The way it works

Believe it or not, my job is not just flying around the country, giving speeches, playing bad golf on great courses and tweeting fun pictures taken with my selfie stick.

(Well, okay, that’s 98 percent of my job, but play along for a minute and pretend it’s not.)

Occasionally, I have to do real work like pouring over spreadsheets full of data about our advertisers. I’m always trying to analyze changes in the market. Which companies are emerging or declining? Which ones are doing more digital advertising and social media? Who’s advertising in other (vastly inferior) magazines and what can I do to reach out to them and bring them safely into the warm bosom of the GCI family?

The landscape of suppliers in the golf business evolves constantly, but one thing never changes: there is a core group of committed companies that underwrites everything we do.

Consider this: By my estimate, about 35 companies account for nearly 75 percent of all the advertising and marketing dollars invested in our industry. That’s not just print advertising…it’s everything including trade shows, sponsorships, chapter support, donations, events, educational opportunities and more. It runs the gamut from putting up a giant $350,000 booth at the GIS to paying for “free” sleeves of golf balls at your local association outing.

If not for those three dozen leaders, there would be no free magazines, conferences would shrink down to nothing and registration fees would soar, and your local and national association dues would triple. In short, those stalwart companies provide the financial infrastructure that keeps information and education flowing to you.

As if that’s not compelling enough, they also put experts into the field to help you every day. University funding and extension programs are getting killed everywhere and companies are stepping in to hire PhDs and put them back in the field to bring agronomic advice to you. Yes, they do have an obligation to represent their company’s products but, in my experience, they spend most of their time just helping supers deal with problems that aren’t necessarily related to what they’re selling.

Those leaders also bring the vast majority of new products to the market. That means they’re the ones doing the fundamental research and development that creates new technologies and new practices. They identify problems for turf managers and they solve them. How cool is that?

(That’s not to say that smaller companies don’t innovate as well. They do every day. I’m particularly impressed with how many new products have been developed and marketed by supers and former supers. Our friends Pat Sisk of Green Sweep and Scott May of Turf Screen are great recent examples of that wonderful phenomenon.)

I could use the rest of this column to list those amazing companies who support us and, more importantly, you…but I don’t need to. Just look around you and you’ll see their logos everywhere in your office, on the pullover you’re wearing, on the pocket knife you carry, on the training manual your mechanic uses every day, on a tee sign at your chapter golf tournament, and so on, and so on. They invest in hundreds of ways, big and small.

Many of those companies choose to market with GCI because they’re confident you’ll read each issue or open our enewsletters and you’ll see their ad. In that sense, we’re simply a delivery system for their key messages. But many of them also choose to invest in our magazine because they like what we say and like how we do things. In short, they support us because they believe in our mission and they feel our passion for this business. I love those folks. They get it.

The question is, do you? Do you really understand the mutual support system that makes our industry work? Do you recognize the value these companies provide beyond just offering products and reward it with your spending? At the very least, do you say “thanks” to them when they visit your facility or you see them at a show?

This is and always will be a relationship-driven industry. The great Willie Pennington of BASF told me years ago that his philosophy is, “Friendship first, business later.” I love that.

My philosophy is simple: I support people who support me. My goal is to return the love. Call it karma, call it good business, call it doing the right thing…it’s simply, as Willie said, an extension of the friendship we all share in our happy little industry. I’m grateful to be part of it. I hope you are too.

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