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Tuesday
Feb202018

Shock: PGA Tour's Procter & Gamble CMO Has All Of The Best B-Speak Down Pat 

WSJ's Brian Costa gets the first in-depth interview with PGA Tour Chief Marketing Officer Joe Arcuri (thanks reader John) and the ex Procter & Gamble man is the first true B-speak and M-speak artisan at Tour headquarters since the Finchem brand-platform years.

Surely this authentic frontier gibberish works with corporate types, and you have to admire the consistency levels to ensure total buy-in, but when you break the words down there just isn't much substance here.

WSJ: How is marketing professional golf similar to marketing consumer packaged goods, as you’ve done for much of your career, and how is it different?

MR. ARCURI: What I’ve found similar is how fundamental the power of your ideas is, and the ability to create authentic and engaging connections with your consumer, or in our case our fan. That remains the fuel of great brand-building, and the Tour brand is no exception.

The biggest difference is the higher degree of unpredictability inherent in marketing a sport, given the week-to-week variables of live competition. What you have to get really good at is real-time storytelling. You need to be very nimble week-to-week on the story lines that are occurring.

Why didn't I think of that! Though I would have gotten a platform mention in.

WSJ: What are the Tour’s biggest marketing priorities for 2018?

MR. ARCURI: My overall focus is to grow new fans. We have a very strong and affluent core fan base to build on. But to future-proof the Tour,

Whoa...future proof, so good. Go on...

we need to make sure that we’re attracting and growing new fans.

Grow 'em baby, grow 'em!

We’ve been shaping our marketing plans through a fans-first lens to ensure that our media, our partnership deals, our content across all platforms, right to our on-site tournament experience, will allow us to reach beyond that core fan and attract new fan segments.

So good and yet you ask, do people listen to that gibberish and nod their heads?

WSJ: Who are those new fans?

MR. ARCURI: We’re trying to attract millennials, but also what we call sports socialites. Those are a more diverse group of fans. They skew a little bit younger than our core base. They’re more diverse in general, and they consume the product at a high rate on both digital and social platforms.

Do they now? I best they just love five hour and 20 minute rounds too.

WSJ: What makes “sports socialites” distinct from millennials?

MR. ARCURI: It’s not an age thing. It’s more a mind-set of how they want to interact with the sport. They are as interested in what we call outside-the-ropes stories as inside-the-ropes stories and competition content.

Spring Break 2 K! Wooohooo, yay let's yell on their backswing! Woke!

They’re interested in what’s going on with our players beyond just the competitive action. They have a broader sense of the sport and want to engage with it on different levels.

Good for them. Please tell us how you reach these special people...

The same example from Jordan’s hole-out to win a playoff at the Travelers Championship comes immediately to mind. Our suite of social analytics and listening tools showed us quickly that the content was getting tremendous traction through our own channels, and we did two things.

Action! Activate!

First, we amplified the content we had already produced by pushing it through advertising to targeted new audiences that hadn’t yet seen it. And second, we moved to quickly produce new content, including the mix of fan-collected video I mentioned to create other ways for fans to experience the moment.

Such a fancy way of saying we edited together some fan video for Snapchat. Give this man an SVP title, another million a year and a Pablo Creek membership, stat!

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Reader Comments (15)

"Word Salad for a thousand, Alex." Sad.
02.20.2018 | Unregistered Commenter3foot1
Oh brother! What a bunch of nonsense. It's hard to use that many words and say absolutely nothing.
02.20.2018 | Unregistered CommenterJS
It's such a fine line between...stupid and clever.
02.20.2018 | Unregistered CommenterAggie88
As fun as it is to laugh at tour robots, this is an indictment of the corporate goons that value this language as much as anything.
02.20.2018 | Unregistered CommenterJB
My brain hurts...
02.20.2018 | Unregistered CommenterSteve B
Imagine the look on Condi Rice's face when he asks her how to get to the social analytics and listening tools suite at Berckmans Place
02.20.2018 | Unregistered CommenterNRH
Gobbledegook! Someone who would beat Timmy Finch 6/5 for spewing heifer dust.
02.21.2018 | Unregistered CommenterIvan Morris
Fan-first lens; sports socialite; I am so much smarter now.
02.21.2018 | Unregistered CommenterHardy Greaves
Good one, NRH.

After reading the PGAT marketing plan, a plan that sounds like being waterboarded with grape juice under the guise of Chateau Latour, what are the odds they'd be onboard with even a minuscule distance reduction? Even this joker isn't creative enough to sell "less is more" to sports socialites and millennials.
02.21.2018 | Unregistered CommenterD. maculata
Sorry for my ignorance, but what is "B-speak and M-speak"? Translation please.
02.21.2018 | Unregistered CommenterGreg B.
Greg B,

I'll take a guess: Business-speak and Millennial-speak.
02.21.2018 | Unregistered Commenterhardy Greaves
My favorite POS

''Our suite of social analytics and listening tools showed us quickly that the content was getting tremendous traction through our own channels''

In school I had a history teacher who referred to political speeches which said nothing as ''fish for sale''-- with this idiot being a P&G guy, it carries one further, to saying ''fish for sale''(nothing) while standing on a (P&G) soapbox.

The only thing more dumb than this guy talking is that goofy photo of him, whose smirk we all share, but at him, not with him/// dig
02.21.2018 | Unregistered Commenterdigsouth
Your "sports socialites" can consume the Tour's Snapchat and other digital offerings until the cows come home and you still might not make one red cent off of them.

They also, to their credit, have a pretty good sense of authenticity and the Tour's polished and packaged stuff isn't going to work. Just see how many more RTs and shares the European Tour's videos get.
02.21.2018 | Unregistered CommenterJohn
Waking up to a "Blazing Saddles" reference is always a great way to start the day. Thanks. Geoff!
02.21.2018 | Unregistered CommenterAndy
Not much PDA here.
02.21.2018 | Unregistered CommenterFC

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