At 09:51 PM 1/27/03 -0500, Ray Pruitt wrote:
as you know I am busy running a shop and don't usually talk a lot. However, running a high quality OEM shop is a big job. I noticed (not for the first time) , on national tv coverage , a player using one brand of driver, but covering it with a competitors brand of head cover.Personally, I could not do this myself. Endorsing something you don't believe in defies integrity. That said...
I have seen this at a TOUR event before, and I for one am tired of seeing this practice. Anyone else out there have the same opinion, ? and what do we the consumer and business people do about it?
Oh, by the way , the player was Vijay ,and he used a Taylor Made , with a Cleveland headcover.
Ray
I find it hard to work up any indignation specifically in the case of athletes endorsing one brand while using another. Tennis players have been doing this for years. And I have no doubt that tour golfers do too. But the fact that "everybody does it" is not what fails to tick me off. It's that the whole OEM endorsement-based sales pitch is just so dishonest that I don't see this as a breach that particularly sticks out.
The endorsement idea -- the notion of paying a visible celebrity athlete to use your product -- appeals only to the weakest or most ego-dominated minds anyway. How could it be logical that because Vijay Singh plays Cleveland (or Taylor Made, or whatever) and wins, that I can improve my game by playing that brand. ("Be like Mike." "Gotta be the shoes." "I am Tiger Woods".) As clubfitters, we all know how ridiculous that is. Yet for some reason, this notion:
(a) Sells lots of golf clubs.
(b) Raises the cost of those golf clubs, because of endorsement costs.
(c) Raises the price of those golf clubs, because of both increased costs and [illogically] increased demand.
So I don't have a lot of sympathy for any consumer that is "fooled" by the headcover switch. They were fatally fooled by the whole premise before the switch ever happened.
Cheers!
DaveT
