One of the great things about private clubs is the interesting stories behind their founding. Rich histories abound, such as The Olympic Club in San Francisco springing from a small group of 20 or so people exercising in their backyards. To this day, it remains a place where aspiring Olympic athletes train and members participate on travelling teams that compete at the highest level of amateur athletics. Or Oakmont Country Club outside Pittsburgh where in 1903 Henry Fownes set out to build the most difficult course in the U.S. Some 90 years and many major championships later, the course remains one of the ultimate challenges in golf, with the members willing to support the cost of maintaining it at championship conditions for every day play. These clubs remain true to their roots all these years later. In fact, we could say they are living their brand.
According to Wikipedia, the practice of branding traces all the way back to the early Egyptians, where people used hot irons to mark their cattle so there would be no mistaking who owned them should they wander off or be stolen. Each brand was a unique symbol literally seared in place to create a clear distinction between the animals. In modern parlance, brand is a term for the special experience that someone seeks and expects to receive from a product or service. Just like the burned on image in the past, your brand should set you apart from the herd. That notion of literally burning your brand in place is a great visual for understanding the important role in plays in a club’s success.
In today’s world, we know and value brands. BMW is “The Ultimate Driving Machine.” Their cars are luxurious, well-engineered and sporty. Rolex is widely recognized for crafting the finest timepiece in the world. Any car can get you from one place to another and there are now all sorts of inexpensive ways to know the time of day down to the second, but these brands excel in a world where cheaper alternatives abound. It’s because they deliver these experiences in a special way. It’s in the styling and materials, the craftsmanship and assembly, the sense they are striving to be the best.
Managing Brand Equity
Brand has evolved to be so important, there is an accounting term called brand equity which places a financial value on the familiarity and reputation that customers associate with that product or experience. BMW and Rolex have huge brand equity. As does Olympic Club and Oakmont. Brand owners manage their brands carefully, they maintain and continually enhance their reputation and assure adherence to high standards to protect their value. They nurture these perceptions through association with the most prestigious sporting events on the planet.
It is important for clubs to recognize and manage their brand. Clubs already start with a branded perception due to their exclusivity. The University Club of New York draws brand equity from its elegant clubhouse designed by McKim Mead and White, the leading design firm in the city when commissioned to do the work. The same would be said for a club that restores its golf course to the original intent of a Donald Ross or Alister McKenzie. Its drawing on and celebrating its brand.
A club that does a wonderful job of managing its brand is Meadow Club, in Fairfax, Calif., just north of San Francisco. There is a lot of great golf in the Bay Area, so how does this club in a somewhat remote location maintain a long waiting list and attract more than one-third of its members from all the way across the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco? One of their brand pillars is their Alister McKenzie golf course. It has been restored to McKenzie’s original design and it is magnificently maintained, including bearing the cost to regularly sand the fairways to achieve firm and fast conditions even in the Bay Area’s rainy season. This is reinforced by the many photos, plaques and maps displayed throughout the clubhouse. They leverage their brand by educating members and guests about the original vision and history. The club is an active member of the McKenzie Society, where members travel around the world to play in friendly competitions at clubs with a McKenzie golf course. This rich history is supported with excellent services and programs led by Jack Grehan, CCM, and his wonderful staff, but it starts with the course. You leave there feeling as if you’ve tasted a bit of history and an appreciation for the bold vision of the founders who committed to building this course in the 1920s when a ferry and carriage ride were the only ways to get there from San Francisco.
Some clubs miss the point. I recently met with leaders of a club with a Donald Ross golf course. They are struggling for members. While some of the Ross characteristics have been muted by misguided renovations over the years, it is still a Ross course. More importantly, the fact the founders hired Ross to begin with signals the lofty aspirations they had at the outset. They didn’t hire any golf course architect, they hired the best of their times, even bringing him to the club, which was not the case with much of Ross’ later work. That makes the course an original.
When pointing out the brand advantage this gives the club to distinguish it from other courses in the area, a member mentioned that the young people coming to the club today do not know who Donald Ross is and, in his opinion, don’t care. This misses the point. It isn’t up to the prospective members to know that; it is the job of the leadership to manage it and protect the brand equity that they are sitting upon. They should be telling the story of the club’s founding and marketing the its lineage. They can associate themselves with one of the fathers of American golf and leverage this to show how they are different and special from other clubs in their market. They are squandering their brand equity instead.
Leveraging Your Brand
A brand may also evolve or be extended, but that must be done carefully. Once lofty Mercedes Benz has taken a hit on quality ratings for their cars, falling to the middle of the pack in the latest Car and Driver rankings. What did they do? They wanted to sell more cars at a lower price point, and they had to undercut their commitment to German engineering. As Warren Buffet so famously said, “price is what you pay, quality is what you get.” This is not the way to leverage your brand. Unfortunately, we see too many clubs that adopt defensive measures that damage their brand, like lowering the initiation fee and sending signals to the world that they are in trouble or cutting positions like the food and beverage director to save money.
The clubs that are winning in today’s world invest in their experience. The most obvious way to change a club’s brand is signaled by where they invest their capital. We see a lot of this these days as clubs add amenities to increase the relevance of their experience. This sends a clear message to the marketplace that the organization is adapting, but how it does it is also important. The Country Club in Brookline, Mass., one of the country’s most important golf clubs, is currently building a fitness center. It will not be a new brass and glass facility, however, but a converted barn that has long been on the property. They are modernizing while paying homage to the past all at the same time. It will deliver a modern amenity, cloaked in an architectural setting that is consistent with The Country Club’s brand. No doubt service and programs will fit their special culture.
Because they were typically formed for a unique purpose and in a certain place, clubs have interesting backgrounds, which translate to special brands. Club leaders must be effective stewards of this brand equity, making membership about much more than an activity. Leaders much connect with that past, even if their beginning was not that long ago. Those who are interested in club membership want both a sensory connection to those beginnings and a relevant experience. In this way, membership development can focus on value, not the price. While the path to success certainly includes offering new services and responding to evolving trends, it is essential to tie this back to your roots—your brand. You’ll never go to Oakmont and find slow greens or leave Meadow Club without thinking about Alister McKenzie. The way in which these clubs live their brand is instructive to us all.
Club Trends Spring 2019