New slice on marketing.

• Author: Schley, Stewart
• Position: Sports Biz - Column

It's late summer, the season for a parade of outdoor gatherings featuring boxed lunches, people wearing shorts, and thousands of little golf balls whose white surfaces have been violated by the imposition of corporate logos.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

Yes, sports fans, the corporate golf tournament season is in full backswing.

Pristine putting surfaces are suddenly violated by yellow signposts declaring that Rex from Risk Management is closest to the pin. A fairway that normally beckons with a blanket of manicured green is blemished by a placard announcing that Becky from Finance (who knew?) can smack it 210 yards.

There are mulligans being exhausted, Bloody Marys being emptied and shanks aplenty. And on every tee box, there awaits a forward line of happy greeters doling out free water bottles, extra tees and travel-sized tubes of sunscreen, each festooned with a different logo hoping to wedge its way into the cluttered minds of favored corporate clients. For the marketer angling to make an impression, the sponsored golf tournament has become a war zone, requiring ever more creative ammunition and posing fresh challenges in the form of industry rivals who have set up camp with a cooler of refreshments over on the 12th tee.

"In our industry it's become very competitive," says Tracey McDonough, Rocky Mountain regional marketing director for Belfor USA, a disaster-restoration company that sponsors an annual golf tournament hosted by the Building Owners and Managers Association. "We used to be the only ones manning a tee box at the golf tournament, and now there are like seven restoration companies there."

Belfor is one of a handful of Denver-area companies looking outside the (tee) box for ways to leverage the appeal of sports in a way that's good for business and customer relations. McDonough thinks she's found another one in the form of a specialty marketing program that strokes the passion of many a corporate suit: football.

With the gridiron season looming, McDonough's national company recently mailed to about 50 selected clients a two-inch thick white box containing a season-preview magazine whose cover features a player from one of the clients' favorite teams from the pro or college ranks.

Kansas City Chiefs fans opened up the box to see running back Larry Johnson. Broncos loyalists--McDonough has many in her territory--got Champ Bailey. Nebraska fans got a Big 12 Preview Issue featuring quarterback Zac Taylor. Behind the magazine is a cover...