push his 15-inch hole. He's going to tell you about TaylorMade 3.0, the system by which every employee has a seat at the table and an incentive to make the company better.
"And what we're going to do at that show, see, is announce TaylorMade 3.0 for the whole golf industry," King said the other day. INN-dah-streee. "You got an idea on how to improve golf? We want to hear it, and we want to find a way to implement it."
Can't wait for the results!
**Here's a video of last night to launch the initiative.
**Here's the press release. As feared, there is nothing here other than a website to accept your ideas. So the highly innovative company really is just soliciting your ideas.
GOLF INDUSTRY LEADERS REVEAL A PLAN TO “HACK” THE SPORT AS PART OF A MOVEMENT TO MAKE THE GAME MORE FUN
Group Calls on Golfers Everywhere to Submit Ideas that will reenergize the Game and Attract New Players
ORLANDO, Fla. – January 22, 2014 – On the eve of the golf industry’s largest trade show, a group of industry leaders presented a plan to more than 1,000 industry members to call on golfers everywhere to “hack” the sport by submitting their ideas to revitalize the game. Since 2004 nearly 5 million people in the United States have left the game for a variety of reasons. Core golfers are down almost 24%.
The group, including Mark King, CEO of TaylorMade adidas Golf; Ted Bishop, President of the PGA of America; Joe Beditz, CEO of the National Golf Foundation; and the man the Wall Street Journal recently ranked the world’s most influential business thinker, Gary Hamel; recognized that current industry initiatives are not working and unveiled an online forum www.hackgolf.org designed to receive ideas from golfers everywhere.
“Innovation stalls when the same people keep talking to each other about the same challenge over and over,” said Hamel. “We need to open the conversation up to a wider audience instead of continuing to try and innovate in the same ineffective vacuum.”
The golf industry has spent tens of millions of dollars over nearly two decades and created a myriad of programs including “Tee It Forward,” “Get Golf Ready” and the “First Tee” among others. While the programs are engaging new consumers, participation on a national scale continues to decline at every income level. The largest reduction in golfers is in the critical 18 – 34 year-old demographic. In 2000, 399 golf courses opened, that number shrank to 14 in 2012.
“We have to recognize the fact that we (the industry) have not been able to fix the massive exodus of consumers from our game,” said King. “Traditionalists are resisting concepts that will elicit real change, so it is time that the people have a voice and can share their ideas to reverse this trend.”
TaylorMade adidas Golf pledged to fund one or more “crowd sourced” ideas. In addition, the company has pledged support for a series of tournaments nationwide that will utilize a 15-inch cup among other rule modifications designed to make golf more fun for golfers of all skill levels.
“This is an industry-wide experiment,” said Bishop. “We don’t have the answer, but by tapping the collective creativity of the millions of golfers who love this game as much as we do, we will find the solution. Then, as an industry, we need to demonstrate the courage to implement non-traditional solutions.”
Hamel has used insights from various industries to showcase the behaviors exhibited by organizations or industries that are unsuccessful. Chief among them are a lack of understanding of what customers want, a lag in innovation, ineffective management and outdated business models. As a sport steeped in centuries-old tradition, golf is plagued by many of these destructive traits.
The group has developed a framework for reviewing and determining next steps that will be unveiled in the coming weeks. For more information on the program, or to submit ideas please visit www.hackgolf.org.
**King was asked by Golf Channel's Gary Williams during a January 22nd Morning Drive appearance about Taylor Made's rapid product release cycles and replied: "We know relentless launching of products frustrates consumers." Then went on to mention the 750,000 crowd referenced above.
