"Making the Tour" Posts from the Pete Dye Classic

Day 7: Saturday

Thursday attendance at the National Mining Assistance Pete Dye Classic was the highest first-round attendance in the three-year history of the event – more than 5 times that of the year before. I found this out about 6:30 a.m. By 7:00 a.m. newspapers that didn’t already go to print, the AP and countless radio stations knew of this news.

Friday attendance is looking great as well.

Below are some astonishing numbers.

Total Potential Impressions: 920,989,478
The above number represents the total potential audience multiplied by the number of ads placed.

Projected Actual Impressions 92,098,947
This number is a conservative estimate of actual impressions based upon numbers provided by media outlets in which we purchased space. Estimates ranged from 10 – 80% of the market. We opted to be rather conservative –to be safe – and go with the lower figure.

Even using the conservative estimate, it’s easy to see how valuable a property (a reference to an earlier sponsorship post) this event is. And that’s before day one of the live telecast to more than 70 million households worldwide began.

To what do I attribute such success?

We helped the tournament staff to better understand the market and to identify its key customer segments. We reached into new markets – larger markets – more familiar with championship golf, with higher income levels and more likely to travel up to four hours – though we actually had a good amount of spectators from much further away.

We refined the prior year’s advertising strategy. Based upon surveys conducted after last year’s event, it was determined that print ads simply didn’t work. So this year, we ran less in print and focused more in broadcast media and online media. The airing of weekly vignettes on news stations in large and small markets, 30-minute previews in large and small markets, and weekly e-newsletters to a growing base of subscribers helped get the word out to a larger audience than ever before.

Oh yeah, the championship golf helped a little bit too.