The COMING golf ball wars - golf industry

Golf Digest, Feb, 1999 by Mark Seal

It was early December, four days after he had been tapped to run Spalding, and Craigie hadn't even begun his first day of work. But he was already sounding like a player in the style of his brash predecessor, Kevin Martin, the "Candy Man," who arrived in 1997 from the presidency of Brach & Brock confections, with a singular mission: to awaken the "sleepy, rather predictable" Spalding. "The golf ball is a fast-consumable item, like candy," Martin had said. "There are loyal customers who like the products they currently have. They are hard to switch. Then there are consumers who are willing to try new things, and they are always hunting for something that's going to give them an edge to their games."

Excitable, almost boyish, the Candy Man sold his advertising tactics for making consumers switch to Spalding. Golf-ball infomercials. Side- by-side compar-ative ads against his chief rivals. Million-dollar challenges. And yes, those infamous System C and System T balls designed to match the clubs of competitors Callaway and Taylor Made. Martin's barely one-year tenure in the ball business inspired a lawsuit and a challenge filed with the National Advertising Division of the Better Business Bureau-and general cursing from competitors coast to coast. His reaction? How sweet it is!

Spalding has a long history of pioneering golf-ball innovations: the two-piece, long-distance Top-Flite family; the first two-piece or nonwound ball used on tour (The Tour Edition, made famous by Greg Norman in the mid-1980s); and the oversize Magna. Spalding sells more balls worldwide than anyone else:

26 million dozen in 1998, seven million more than Titleist, and its plants run seven days a week, 24 hours a day, spitting out 1.7 million balls every day. But Spalding is not resting on its laurels; the company is intent on transforming itself from a rather gentle giant into a brash and scrappier player. That includes going head-to-head with Titleist and placing more emphasis on Spalding's premium golf balls. Spalding's Top-Flite XL balls have the largest market share worldwide, with 15 percent. But the company's most popular ball is also its lowest priced, selling at $16 for an 18-pack, while Titleist's upscale Professional sells for $54 a dozen.

Did it matter that Craigie and Martin knew next to nothing about golf balls before their arrival? Not at all. Because they are masters of something even more important: the science of sway. "In the ball business, like commodities, the market share and share of voice almost go hand and hand," says 25-year ball-industry veteran Hank Rojas of Bridgestone.

Spalding's voice is growing increasingly louder. "In an environment where Titleist's strategy is pretty well known-the No. 1 ball in golf- we have to convert players from what they're currently using to our product," says Spalding's Creelman. Or as Spalding urges in its marketing for the Strata ball: "Switch. And lower your scores."

The ball business was once generally a gentleman's game, with time- tempered regulations. In golf balls, it was rare for a company to mention the other guy's product in advertising. It was rare for companies to get in the face of their competitors in their marketing strategies; companies knew their place in the market and weren't so quick to cross the line. The new Spalding began crossing the line from Day One, first with "comparative advertising," a staple of aggressive political ads, hungry car-rental companies and desperate drug companies-not golf-ball manufacturers. But when Mark O'Meara began winning tournaments after switching from Titleist to Top-Flite's Strata, the company went comparative in ads mentioning O'Meara's switch from "a wound ball," a definite swipe at Titleist.