TheSocialGolfer.com (TSG), the online social networking community for golfers, celebrates its fourth year in existence by launching its first ‘above the line’ marketing campaign.
The website run by ex-Media Director Ian Mullins will be running a series of 10 second commercials throughout July and August using the world’s biggest Sports Radio station – talkSPORT.
The commercials written and produced by Mullins’ own marketing consultancy MC2 Marketing, launches on the station the same day as The OPEN commences. The airtime will run for approx. seven weeks and plays on the theme of ‘being let down by your mates’. The campaign has been planned to target an ABC1 35+ male audience and will reach over 3/4 million individuals.
Talking about the campaign Mullins said: “It was always our intention to eventually launch the TSG brand to the masses but we have deliberately waited until such time as the website was a busy and much used resource before tempting a wider audience to try our service. In 2013 the site hosted over 700 golf events and had more than 4,500 rounds played. However, we recently hit the 8k+ users and feel now is the time to grow the community further”.
Mullins has worked across a number of blue chip brands in his career including managing the Emirates Airlines media activity for 7 years, Hitachi for 7 years and launched the Daily Star Sunday for the infamous Richard Desmond in his 11 years at the UK’s largest Media Independent MediaCom. More recently he was responsible for managing The London Golf Show marketing activity including the launch of the Manchester Golf Show in 2013. He was also responsible for launch of the ‘Altonwood Season Ticket’ for the late Ron Noades’ Altonwood Group in the same year. He has also advised William Hunt of Trilby Tour fame on sponsorship matters.
He went on to say “When I first started planning and buying media on behalf of clients twenty years ago, I never thought for one second I would ever be spending my own money, on my own brand in mainstream media but here we are and I feel very excited. I am immensely proud of the unique service we have created for golfers and our ambition is to eventually be the biggest golf club in the UK…. we’re certainly on our way!”
The radio campaign has been bought via Radio Experts, the UK’s second biggest radio buying point and by an old media friend of Mullins’ Radio Experts Managing Partner – Steve Ramsay. “I was so excited for Ian when he called and told us it was time to go public with his creation. We started out trading radio together in the early 90’s, so it was a real thrill to plan a campaign in a sector so close to both our hearts…. as a avid golfer myself, In my humble opinion, Ian’s creation is the future of the sport!”
Another old media pal of Mullins’ Adam Mills – talkSPORT Ad Director said “We are thrilled to be helping Ian launch his brand and we believe talkSPORT to be the perfect platform for TheSocialGolfer.com. We have established ourselves as the world leading Sports Radio Station and it’s important that we continue to support new up and coming sports brands as well as the more established ones. I wish Ian every success this new and useful social media platform.”
TheSocialGolfer.com (launched in 2010), has over 8k registered golfers worldwide (4k in the UK) and provides golfers of all levels with the opportunity to link up with golfers in their area, county or country, using the TSG geo targeted games posting system and the internal TSG email system. They also provide golfers with a Handicap tracking service and certificate, a 25,000 course database (whereby TSGers submit their course reviews). You can also watch/upload golf videos, book tee times and run your society, all from one place.