No. 260: The Tiger Effect

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Photo: Andrew Haynes, Gear Patrol

Media and eCommerce. Tiger Woods’ effects on media and commerce are astonishing to consider. When it comes to professional golf, he doesn’t just move the needle – he is the needle. In 2018, if you happen to watch Woods in contention on a Sunday afternoon, it’s a major event in media, branding, and eCommerce. Here is a focused look at what that means.

(1) Retailers will capitalize on merchandising.

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Nike’s golf division had all but forgotten about Tiger before his return, earlier in 2018. Jason Day had top billing and Tiger Woods was present on the Nike Golf homepage for contractual reasons. That changed, this weekend. The Tiger Woods store front on Nike.com was the tenth most viewed page. The SKU’s of the Sunday red collarless polo were of the Nike Golf brand’s best selling product over the final few days of the four round tournament.

John Haley on Twitter

@nikegolf where can I buy the @TigerWoods Nike range ? The shirt he’s wearing today is superb👉

John Haley on Twitter

@nikegolf where can I buy the @TigerWoods Nike range ? The shirt he’s wearing today is superb👉

Much like team Nike, the merchandising team at the 2018 Valspar Championship was not fazed by the Tiger Woods buzz surrounding the tournament. Given that last year’s winner was not exactly a household name, the team coordinated with Nike once they were notified that Woods, Spieth, and McIlroy were to make appearances. It’s reported that the tournament saw a 400+% jump in on-ground merchandise sales on the ground.

But look no further than Barstool Sports’ content and commerce maneuver after yesterday’s event. In what can be considered as nothing more than SEO bait, they published this excerpt and a link to their Woods-inspired tees that paid homage to his Sunday red-look and his confirmed appearance at the upcoming Masters.

There’s nothing like Tiger Woods being in contention at a golf tournament on a Sunday. Everybody tunes in. That’s why the Valspar smashed its attendance records all week. That’s why the text chain you have with your buddies was full of Tiger talk. That’s why Twitter was on fire as everyone tuned into see what was gonna happen. It was the Valspar ant people were going nuts. People have said it before but Tiger doesn’t move the need in golf. He is the needle. He transcends. He proves it time and time and time again. Doesn’t matter if you love or hate him. You wanna see what he does.

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Barstool Sports

(2) Broadcasters will be thankful for him.

Let’s be honest, Woods has been through one heck of a ringer. His reemergence from the depths of public humiliation has been generally welcomed by fans and consumers. “He’s a completely different person,” said Notah Begay III, a longtime Woods confidant. “He’s gone through public humiliation. He’s gone through personal challenges. He’s gone through physical injury. He’s gone through technical problems in all parts of his game. He’s risen above it all.” Per the @GolfChannelPR account on Twitter, final round coverage on NBC was +28% vs. the final round of 2015 Wyndham (4.0), the last time Woods contended on a Sunday. Yesterday’s broadcast was +73% vs final round of The Honda Classic a few weeks ago.

Also, it was the highest-rated (non-major) PGA TOUR broadcast since the 2013 Players Championship (5.7). The final round on Sunday washe t highest-rated golf broadcast (outside of the Masters) since 2015’s PGA Championship (5.14). A Tiger Woods in contention is lightning in a bottle.

(3) Twitter will project Woods’ wide appeal.

In this small sample, you have: golf’s greatest player, a perennial All-Pro football player, a Women’s PGA Tour legend, one of the top 50 NBA players of all time, and a woman who’d be on American skiing’s Mount Rushmore.

Jack Nicklaus on Twitter

40 the new 20-something?! Phil Mickelson, 47, ends drought of 4+ yrs & now well done, hearty congrats @Paul_Casey, 40, on 1st @PGATOUR win since 2009. Fantastic 65 w/ just 21 putts at @ValsparChamp! And well done @TigerWoods! You’re getting there my friend. Sure it won’t be long!

JJ Watt on Twitter

Has any one athlete ever moved the needle for an entire sport like Tiger for golf?! Maybe MJ, Serena… idk. Man that’s crazy.

Michelle Wie on Twitter

Let’s goooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo 🐯!!! @TigerWoods

Scottie Pippen on Twitter

@TigerWoods from deep! What a putt. So great to see him competing like this on a Sunday.

lindsey vonn on Twitter

Let’s go T!!! https://t.co/uc9a9lKiL2

(4) Sponsoring brands will have the week of their lives.

The tournament was founded in 2000 as the Tampa Bay Classic and in its eighteen years, no title sponsorship has shaped up to be as effective as Valspar Corporation’s 2018. Signed in 2013 and extending through 2020, the championship event is seeing more search traffic than it ever has. This, on the heels of the most material evidence of Wood’s comeback in five years. Screen Shot 2018-03-11 at 10.25.24 PM

(5) His performance inflates ticket prices.

The Masters’ odds are changing by the day and the better Woods’ odds, the more expensive the ticket prices in Augusta. Tiger Woods is the now the third favorite to win The Masters at 10-1. He is ranked 388th in the world. The betting market’s irrational hope for a Woods return has led to an absolutely insane secondary market for tickets in Augusta. And this is a boon to IBM (the title sponsor) and the broadcast partners: CBS and ESPN.

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In the last few years, we’ve learned how the sports world reacts to various degrees of Tiger runs. A nice drive at a random tournament in the Bahamas in the winter gets a roar, a second place at the Valspar gets an explosion. If Woods ever competes on Sunday at a major, let alone Augusta, the entire country will look like post–Super Bowl Philadelphia.

Maybe that will never happen, but what we learned on Sunday is that anything could happen. And that’s all that’s needed right now.

Kevin Clark, The Ringer

Tiger Woods, at peak performance, is unlike any phenomenon in sports. His performance can reflect an immediate spike across all areas of 2PM’s coverage: brand, media, eCommerce, data. If by chance his Masters performance is anything similar to this weekend, you can expect a revision to this article.

Read more of the issue here.

No. 259: Walmart’s Next Acquisition

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Over the weekend, 2PM released the first executive member brief. It covered quite a bit of ground in an in-depth report on Walmart v Amazon eCommerce called Walmart Ventures.

Here is a small excerpt:

The competition between Walmart and Amazon has never been stiffer. Consumerism has always been about the heart, until Amazon made it about efficiency and logic. But for items as intimate as what you wear and what you sleep on, is logic enough?

Walmart is betting on the heart again by focusing on brand affinity, representation, and reinvigorating consumer faith. By using eCommerce as the tip of the spear, their brick and mortar presence will innovate along with it.

It’s no secret that I tend to believe in Marc Lore’s vision for a modern Walmart. In my recent report, I focused on Walmart’s brand-equity growth by means of DNVB acquisition (Modcloth, Moosejaw, Bonobos, etc). And 2PM Executive Member Taylor Holiday called me on it:

Solid stuff as always Web. The question I have that this post ignores a little is related to logistics power. You touch briefly on the convenience element that Amazon focuses on and I wonder how Walmart will seek to combat this? The thing I believe would be super super interesting would be Walmart could combine the DNVB style slick brand launch with convenience of a logistics super power. Imagine Allswell style brand with Same Day Delivery. Now that would be interesting.

Taylor Holiday, Managing Partner of Common Thread

In my report, I made two tables available: (1) Walmart’s existing acquisitions and (2) Walmart’s target acquisitions. To Taylor’s point, in discussing Walmart’s appetite for acquiring sexy DNVB’s (or building them from scratch), it’s easy to overlook that they’ve also acquired Parcel (2017). Walmart is working on building that logistics super power. And if they can’t finish the job, another $1B+ acquisition is on the way.

Walmart on Parcel’s acquisition: 

New York City is the top market for both Jet and Walmart.com, and because of the density of the area – along with the proximity of our fulfillment centers – it’s the perfect place for high-impact innovation. Born and bred in New York City, Parcel has developed unique expertise delivering to customers in a distinctly challenging and essential market. This acquisition allows us to continue testing ways to offer fast delivery while lowering our operating costs. We plan to leverage Parcel for last-mile delivery to customers in New York City – including same-day delivery – for both general merchandise as well as fresh and frozen groceries from Walmart and Jet.

As further proof that logistics is on the minds of Walmart executives, look no further than last night’s Oscar’s campaign.

The star of each 60-second spot is the same as for Walmart’s current ad campaign – the retailer’s signature blue shipping box – a nod to corporate priorities in the battle to catch Amazon in e-commerce. 

Jack Neff, AdAge

And if I had to project Walmart’s war room strategy, a Postmates acquisition comes to mind. Nationally, it’s one of the most trusted of the last mile platforms and it’s proven that it can operate in many of America’s largest markets. Couple this with the company’s recent emphasis on grocery delivery and you’re looking at quite a bit of shared virtue. Walmart’s grocery business is of its highest priorities.

Assuming that Parcel’s acquisition was a test, the Postmates acquisition could be the beneficiary of Walmart’s single-market experiment. After DoorDash’s recent $535M raise, this is an acquisition that makes sense for the gritty and resourceful Basti Lehmann and company. And it’s a purchase that is in Walmart’s price range. Paging Marc Lore.

Read more of the issue here. 

 

No. 257: Snap Inc. and eCommerce

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Snapchat, Nike, Darkstore and Shopify teamed up to pre-release the Air Jordan III “Tinker” on Snapchat with same-day delivery. There are a few implications to consider here.

In the United States, eCommerce is dominated by consumer search. Product discovery still lags behind. Amazon continues a tried and true discovery mechanism that is currently outsourced to digital publishers (in exchange for affiliate revenue). But a hole in the discovery ecosystem remains. So, leave it to the embattled media company known for discovery to attempt the leap.

Benedict Evans on Twitter

Amazon is Google for products, but we have no Facebook for products.

Perhaps Snapchat is attempting to lean into this role? There might just be a product market fit.

Snapchat’s push into eCommerce is a long time coming and it couldn’t happen at a more appropriate time for the Los Angeles media company ($SNAP). Here’s what Jason Del Rey noted about the the partnership between Shopify and Snapchat for Nike’s Jordan brand:

Over the All-Star weekend, Nike hosted a special concert in Los Angeles, the host city of the game. Attendees were guided to use the Snapchat camera to scan a code displayed on a basketball-hoop backboard to view the new Air Jordan III “Tinker” sneaker in the app.

Guests were then able to purchase the sneaker right within Snapchat with the help of technology from the e-commerce software company Shopify. And most of the kicks were delivered to customers on the same day, thanks to a logistics startup called Darkstore.

@DelRey, Recode (read here)

May 2016’s 2PM Issue No. 46 was entitled “Snapchat, the eCommerce Giant.” It was titled as such because it featured a now-noteworthy article by Maya Kossoff that preceded much of the conversation that you will read about Snapchat’s recent experiment with Shopify and the Jordan brand.

The ability to buy tickets without leaving Snapchat is the biggest coup for Snapchat and Twentieth Century Fox, which placed the ad buy, and it suggests the company is making serious moves toward expanding into the e-commerce space.

@MeKosoff, Vanity Fair (read here)

Snapchat’s potential to combine advertising campaigns with ease of purchase sets itself apart from Instagram who has yet to develop a partnership with Stripe or Shopify. I was excited about that direction before Snapchat focused on their Spectacles campaign. But even with Spectacles, Snapchat began honing the ideas that we’re now seeing.

Here’s what I wrote in 2PM Issue 191 (2017): 

The most successful marketing campaign that Snapchat has led in the last two years wasn’t through traditional advertising, it was through traditional retail and eCommerce. […]  There is a virtuous cycle in modern digital media and eCommerce that shouldn’t be ignored. Consumers want to go where they are influenced to act. And advertisers would be smart to create content in those same spaces.

 

With Jordan, Snap is dipping its toe into the possibility of monetizing just about anything via app-integrated sales channels. Snap openly classifies itself a camera company, rather than a social media app. That’s why it’s explored products like Spectacles, which turned sunglasses into a video camera. And while right now, Snap is only selling one limited edition sneaker drop for Jordan through a live event, it’s easy to imagine Snap leveraging the close relationship that its 187 million daily active users have with its camera to any number of third-party brand partners.

Mark Wilson, Fast Company (read here)

Facebook has done a marvelous job of iterating around Snapchat’s original ideas, all but trouncing the high flying Snap, Inc. Only time will tell if this flavor of content x commerce is another one of those ideas that we’ll find reimagined for Instagram.

Read more of the issue here.