EPISODE 83

Tucker When we look at examples, like you had said, it’s unique; it is not very uncommon. We have plenty of clubs come to us with this challenge to say we are shifting. How do we make sure our brand is shifting with us properly? But these are things like transitioning from a public club to a private club. This shift requires that exclusivity. And what kind of members do we want and how does that work? And then we need to build out messaging and a perception around that kind of more exclusive shift from our public-facing club. This also has new membership tiers thinking about when a club says, What we’re really going to focus on is a junior membership. We’re really going to focus on maybe a social membership addition to this or building out a more legacy-oriented membership. How does that work for us? And shifting that message, that visual that allows their brand to attract those people. Or in the rare case, which has happened plenty of times as well, is expanding more to a corporate or national membership model to say we need to attract businesses or people from other areas of the country to come enjoy our club, become members. What does that look like? And these all have implications for not only the new members that you’re trying to get but potentially the current members that are saying you’re introducing all these new people into our club. What does that mean? And we believe that that’s a great opportunity to look at the brand and say, what are we introducing these new people to? And what are we introducing the current people to as we move into the future for our club? 

Derek When we think of these different opportunities, we’re not going to get into the financial aspects or motivations of the club. I understand that a public golf course and a private golf course operate differently. They are completely different business models. I think the key thing that we’re honing in on here, though, are the specific audiences. Prospective customers of a private club compared to a public course, those customers are very different, and they want very, very different things. That potential corporate member is looking for something different from you as a club than the typical, say, full golf member, or especially compared to a public golf course. So, to make sure that we are understanding what each of those components wants based on what type of transition you might be going through is pretty critical and might even be part of what goes wrong. 

Tucker Start there. What goes wrong? What often goes wrong when clubs shift this membership model? And then let’s dive into what are the things you can start thinking about in a way that helps you kind of transition correctly. What steps can you take to move that brand forward as long as you have this challenge in front of you instead of just doing nothing? Like we say, doing nothing is a choice. If you do nothing with your brand while you shift, that means that you agree that the brand it currently sits at is desirable for that new audience. So, what goes wrong? First, it’s the misalignment between messaging and culture. So if the brand doesn’t really reflect the club’s evolving values, a lot of clubs don’t really think about how we talk about our club is really in tandem with the experience you have at the club, with the people, with the amenities, with all of those things. And that risk of alienating current members by saying, if we just remessage our club differently, if we just talk about ourselves differently, then that has this huge risk of saying current members don’t agree with that or don’t like the way that you’re talking about the club. Or prospective members who come look at that in this new membership model say, well, you said this one thing, but the way that everyone treats everybody is this other way. So what’s the disconnect there? And why does that happen? 

Derek Yeah, just jumping straight to how we talk about ourselves and that messaging without first doing the strategic work that we’re always harping on and figuring out what those people want and what is important to say, that just causes that confusion and makes it worse. You know, you’re kind of in the creative world, you’re throwing darts, you’re just throwing messaging out there, hoping that it works, but without really kind of getting to the bottom of it first. 

Tucker You’re also shifting to the next issue or challenge that you put yourself in, which is that creates poor communication normally for the changes. Thinking about an unclear or maybe inconsistent message to current members can cause a resistance. I think what leadership really wants when you make this change is the least amount of resistance as possible from the current audience that we have. And if you’re not communicating to them clearly why we’re doing this, what this is going to mean, and how this is going to help us become who we want to be, then that can really make it harder for you day to day than actually help them become evangelists of this initiative and help them push the initiative forward. 

Derek There’s a club that we’ve worked with in the past that’s adding a certain type of membership to their club. And they’re really concerned about how the current membership, which is the bulk of their club, receives this change that they’re doing. Because their current membership, who make up the club, who fund the club, who’ve created that culture, when they see this club adding this other component, their first reaction is to say, well, what does this mean to me? How is this affecting me and my membership? And why are you treating this thing as so special rather than us who’ve been here the whole time? So that communication is critical. 

Tucker The final one that I would harp on is this failure to attract the right audience. So we’ve talked a lot about internally, like what are the challenges you’re going to get with your current audience? And that’s all great. But let’s say you’re shifting from public to private. You don’t have a current audience, or maybe you have a couple of members who are saying, Hey, we want this to be a private club. Let’s shift from a public to a private club. Here’s what it is. But that means that you need to spend the time, the effort, and the energy into attracting that next step. What is our membership? What does that mean? What are all these people? And most likely your current brand doesn’t attract those people on purpose. So you’re not attracting those people today with your brand. That’s a reason. There’s a reason for that, and that shift is going to be really impactful. 

Derek If you’re currently a public course and you’re shifting to becoming a private club, like I said, those are two completely different audiences. Your public club brand will not work in attracting your private club audience. To say that we’ve changed and now we’re private and we used to be public, but none of the branding, none of the messaging, none of those components change, it’s going to be impossible to change your reputation and how people think of you. 

Tucker The reputation is a big deal, right? Do you look at that and say, Well, we’ve been around for 40 years as a public club. Well, just changing from public to private doesn’t mean that the local audience is going to understand that just straight away. And so figuring out how you communicate that change, whether it’s visually, whether it is verbally, that’s a big deal. But when a club changes its membership model, it’s not just an operational shift. I think that a lot of people think that. Like, we’re just changing our model from this to this that requires this operational change. Sounds great. I agree with that. But it’s more than that. It’s also this big brand shift. And so when you fail to recognize that your brand needs to change, it really leads to a missed opportunity, and it can have these consequences in which you don’t take full advantage of that opportunity that you’re going after. You’re switching your membership model for a reason. There is an opportunity out there that you are trying to take advantage of. If you believe that you could have taken advantage of that opportunity without changing anything, that probably isn’t the case, and there’s a reason for that. 

Derek So how do you do it right? A couple of thoughts that we can share, maybe three or four steps that clubs can be taking, if they are doing one of these shifts or considering one of the shifts so maybe they avoid some of those challenges that we just outlined. 

Tucker The first is to define your vision. And that seems really easy for a lot of people. It’s like, well, of course we have a vision. That’s why we’re a club. But define your vision in a way that clarifies what this shift represents. What are we trying to become, and how does this become a part of that initiative rather than saying our vision is to offer this new membership model? That’s not the case. That’s what you’re doing to get to that next place. So figure out how you’re building that model in a way that contributes to what you want to be rather than just doing it because it’s a business opportunity. And that’s a big difference. And then aligning all of that internally, ensuring that leadership staff, members, and any current internal audience is on the same page about that vision. They all agree upon that. That is what we want to become. That is what we want to do. 

Derek This is a critical step. If you skip this vision, defining vision, casting, everything after this is going to be really, really hard. I mean, this goes right to the foundation of branding. This goes right to the core, to the base. You have an opportunity. So if you’re making this sort of evolution or change, you have some sort of opportunity. So if I’m going to take my public course, I’m going to make it private, then from a business standpoint, my assumption is that I’m looking at the landscape in my area or region, or maybe nationally, and I’ve determined there’s an opportunity to serve a need that’s not currently being served, which means that there’s a desire for this. I’ve determined that opportunity, I’ve determined who my target audience is, and then I’ve crafted that vision to help tell that story to support us in the long term. Again, it’s setting the strategy versus just thinking about the tactics that come along with that change. If you do one thing, and you do the one thing right, it’s making sure that you get this vision set first. 

Tucker And if you’re shifting, the public to private thing is clear when you say, well, obviously a lot has to change. But even saying that we’re going to introduce new membership tiers or we’re going to introduce maybe a corporate membership model to our existing model, that still requires the question, well, why are we doing that? What is that going to help us achieve in the future? And how is that going to contribute to who we want to be and where we want to go? The next step is tailoring your message. A lot of people get tactical around messaging to say, What are the exact words that we’re going to use? I want to think about what the story is that we want to tell internally to our existing members and then externally to this new outreach audience that we’re trying to attract. What is that story so that we feel like we’re really hitting on the key pieces of what each audience wants from us and how that’s going to contribute to this vision that we just talked about? 

Derek We’ll often refer to this, maybe even as crafting a value proposition, some sort of statement that gives people a reason to care about what this change is that you’re going through. I want to hammer the point that you made. There are two audiences. There are existing member audiences or customer-based audiences, and then there’s the prospect. And there’s also your internal team audience. Now, you have a vision. In step one, you set the vision or casted it. You put the strategy in place. You know who your target audience is. You know who your audience used to be. You know who your team is and what kind of people you need on the team to support you through that transition. That will then make crafting these messages to tell each of those audiences why this matters, why this is relevant to them, which is a big step. It creates trust with them, it creates transparency, and it gives them a reason to stick with you or to join. 

Tucker And you’re not just changing who you’re going after if you think about all of those things. Even if you’re introducing a new membership model tier, when you say, oh, we’re just going to focus on junior memberships, that requires your staff to think about how do we treat those people. And how do they interact with that? Do we treat that same junior member as we do the 70-year-old who’s been here for 45 years? Probably not because they want different things and they want other experiences. And we need to figure out how we’re building out that perception around what we offer and how that all works. And then helping our staff understand this shift is going to change the way that we look at that. I think that we’ve seen public clubs shift to private and say, we can just have the same staff and the same experience. And it’s all great because we offer golf and people want golf. So that’s awesome. That is a huge mistake, in my opinion, to say that you could have a public experience, but you’re private. That is definitely not the way that you want to go about that. So you need to understand what that change is and communicate that internally to your staff as well. 

Derek And if you can shift that mindset, you have to shift that mindset. You have to be able to shift the community’s mindset. I’m thinking of two clubs in our region that both made an attempt to go private, and neither one of them ended up doing it. Neither one of them were able to raise enough members to financially make it a viable option for them. Without having been involved in either of those processes, I can only make some assumptions. But one of them has to be the inability to help people who already perceive this as a public golf course, even though it might’ve been a very high-end public golf course, as to why I would want to join this at a private club level and to even have any understanding how you as a club are going to be able to transition that service and offering to support me and that emotional and financial investment that you are now asking from me. 

Tucker So, assuming you have this great vision and you’re saying, Derek, I know what you’re saying, but we have a great idea on how we’re shifting that offering. We have a great idea of how we are going to do all that. The next step is to assess the visual and verbal identity of the club to say, are you speaking the right way to talk to those people? Do you look the right way when you say, here’s who we’re going after? Are we showcasing that visually when we show up on someone’s opportunity list? Or if they’re looking at all the private clubs in the area, do we stand out? Do we look different? Do we really feel like, wow, there’s something else going on there or some kind of shift has happened there? I should go check that out, or I should go talk to somebody there. It’s also about how you can have all those great things and you can have great ideas, but people tend to not give you that chance unless you say, No, we have changed. See this or look at this or read this. And that’s really when it comes to how that brand helps you move through that transition is a big piece. 

Derek The public to private is maybe a relatively easy example to associate with. I’m sure there are scenarios where we would recommend that the brand, the visuals, and the primary way that club looks and represents itself, there may be some occasions where that wouldn’t change. But if you’re going to make that drastic of a change to craft the public perception that you need, I have a hard time envisioning a case where you are reassessing your logo, your tagline, your messaging, maybe even the name itself, because you are now telling a completely different story. This also takes the case with clubs that are adding corporate national memberships to their private club and giving that corporate national membership its own designation. We talked a little bit before about how you add that while not discouraging or frustrating your normal current membership. How do you treat them in a way that identifies them and helps them feel like they belong, but maybe do so in a way that’s thoughtful as it fits into the overall ecosystem of your master brand? 

Tucker Yeah, and I think that shifts into our final point of your goal now, if you’ve done all these things, you’ve established your vision, you’ve had the right message, you have the right story that you want to tell to these people, you assessed the way that you present yourself and how you go about selling that offering, the last one is you need to build momentum. This isn’t going to be let’s flip the switch and now we’re private or let’s flip the switch and now we add junior offerings and people are just going to come in. You need to build momentum and launch that initiative with intention using events, campaigns, storytelling, and opportunities to generate that excitement within those new audiences and those current audiences. And your goal here is to establish credibility on both sides and say, we are going to do this. This is real. This is happening. 

Derek Great word – excitement. These are incredible, exciting opportunities. There are reasons to market yourself. There are reasons to brand. This is a momentous occasion to do that with intention as you described. 

Tucker When we redefine membership models as a club, it represents a massive opportunity for the club operationally and financially. The brand needs to meet that opportunity where it is. And for us, this is a huge moment to reintroduce the club to the market that you’re in. It’s a great opportunity to create a sense of shared vision amongst your staff, amongst your community that you’re moving forward, amongst the new members that might be coming in. This is all about figuring out the future of your club, communicating the future of your club, and letting your brand do some of that heavy lifting around the communication. 

Derek The name of the podcast is Brands Made Meaningful. So when you do this in a meaningful way, that ensures that what you are changing into or adding or evolving towards is done in a relevant way, a relevant way that’s authentic to your club that’s aligned with your specific vision. 

Tucker My big takeaway from today’s conversation is that membership changes. Whether you’re adding new members or completely shifting your model from public to private, they’re more than operational. It’s more than just figuring out how we’re going to serve these people. It’s transformational. It’s we are a different club than we used to be. And that’s very hard for most leaders who were leaders of the past club. Having you think of that club completely differently is going to be a challenge, and that needs to be thought of when you think about the brand, when you think about communications, and when you think about the way you execute it as well. 

Derek Looking ahead to the fourth episode in this series, we’ll continue the reputation component that we talked about today. We’re going to look a little bit closer at what happens when a club’s reputation is changing, maybe even declining, and how we can help you think about ways to come at that. But until next time, it was a pleasure. If there’s a topic that you’re interested in as we look ahead towards the future series, shoot us a note. Let us know. We would be happy to add it to the queue. 

Tucker Thank you. 

Derek Sussner is a branding firm specializing in helping companies make a meaningful mark, guiding marketing leaders who are working to make their brand communicate better, stand out, and engage audiences to grow their business. For more on Sussner, visit Sussner.com.