How NBC's GolfNow app is reaching new consumers—with the help of a gopher

A golf-playing, wisecracking gopher takes a starring role in a new campaign for GolfNow, the tee time marketplace app controlled by NBC Sports. The effort, called “Get your golf on,” is meant to drive greater participation in golf, which is benefitting from new interest from younger players and people of color, according to the National Golf Foundation. Those demographics could boost viewership for pro golf events televised by NBC Sports. The GolfNow campaign will kick off tomorrow, coinciding with the first round of the U.S. Open tournament, which will air on NBC and the NBC-owned USA Network. Ads will also air on the NBC-owned Golf Channel, as well as a range of linear and OTT platforms. NBC Sports is aiming for the campaign to reach 50% of U.S. households over the course of the summer. GolfNow is an app allowing consumers to reserve tee times, research courses and search for deals at more than 12,000 golf courses in 41 countries, including more than 9,000 courses in the U.S. The app also helps golf courses manage their businesses. It is a part of NBC Sports Next, a division uniting the company’s technology-based properties such as GolfPass, a paid membership program offering discounts, online lessons and exclusive videos for golfers, and youth sports apps including SportsEngine, which allows users to search for sports camps and programs. The brief for GolfNow’s campaign focused on its role as “one of the biggest mouthpieces for the sport,” responding to a boom in golf participation that’s brought millions of new participants to the links since the pandemic, said Jody Vogelaar, chief marketing officer for NBC Sports Next and Fandango, the movie ticket platform also owned by NBC. The agency Stranger Friend was behind the campaign's message. “We’re sort of sitting at this moment where the sport of golf was exploding, and our products and services were growing,” Vogelaar said. “We sent more golfers to our course partners than ever before. And we wanted to step back and say, ‘How do we really lean into the moment?’” GolfNow, which was founded by Cypress Golf Systems in 2001, was acquired by Comcast in 2008, prior to Comcast’s merger with NBCUniversal. Growing in part through purchases of competitors, GolfNow is the leading tee-time reservation app in the U.S., with high awareness in the golf community. In a survey by the National Golf Foundation, 76% of golfers were aware of GolfNow when asked in an unaided survey question, with the closest competitors TeeOff at 38%, 18Birdies at 27%, and Supreme Golf at 12%. (TeeOff was acquired by GolfNow in 2019 and is also part of NBC Sports Next.) GolfNow controls about 90% of the tee-time marketplace, according to Golf Inc. GolfNow declined to disclose revenue figures. Cannes Lions coverage Follow our live blog here Sign up here for email updates See all of the Grand Prix winners here Golf's growing diversity Total U.S. golf participation surpassed 40 million for the first time in 2022, including non-course play at facilities such as Topgolf, according to figures from the National Golf Foundation. Of those 40 million, 3.4 million are youth golfers, a group that’s grown by 36% since the pandemic. Non-white golfers increased by 9% in 2022 and by 32% since 2018, now accounting for an all-time high of 22% of on-course golfers. Women comprise 35% of on-course golfers today and participation is up by 19% since 2019, the figures show. Pro golf recently came under scrutiny with the announced merger of the PGA Tour and Saudi-backed LIV Golf. Read more: What the PGA-Liv combination means for brands GolfNow execs said the changing demographics of the game required the brand to be certain its marketing was representative of the game’s modern players. The marketing also needed to be welcoming to newcomers, who typically find the game and its customs intimidating at first. “We wanted to say, ‘OK, we recognize that golf has some barriers to entry. How do we develop personas that speak specifically to those barriers of entry and kind of take the walls down for people?’” Vogelaar said. “No matter what your age, your gender, your ethnicity, your skill level, anybody can have a great time golfing and find a way to encourage people to get out and play more.” What GolfNow needed, Vogelaar said, was to take these messages to consumers in a way that broke through the clutter of golf ads. And that’s how the gopher came to be. Going for humor “You think about golf advertising that you might see during a tournament and it’s a bit formulaic,” said Vogelaar. “It’s typically appealing to a specific demo, you’re going to see a lot of the same imagery, you’re going to see the golf course beauty shots and the people in the clubs, you’re going to see the latest equipment, and people looking picture perfect and are probably at a decent or high skill level.” The agency Stranger Friend developed the idea of delivering GolfNow’s message through a character. A squirrel, a deer and various birds were considered, but in the end it was agreed that a gopher—made famous on golf courses in the movie “Caddyshack,”—would be best. “We felt like the gopher in concept was going to deliver the right balance of humor and relatability while feeling very organic to the game of golf,” Vogelaar said. “The other thing we couldn’t resist was the auditory similarity between the words ‘gopher’ and ‘golfer.’” In ads, the Gopher is a friendly and optimistic denizen of the golf course, who is oblivious to those who might find him a pest. The personality is carried through by his look, developed by puppeteers at Stoopid Buddy Studios. “He doesn’t see himself as a gopher, he sees himself as a golfer, and that practice sets up all these different humorous scenarios,” Vogelaar said. “He’s sort of an eternal optimist, a champion of the sport and a champion of our product as a brand insider.” Vogelaar credited Stranger Friend with the introduction of a character that “took us out of our comfort zone.” The brand’s last campaign, known as “No Better Place,” began in September of 2021 and celebrated a variety of golf moments such as date nights, family outings and solo golf trips. NBC Sports Next will extend the new campaign via social media, on-site promotion at golf tournament, and merchandising, like the bucket hat worn by the gopher.

How NBC's GolfNow app is reaching new consumers—with the help of a gopher

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