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Weather 'Fore'cast idea recognized as 2008
Golf Business Idea Fair Winning Idea
You've waited all week for your Friday afternoon tee time
with your buddies. Thursday night, you shine your clubs and shoes, check your
stash of balls, iron a shirt and-right before bed-flip to the local news
station for the weather forecast. "Tomorrow will be mostly cloudy with a
40-percent chance of rain," the meteorologist pipes.
With those 12 simple words, your dreams of a
great end to a long week vanish. Dejected, you call your playing partners and
make plans to go bowling instead.
How often has this happened to you (OK, maybe
without the bowling)? More importantly, how many times has such a gloomy
weather forecast turned your customers away-and on a day that turns out to be
perfect for golf? Speculating that glass-half-empty weather reporting (Doesn't
a 40-percent chance of rain mean there's a 60-percent chance that it won't
rain?) was costing his operation countless amounts of business each year, Dave
Cowan, general manager at Saugeen Golf Club in Port Elgin, Ontario, decided to
take on Mother Nature-or, more precisely, the men and women who try to predict
what hand She may deal from her fickle deck. Along the way, he captured
thousands of dollars in green fee revenue that might otherwise have been lost
to activities like bowling, darts, couch potato'ing or (worse) a day of work.
Cowan's solution was nothing if not inventive.
Initially, he planned to thwart pessimistic forecasts by sponsoring the weather
report on a local radio station and in a local newspaper.
His caveat for sponsorship was that whoever
was delivering the forecast put a more positive (but still accurate) spin on
their weather report. However, Cowan quickly learned that federal regulators
govern weather reporting, so his plan wouldn't work. At least not in its
original iteration. Undaunted, Cowan opted to maintain his sponsorship
agreement-with a clever twist. Instead of merely subsidizing the weather
report, he created an advertising campaign to run immediately after the
forecast that poked fun at the pessimism. Meanwhile, he placed similar
lighthearted ads within the weather section of the newspaper. To Cowan's
surprise, the media accepted the strategy (and, obviously, his money). He ran
such messages as:
"When weather forecasters call for a
40-percent chance of rain, it really means a 60-percent chance of sunshine. We
always like to think positively at Saugeen Golf Club. Therefore, Saugeen's
'forecast' calls for a good possibility of pars, mixed with a scattering of
birdies and a slight chance of eagles. One thing you can count on at Saugeen
Golf Club is a 100-percent chance of fun on and off the course, rain or shine."
While the campaign garnered some chuckles, the
results were nothing to laugh at. Cowan established unique toll-free numbers
and URLs to measure the program's effectiveness and according to his tracking,
this campaign-in combination with seasonal promotions that were also embedded
in the ads-generated an increase of no less than $250,000 in gross sales and
$100,000 in bottom-line profit.
Numbers like those should offer a bright
outlook for any operator searching for a ray of sunshine.
Editor's Note: Dave Cowan's "Weather
'Forecast'" was one of nine ideas selected to be presented at the Golf Business
Idea Fair, which was held at the recent NGCOA Annual Conference. In addition to
growing Cowan's business, his unique campaign earned him the title of 2008 Golf
Business Idea Fair Winner. Have a great idea? If so, Golf Business wants to
hear about it. Contact Ronnie Musselwhite at (843) 881-9956, ext. 224 or via
e-mail at rmusselwhite@ngcoa.org.
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