And Yet More From The Communications Summit
After Finchem and Votaw put the assembled to sleep, their market research speaker took the podium. This is Barb Kaufman of Kaufman and Associates talking about her findings on the media-fan-player relationship.
Second point, on the fan component, fans need more technicolor, and a lot of the media I spoke with were not only representing golf but also cover other sports, and felt fairly strongly that fans really love the technicolor presentation of athletes.
And you think they only talk like this in Hollywood? What does that mean, need more technicolor?
Speaking of that, isn't Technicolor a registered trademark?
They want to know more than their performance. They want a little more depth, a little more context. If they get that, it'll expand and create greater loyalty and longevity and loyalty to your sport. NASCAR and the NFL were cited as benchmarks in that regard.
We're benchmarking!
A top line of the agent feedback, and I'm sure this is really going to shock you because it was the flipside of the coin, the agent and manager perceptions are that overall traditional golf media has become lazy and stale. The sameole, sameole content has bred some degree of ambivalence by the players, and they just don't want to engage any longer because they don't feel the content is very innovative and creative.
Well, we could do more New York Post type stuff. That would be innovative and creative for golf! Bet the agents would love that.
The golf print media is becoming a dinosaur according to agents, and I want to specify that this means not the written word, but to Tim's point, print media in the traditional sense. A lot of the younger players are very in tune to new media and would much rather give their time to those media outlets. One particular agent said players would rather have 30 seconds on SportsCenter than a 900 word article written about them.
Wouldn't we all.
Players are becoming significantly more guarded with the media in the past by virtue of being burned. Now, having said that, the majority of agents said it's a small percentage of the media who, quote, burn, shall we say, and that violators should bear the brunt of the burning and not all media because not all media are guilty of this travesty.
Travesty?
Many of the print media believe overall Tour coverage will decline and is declining if the playing field is not level between the electronic, print and quite frankly other emerging media. They felt fairly strongly that preference and rights deals provide access to some media outlets and not others, which makes it more difficult to do my job.
From the agents' perspective, younger players are viewed as presenting great opportunities for unique and colorful content because they get it. They've grown up in this entertainment world of sport and they know exactly what it takes to compete and keep their star rising.
They know branding!
It was at this point I had to take another break. Small doses, baby!
Saturday, December 9, 2006 at 08:20 AM
Reader Comments (5)
The trouble is that golf's reached a point where the players don't need the media the way they used to; their income just from playing (and outings) is so spectacular that endorsements that follow from fame are a minor factor (except for the extreme top tier). Golf's going through what other sports went through when their salaries exploded: the dynamic between player and reporter changes dramatically, because they're no longer living in relatively equal circumstances. What a writer writes doesn't have much of a positive effect on a player's life any more, so the player doesn't see a reason to invest the time.
The quote of the year -- of the decade -- is Lee Westwood's 5-year-old son asking "Daddy, what are all these people doing on our airplace?" the one time he flew commercial. LEE WESTWOOD! If that's the lifestyle for the world's #53-ranked player, why should we expect these guys to treat the media obligations as anything other than a nuisance?
Why does it not suprise me that most of the blame from these people is being delegated to the print media?
What a crock of bullshit. And what exactly do they mean when they say the print media "burns" people? Huh? If gross, harmful untruths are being printed, where is the loud demand for withdrawls or rush of libel/slander lawsuits to make things right? Huh? Why aren't these unscrupulous writers being fired by their editors and black-balled in the industry? Or does being "burned" include revealing character flaws that are potentially embarrassing, or honest criticism of players making stupid mistakes?
Tiger Woods "got burned" nine years ago by a writer from GQ -- hardly a member of the golf media. And his being "burned" included some non-PC ethnic humor he assumed would be off the record, but made it into the story anyway -- what a surprise, when the entire premise of that article was to paint an accurate picture of Tiger Woods. And sorry, IMG, but that's exactly what the story accomplished.
If writing what one perceives as opposed to artificially burnishing a player's public facade is "burning" a player, than I'm as guilty as heck. These idiots need to learn the roles of PR people and the print media are diametrically opposed.
Four-Putt should seek a putting lesson from Jarrod Moseley, but when he speaks of PR people and print media he's an expert.
At this years Masters, Tiger was asked about his play on Sunday, "I putted like a spaz out there today, just kept getting in my own way". Barb Kaufman wants print media to let that one go, it's bad PR, he didn't mean anything by it, but he still said it. After you've gotten into the definition of the word it's clearly offensive towards a group of people with a genetically predisposed condition, one they certainly didn't ask for. How stupid would we look if we didn't write about it? People would accuse us of being a biased liberal media that offers up pardons. What's upsetting Barb is the fact that print articles sit on the locker room coffe table for months with the headline clearly displayed; Tiger Putts Like A Spaz. It's prints indefinite lingering that has her all worked up, she should feel comfortable knowing that most of it only spends a week on the shitter floor and is then disposed of.
If player handlers and the tours had their way -- and Lord knows they're trying -- they'd replace in interview rooms all of us question-asking, ink-stained wretches with PR people and intellectually-devoid talking heads like those from the Golf (Chummy) Channel. The toughest question Kraig Kann ever asked was "How come you left the pickles off my Whopper?" And more and more I wonder if Doug Ferguson and Tim Rosaforte are lobbying for cushy jobs with the Tour -- maybe as "Designated Interviewers"? Or maybe a high-dollar offer to cross over to the "Dark Side" -- like Larry Dorman and T.R. Reinman did?
Truth be told, let the Tour answer this question, which I doubt came up at the Communications Summit: "Since when did it become acceptable for defending champions to skip attending in person the Media Day for the event?"
Jeez, what a group of spoiled brats. Most of today's players don't realize how important it is for an event's organizers to generate advance stories a month or two prior to their dates, to give ticket and corporate hospitality sales a jump start.
While it may seem parochial, having the defending champ in the flesh at Media Day for a gang interview with local media plus one-on-ones with local TV and radio is paramount to the success of that event. TV stations will clear three minutes in the sports segment if their anchor gets a one-on-one with the returning champion. But without that one-on-one, the editor might give the event a 15-second plug over a tournament logo graphic. Right now I'd say the batting average for defending champs showing up for Media Days is less than 50 percent. It used to be near 100 percent.
I remember a few years ago at Media Day at Sahallee, in advance of the 1998 PGA Championship. Davis Love III was the defending champion, but didn't attend because he claimed the flight might cause his neck to stiffen up. I wrote at the time that if I was Love, having finally won my first major after such a long wait, I would have been at Media Day even if I had to arrive on a stretcher -- because as a player you never know which one will be your last.
Huh. Guess what?