A beastly debut

Among the mixed blessings of life in my business are what we call “made-for-the-media events.” These fall into one of three categories:
 

Junkets: These are thinly veiled mini-vacation trips, usually to warm sunny places, meant to entice the press to absorb and (the host hopes) regurgitate some highly technical product information that most of us don’t understand. The media reps move about in a little herd, not asking any real questions (because you don’t want to tip your hand to competitors), and generally wondering when the next meal and/or cocktail reception takes place. Soft-sided briefcases with the host’s corporate logo are often given to media. I have 256 of these briefcases piled up in my basement yet I still use the same backpack my sons gave me for Father’s Day 15 years ago. Go figure.

Tours: I’ve seen the innards of a bazillion manufacturing facilities. They are very cool but often completely incomprehensible to a schmuck like me. The host usually turns the factory tour over to an engineer who clearly despises having to explain “simple” processes to media idiots with English degrees. The best of these are “black box” tours where a new revolutionary product is in development and you have to sign a secrecy agreement. This is pointless since I never understand the technology and therefore could not blab about it even if I wanted to. I always try to steal the plastic safety glasses at the end of the tour but the damned engineers are ruthless about getting them back.

Relationship-Builders: These are usually small groups — or even individual visits — where the host spends time with media and attempts to get to know us. The PR folks who set the whole thing up step back and we get a chance to know the CEO or VP who’s running the business. These are a great way to build trust assuming the person in charge actually wants to do it. There is nothing more painful than a relationship-building meeting when the suits don’t want to be there, much less disclose anything substantive about their business. Super awkward.

Probably 99 percent of the media events I attend fall into one of those three buckets. But, I went to one recently that incorporated the best of all three.

The invitation came from Jacobsen Turf and the purpose was to get a secret sneak preview of their reinvented Truckster product. (It wasn’t that super-secret. I’d seen an earlier prototype which I’d nicknamed “The Beast” for reasons that are immediately apparent when you see it.) It was a small group — just the editors from the four national magazines — who came into Charlotte to meet the key folks bringing the vehicle to market, get the tour, take a crazy test drive on a prototype and adjourn to Sage Valley GC for some bonding and R&R. I was, in a word, sold.

Upon arrival in Charlotte (which, although not truly a “junket” destination, definitely beat the hell out of Cleveland in January), the initial briefing came from the big cheese himself, Jacobsen’s ever-candid president, David Withers. He made it clear that the new Truckster HD wasn’t “your father’s Cushman” and launching the vehicle under the Jacobsen brand was part of the effort to grow their value to customers and dealers across the board. (Another recent example: their acquisition of Dixie Chopper.) Withers stated flatly that the Truckster is the biggest launch the company has made since the 322 hit the market in 2009.

And, most importantly, the XD had most definitely not been developed in a vacuum. “We talked to more than 400 customers in 20 countries to find out what they wanted,” said Withers.

The most impressive thing I heard was not the fact that the new XD has a much bigger payload (3550 lbs vs. 2850 for the old Cushman) and a steel gauge bed, lots more torque, a cab-forward design customers asked for and a driver friendly seat system and dash design. The most impressive thing is that Textron — notably CEO Scott Donnelly — are fully backing the Jacobsen team in this and all other aspects of their continued reinvention of the company. “He has been keenly interested,” says marketing manager Glenn King. That, to put it mildly, has not always been the case in the past.

The Beast made its initial debut at the STMA show in Denver last month but the big coming out party will be in San Antonio at GIS later this month. The timing of this introduction, along with new models from Toro and others, is good: GCI’s State of the Industry study showed utility vehicles at the top of the capital equipment shopping list for supers in 2015.

So, we toured, we schmoozed, we learned and we bonded. And Sage Valley? A little slice of junket heaven.

Pat Jones is editorial director and publisher of Golf Course Industry. He can be reached at pjones@gie.net or 216-236-5854.