Make New Friends, Play More Golf
The online social networking community for golfers is celebrating its fourth year in existence, by launching its first ‘Above the Line’ marketing campaign.
The website run by ex-Media Planning Director, Ian Mullins, will be running a series of 10-second commercials throughout July and August.
The campaign will air exclusively via the world’s biggest Sports Radio station – Talksport in London and the surrounding areas.
The commercials written and produced by Essex based marketing agency, MC2 Marketing, and launches on the station the same day as this year’s OPEN Championship commences.
The Social Golfer radio airtime will run for approximately seven weeks and plays on ‘being let down by your mates’.
The campaign has been planned to target an ABC1 35+ male audience
It will reach over 3/4 million individuals, each listener hearing the campaign approximately 6 times.
Talking about the campaign Mullins said: “It was always our intention to eventually launch the The Social Golfer brand to a larger audience”
“But we have deliberately waited until such time as the website was a busy and active. 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. These include managing the Emirates Airlines media activity for 8 years.
Having worked in the media agency world for more than 25 years, he also ran the Hitachi media account for 7 years and launched the Daily Star Sunday for the infamous Richard Desmond. Spending more 11 years at the UK’s largest Media Independent Mediacom – now known as EssenceMediacom.
More recently he was responsible for managing The London Golf Show marketing activity. This included the launch of the Manchester Golf Show in 2013.
He was also responsible for launch of the ‘Altonwood Season Ticket’ for the late Ron Noade’s Altonwood Group, in the same year.
In addition, 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. 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 MD – Steve Ramsay.
Commenting on the new radio campaign Ramsey said, “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 an 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 is 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.”
