EPISODE 94

Derek You’re the one, you’re the listener.

Amy I’ll try to raise that number up for you. Yeah, it’s great.

Tucker Amy, let’s start with your career. Just give a little bit of a background, kind of your journey, where you come from from a professional side. And then I also want to flip that from a club side and that perspective, we were talking a little offline beforehand and I had to be like, stop talking because what you’re saying is amazing. So dive into that a little.

Amy Sounds good. Well, you know, Derek did my career, you know, well in the introduction. So thank you, Derek, for doing that. Like, like he mentioned, I’ve spent over the last 20 years, you Know, leading brand development and activation. Demand generation and marketing strategy for companies in industries like FinTech, financial technology, and healthcare. SAS, just so you know, Derek, is software as a service. So just a nice little acronym. But as you mentioned too, I built and managed global marketing teams at a Fortune 5 company, United Health Group. At a smaller tech firm wax, right? I help create strategies that not only boost revenue, but they strengthen that connection and trust with the customers, right. To make a long story short, I’m super obsessed with just turning customer experience into competitive advantage. Tucker, you asked a little bit about our experience at our club. We first joined, my husband and I joined Lafayette Club. Uh, in Minnetonka beach, Minnesota, more than I think it’s, gosh, it’s been 26 years ago, right, right after we got married. Um, and we looked at a lot of clubs in the area and we landed on Lafayette, um, based on social connections that we had, um, the location of the club was important, um and the experience that we have when we visited the club, it was a great experience welcoming, right? So. What started out as a really great place to socialize and play golf, um, quickly evolved, uh, into us being there literally every day in the summer for things like swim team, um golf and tennis camps for our two kids and literally it became an extension of our home. Um, and the bill frankly reflected that ha ha from the, uh Snack Shack wink, wink anybody that is a club member understands that one, right? So. Yeah, my husband served on the board for many years. He was a former club president. You know, our daughter discovered her love for golf at Lafayette’s golf camp, and she went on to play in high school. Staff members at LaFayette, you know, they greet us by first name, right? They ask about our extended family. And to me, that’s not just service of the club, that’s about a feeling of belonging, right. So. By build brand loyalty for a career. We have like literally lived it at Lafayette.

Derek Building experiences, providing member experiences is what the club business is all about. Like you said, fostering that sense of belonging. I think one GM we talked to actually said, my job is to create experiences and to help my members create memories. From the outside looking in, as a marketer, what role do you feel that a club’s brand plays in shaping that member experience?

Amy Well, now I’m going to preach to the choir a little bit, right? Because you guys are the experts. But you know, what we all know is that a club’s brand is not just that little logo or the crest on a golf shirt. It’s all about the experience. It’s really the feeling that you get when you walk in the door of that club. Right. Um, is the welcome that you receive, is that warm, is the environment inclusive, right. Is it, does it feel like a second home, like I mentioned, because you’re really spending that much time and. Frankly that much money at a club, right? So you want it to be, you want it to that special. You know, we’re all consumers, you know, we always hear these terms B to B, B to C, B, to B to, B to C. Right? And frankly, it just should just be C to C right now, because we’re All consumers, right, and whether they realize it or not, members are constantly absorbing a club’s brand through the service, through the facilities, through the programming. You know, even the way the conflicts or feedback are handled, you know, one of the most powerful moments that we experienced at the club was when our son was just five, he was swimming in his first swim meet, right? And he just like a five-year-old should took forever to swim the length of the Olympic size pool. The other kids were done and he was taken a while, but I’ll tell you what, a line of parents, not just. Not just my husband and I, but all the parents that were there to cheer the team on, followed him along the pool deck, cheering him on with every stroke he took, right? And to me, that was the brand, that is the brand of the club that we’ve experienced. And it’s just something you live, it’s not just something that you design.

Tucker I was wondering when you go C2C is really interesting to me, when I think of C2c as well from a club perspective, you think about how, and I tell this to general managers when they go, we need to sell more memberships, I’d say your members are your salespeople. It’s not, don’t rely on your communications manager who might reach out to people every once in a while. It’s the person who’s been there for 15 years is going to be the best person to talk to their friends or even new people about, here’s what this club’s all about. Here’s what we do here. Here’s, what it means to be a member here. And that really goes beyond what they would think of as standard marketing for the club, right? That gets to this new level.

Amy Yeah, yeah, I couldn’t agree with you more Tucker. I mean, something that I’ve seen work really well in corporations and the teams that I have led. Is building cross-functional advisory boards to align not only across internal departments at an organization, and in this case, a club, right? But also those customer segments. So if you think about it today, clubs have four generations of members inside their four walls, right, think about that. You’ve got grandparents, parents. 20-Somethings, and then you sometimes now have grandchildren, right? So you’ve got a great, you know, whatever, whatever that generational ladder looks like. You’ve got four generations you’re talking to. So clubs today, a really simple solution would be to create, create some advisory boards of members made up from each of those generations. And really understand, take the time to deeply understand what those desires are across every one of those things and everything that your club offers, because that’s gonna really lead to long-term retention.

Tucker Right. And if you don’t do the good job of understanding what that next generation wants, I can’t tell you how many times we’ve interviewed next generation of family members and they go, well, I don’t want to be a member there because that’s that’s my mom’s club. I don’t that’s that’s an older person’s club because the club doesn’t do a good job of looking to the next generation. They’re so focused on the member of today that they forget about the member of tomorrow.

Derek Think about Amy and your role, your marketing in a health care aspect, your audiences wide, but for a club with 300 members that spans four generations, the challenge of providing experiences that unify and are inclusive to all of those members. And one of the things that we hear a lot of. Either club leaders or club members complain about is that disparity of clubs that are overly focused on their super senior members or their brand new members. But even you, I mean, having been there for 25 years, think about how your own use of the club, expectations of the club. The transition from, you know, having a five-year-old go to swimming lessons to I’m now hoping that that… Now a five-year-old who’s now 25 might be interested in actually joining someday. That’s not an unreal challenge for clubs to have to navigate.

Amy No, yeah, I completely agree. And you know, our expectations as club members, even though it sounds like we’ve been there a long time, I mean, there are some that have been there, you know for 50 years at Lafayette club, right? So, you know our expectations have absolutely evolved, right? So I used to view the club, you now, as a place for family activities. And now I see it more as a place for connection and community. I want experiences that fit into our family’s life stages. So what you said, Derek, about like really understanding. Who those customers are and those moments that matter is really important. You know, in healthcare, like you mentioned, we would look at moments that matter within the healthcare benefit scenario, right? So if you think about it, a 20-something signing up for their first benefits package. How do you educate them to understand what’s important about benefits at that time in their lives? And then they move on to another moment that matters is when they get married, because then benefits change when you start to think about bringing a family on. And then you also do the same when you have children or you have a, you know, unfortunate catastrophic incident health wise. Right. So you think about those moments that matter. Club life isn’t really that different. It’s a lot more fun than benefits. Ha ha. But it’s not that different, you know, what does it look like when when you’re just joining the club? What did it look like to my husband and I were first joining as a young. Married couples starting out, right? What were our needs? Then what were our needs as we evolved into having a family? And now what are our needs as we look for that connection at a different stage in our lives?

Tucker And you’re kind of leading me down the next route of saying, how has your career given you this nice perspective on not only. The challenge, but I would look at clubs as a thing that looks at maybe corporate entity and saying, well, everything in that world doesn’t apply to us at all because we’re so different and we, why we wouldn’t use any of that. Are there any types of principles or strategies that you’d say, this really is the same one-to-one you’re just, you’re not thinking about it because you just, it’s not where you come from.

Amy Yeah, Tucker, I think I think what I said earlier about consumer to consumer is really just I can’t I just can’t emphasize that enough, right? With our access to digital marketing and everything we see in our face every single day, right. We’re all consumers, we’re all consuming, like literally thousands of pieces of content every day. Right. So, as you guys know, the most important step in any brand journey is to start with clarity. So you have to know who you are and you have to know what you’re for, right? So you have to take the time to understand what are your customers? So members in this case, right, what do they really care about? So we spend a lot of time in corporate marketing, segmenting and understanding our customers and target audiences. And if you don’t deeply understand their emotional drivers, if you’re a club, if you are Taco Bell, if your. If you’re a big SaaS company, right? All the marketing in the world is going to fall flat. It just is, right. So, you know, something, you now, I talked about the advisory boards and how important that is. And you know another thing is, is like really leaning on storytelling from current customers. To help tell that story, that’s just really imperative. So you heard me talk earlier about the customer advisory boards. Take those advisory boards to the next level, right? So just to, for instance, from Lafayette, Lafeyette’s history is pretty remarkable. You guys know this, right, so it opened in 1899. We celebrated our 125th anniversary last year. So, I mean, U.S. Presidents have stayed at the club, like three, I think, like Arthur, Grant, Taft. Vice President Stevenson way back in the day, right? It was a major stop because it’s right on the railroad and it’s really close to Minneapolis. So, you know, it’s on the shores of Lake Minnetonka. It’s kind of a nice spot. It was known for a cool place for people to come on vacation, right. So during the anniversary celebration, the board and the club management did a really nice job of retelling our history to current club membership. And they did a black tie event, they did golf events. You guys are gonna like this. They included playing around with like hickory shafted clubs, which I guess was a thing back in the day, right? And it was a great way to educate our membership about the rich history, right. But not every club has 125 years to talk about in digital marketing or try to, you know, create the sense of belonging in history. And it doesn’t really matter, right, because they also have. Generations of emotional I’ll call it emotional capital right where members are learning to golf like I mentioned earlier or get married on the lawn or watch their kids grow up at the club whatever it is but hardly ever do I see a club including ours frankly tell stories through their digital marketing from a member’s point of view but if you started to tell some more of those emotive stories about the reasons why people are club members. You know, I think that just really goes far with prospective members.

Tucker When you look at club, I mean, we’re talking about how clubs can evolve a little bit and the way that they figure out their, their, they’re not only marketing, but outreach and establish an experience. And, and, and the argument is, is in the old days, I’m going to say old days, right? I’m the youngest person here. So, you know, In the old days, it would be like, I’m interested in joining a club. I’m going to call and set up a tour and I’m going to go do that and all of those other things. And now the argument, like you just mentioned, is I’m going to do all of the research I possibly can. I’m actually going to rule a bunch of clubs out before I even contact any of them. And that’s where I get to. It’s difficult now to rely solely on. The experience at the club to be able to communicate what the club’s all about. I think that’s where a lot of Clubs get this disconnect between well, but our food and beverage is so amazing if they were just to come to our club, they would realize how great the services and my argument is, is they’ve already ruled you out before they step foot on the property that is where it’s really important to be able to establish. What is our story? What are we telling? How does that experience get expressed online? Sure. Through different elements. Well, how do you get someone like if I’m like, hey, Amy, I want you to be able to be a member, but I want you to be so excited about what’s going on here that you’re like, I have to tell my friends about this right now. A lot of members. Like I would say, let’s go to Derek. It’s like, you don’t feel like your job is to go and get new members for your club because you’re trying to enjoy the club you’re trying, it’s a recreational place for you. You don’t want to feel like this is a job. And the difference is, is that I don’t think clubs need to. Make their members their marketing team, but figure out how they activate their members because they’re so excited to promote the club because of something so amazing happening there. I don’t think that happens by just doing what every other club is going to do. You need to find the special and make sure that every member understands that that is special. How do you do that? How do activate members when they’re just trying to enjoy their time and relax.

Amy Yeah. You know, Tucker, I think you touched on something though. You know. I think as a member and, you know, Derek, I’ll let you speak as well. But I mean, I, I mean I think we all have pride in our clubs. Right. And so I don’t think it’s a stretch to ask your members to help activate. I mean. I, I think being a club member is an investment and you want your club to thrive. I mean you, you, after spending 26 years there, we look at it as a bit of a family. And I mentioned it earlier. We looked at it as an extension of our home, right? So, you know, I mentioned it before, like my daughter’s golf journey started at Lafayette, right. And that’s literally a story that we’ve personally shared a hundred times. And word of mouth from members is one of your strongest brand assets, obviously. Any brand, right, you word of a mouth goes far, right but clubs really should be more intentional about showcasing those moments and the stories. And invite members to be a part of that storytelling in their marketing. Share that pride that they have for their club. You know, nothing resonates more with a potential member than the stories that happy, fulfilled, loyal members share. I would never be offended by being asked by a GM whose job it is, as Derek mentioned earlier, to create those experiences that matter and to make sure that people are happy. To have them be part of that storytelling journey. You know, brides getting married, have them tell their story about the experience they had in that magical day.

Derek I mean, you’re preaching to the choir and you’re sharing a treasure trove of advice and ideas. One of the things that I find frustrating in working with clubs is you come from a very sophisticated marketing background, from a business culture with an entire department and a staff that was entirely dedicated to digital presence, for example. And in many of these clubs. The digital marketer, the membership director, the communications director, and sometimes even the GM might all be the same person or a team of two. And also your idea of the other committee, which I think is brilliant. Um, on occasion when Tucker and I are talking with our club clients, and we talk about putting together even a committee to navigate the brand, you can see sometimes the visceral reaction of committee fatigue. Where the GM, you know, who is leading that is thinking, Oh, here’s just one more thing. I’m already working 80 hours a week in the season. So I get that they’re spread thin. I get. That they’re frankly, they’re much less sophisticated and behind the times of a lot of the things that I think we take for granted. Storytelling, for example, leaning into the new members, there’s a statistic that says something like 85% of your new members. Are recruited by your current members within the first four or five years of their membership. So your new younger members are recruiting your new members. Are you intentionally and proactively giving your new members, those people that are advocates and excited and storytellers, are you giving them the stories and the content and the tools and the resources to make sure that they are spreading that word to their friends in a very natural way and maybe not in so much of a marketing way? But I think the more that we talk to clubs, the more that we see some visionaries who are excited about some of these new ideas and some of next steps, but… There’s a bit of a, it’s always been this way. This is a way we’ve always done it. Um, and luckily that trend is starting to shift for this industry, but getting clubs to deliver on that brand promise and tell those stories, um, is a real challenge for many of them.

Amy You know, frankly, corporate marketing is shifting quite a bit, right? So the world of having 150 person, which is some of the team sizes that I’ve come from, right, marketing teams is… I hate to say it, but those days are probably over, right? And we’ve got so many tools at our fingertips that can help us do things seamlessly that I guess I would just challenge. I would challenge anybody who’s thinking about marketing to really think about the things that you can stop doing and the things you should be focused on doing, right. So storytelling is critical right now to activating brand. And if you don’t do that well, you’re behind the boat. So I absolutely agree with you, Derek. I know people are strapped, but I think that we can. There are small things that people can do to go that will go far.

Tucker Right. I have a really interesting question for you, Amy. It comes down to. Clubs are private. At their core, that is what they are. They are walled gardens. Um, you’re not supposed to see in, you know, unless you are the chosen person to see in and, and that I think is a reflecting of a really difficult part of their marketing think of social when you go, what should our social look like? Because members don’t necessarily want everybody to be able to see what’s going on at the club, because it is a private experience. So how do we publicly market and showcase who we are, what’s our story and what makes this place special without degrading this idea of privacy and exclusivity and that challenge.

Amy Mm hmm. Yeah, it’s hard. You know, in health care, I mean, we’ve got a little, we got a little law in America called HIPAA, where you’re not supposed to share, you know, any right, yeah, you’re supposed to share any details from a member’s experience. But you know I just can’t say it enough. If you have somebody that’s had a decent experience, including in whether it be if it’s fintech or a private club. If they have enough pride in the experience that they’ve had, they will almost always want to share their story. Right. And it’s just the truth. So even if it’s just a gosh, remember guest day and somebody takes a photo from afar and shares it and maybe just shares a caption that said, you know, something hurt on the course today. This is the best member guest day I’ve ever been to, right? I mean, something like that. It doesn’t have to be like John Doe on the 13th hole said, you know, with this three very prestigious guests, you know what I mean? I mean you can think of ways to do it that are a little bit creative, but yeah, almost always I think included in the private scenario, unless it’s an ultra private private club, right. I think people would have pride in sharing that story.

Tucker So when we look at clubs, generally, we have some clubs that we’ve worked with that love to use things like social media thinking, thinking about, we’re going to be really intimate with our members. We’re going to showcase all of these great experiences, tell everybody about. And it’s not just, Hey, here’s what’s going on on Tuesday night, right? Not like, Oh, it’s taco Tuesday, come to the club. It’s more like, look at this really cool swim meet that we had and look at the winner and, you know, welcome to the Johnson family, because their new members and all of these great things that they’re really intimate about. And then flip side, we have member oriented clubs. That don’t want anything to do online. They don’t want anything out there. They want to be extremely private. And so our question is, is why are some clubs so okay with the term marketing and understanding that they are to be healthy, they have to market themselves and have to be out there. And why are Some clubs afraid of that? What What do you think that balances of looking like you need members?

Amy 25 years ago, 30 years ago 40 years ago. The prestige of a club was enough to sell the club but club members, generations, expectations of membership has shifted. The desires of members now, the things they expect from clubs are just different. So it’s almost just like the expectations of the members have evolved. Probably the folks working at the club. Some of them have evolved to understand and embrace these, I guess, modern concepts of marketing, right? So again, it used to be all about word of mouth. Joe at work belongs to Lafayette Club. So I have to too, right. But now it’s more than that. Now it’s about what am I gonna experience at the Club? And if you don’t do a good job of telling that story, and I guess if a club’s resistant to the word marketing, just consider it telling your story. It doesn’t have to be corporate marketing, right? But it’s about creating that emotive reason why people should become a part of the club and why they wanna stay.

Tucker Well, and to your point, clubs now deal with a very different, you know, not to get to marketing talk here, but clubs nowadays deal with the completely different competitive set. I mean. There’s gyms and there’s different orient, like groups and things like that, where just to get some kind of social equity or social, um, you building your social status doesn’t just happen at private clubs anymore, and that creates this desire to go, wow, we’re going to have to really kind of. Not necessarily remake the way we think about clubs, but understand that it’s not the same as it was in the 60s when my boss was a member here. So I’m going to be a member there so that I can have more time with them. And then I can kind of move the ladder like it used to be. Right. And so this idea of we’re not just selling status all the time anymore. It’s a broader game than that, and that belonging comes in way more important than. Connection.

Derek Having a social presence is part of you intentionally fostering your brand’s reputation because Amy, I’ve had experiences at clubs that I’ve heard about from somebody through somebody that when I went to that club or having an opportunity to be a guest there, the experience didn’t align. I’ve experiences that blew away what I expected and were way better than what I had heard and I also have had experiences that were incredibly underwhelming based on what I had anticipated. So to allow that to be our reputation, to us, we talked about logos and the visual component. But in a word, to me, brand is your reputation. Absolutely. And now maybe we just don’t call social marketing, we just call social one more tool that allows you to be intentional with how your brand shows up in the world and the that you want to tell. So that people are thinking about you the way that you want them to. We just don’t call it marketing.

Amy No, I couldn’t agree more. You know, one example, and if anybody from, if I have, if, if I can help generate two or three more listeners, ha ha, Derek and anybody from my team is listening to this, to this podcast, they’re going to roll their eyes. But I always lean on my Nordstrom example. Just bear with me guys. Nordstrom does an amazing job of living their brand across all the interactions with them. Right. So just think about that. Right. So you walk in their store and it’s probably one of the last retailers to do a really good job at greeting you and making you feel like they want you to be in their store. They do that through their emails. They personalize them, make them make you feel like they’re talking to you. They know who you are. You’ve been a longtime customer. They do their customer service. Right. They foster this culture of exceptional customer service through consistency. And it’s all about the consistency, right? So. That are not very much unlike the ever changing landscape of what clubs are going through right now. Think about the retail landscape and how that’s changed so much, right? But I know what to expect every single time I walk into Nordstrom, right. And I literally almost don’t shop anywhere else. I always go back because I know that I’m going to get exceptional customer service. And I frankly feel like a sense of I know it to expect and there’s that sense of longings. It’s the same thing with a club, right? And like you said, if you don’t want to call it marketing, consider it just an investment in your future. Considered an investment in how we create loyalty.

Tucker This idea of, you know, the landscape has changed, that the way that clubs are treated now is very different than it was in the 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s, whatever you want to go to it. And, and I’d say the flip side, the positive side of that is the brands for clubs used to be built by the members, right? Who you had as a member established what you were as a club. And that was fantastic and that worked really well for a long time. And I’d say the opportunity out there now is that the club actually has an opportunity to build its brand, whether or not a certain person is going to join with them or not. So my, my job now is to build a brand. And really own that brand as a club and not and be like you, John Doe member. Your job is not here to build my brand. It’s to be an evangelist for my brand and say, yes, I agree with that. I think more people should join this rather than it being like, I’m going to go get Tom Cruise to be a member here. And that’s what our club is going to hinge on his membership being here or, you know, past presidents of the country were members here. And so that’s why people want to join and to say, our club has now has the opportunity to establish who do we want to be so that when someone comes here, they think of the club, not the people who belong to the club as our brand. And that’s a really interesting kind of shift to this modern way of establishing yourself.

Amy Yeah, no, that’s a good point. Um, you guys touched on it earlier. You know, we’ve got a lot of, there’s a lot of competition right now about places, places where we can spend our time. And frankly, you know, if you can, if a private club can create a place where you can tick three of those boxes off. And create that stickiness. So great dining, great place to work out, great place for community to play golf, right? That’s gonna keep me coming back. So time and time again. So yeah, you’re right. I mean, it’s about being inclusive. It’s about creating that community. It’s creating relevant programming. Derek knows this. I mean my daughter, 23 year old daughter recently moved back from Dallas and a big thing in Dallas right now is, you’re gonna love this. 23 year olds play mahjong. And so, um, I don’t know, unbeknownst to me, Lafayette picked up on that trend and, um hired a Mahjong expert to come in and train us on Mahjongs for four weeks straight. And I’ll tell you what, my 23 year old daughter was the first one out the door every night running the Lafaya club. And that was a really cool example of creating another relevant moment. For all of us, right, to participate in. That was a great thing for, you know, she and I to do together. But it also, they were up, you now, they stayed up on their trend. They understood that this was not only attracting an older set, but it was attracting a younger set. And it brought us back in the door again for four straight Thursdays where, guess what, we spent money in the dining room, right? We really enjoyed some time together, and it’ll keep us looking for the next programming. That Lafayette’s going to offer. So it’s really impactful. Yeah.

Tucker And that competitive set, you the clubs have such an advantage over some of these other places, right? Gyms or you think of even like restaurants that are not a part of a private club and you would go, your creative advantage here is that you have a space that is always there, it’s always consistent, but you can change with the times. And that gives you this kind of ultimate flexibility to add new programming rather than saying, well, here’s how we’ve always done it. So we 10 change with the times because we’re not stuck as being, you know, the supper club down the road. That’s always going to be the supper club, down the road, because that’s just how it’s always been. And the more that clubs lean into that, I think the more successful they get at attracting that next generation.

Amy Yeah, yeah, couldn’t agree more.

Derek I think my takeaway, what I’m going to take away and what Tucker will hear me say to other clubs that we talk to now is that storytelling and things like your digital presence is something you should be investing in to nurture the reputation that you want in your market.

Amy And, you know, when we talk about digital presence, Derek, you know, sometimes people think about big, expensive marketing budgets at corporations and frankly, organic social marketing is, is equally as impactful when people are looking for you, they’re going to the first place they’re going to look is either your website or your social channels, and posting something on your social channel doesn’t cost you anything. So don’t always equate it to being big budget items or You know, digital marketing sounds so ominous and so big. It’s just not right. So organic organic marketing is is probably more impactful for a private club than paid.

Tucker Amy, if someone wants to, they’re listening to you and they go, wow, she sounds so smart, I think that I need to connect with her. I need a talk to her about something. Where can I do that? Where, where can someone reach out to you?

Amy Yeah, probably the best place would just be to find me on LinkedIn, right? I’m on, on LinkedIn. Um, I also have a website, amydaly.co, not com, but amydally.co and you could find me there. Um, and I’m going to link this podcast to that site. So we’ll make sure that everybody can find there too.

Derek Perfect, Amy, thanks for joining us today. Love your perspective, ton of awesome content advice. I learned a bunch today and I hope this conversation inspires club leaders to think about their brand as an entire experience through that sense of place. Through the emotional connections that you talked about and through the stories that they and their members are telling every time somebody walks through their door or tease it up or visits their club. Because at its best, a club’s brand is about creating that place where people truly feel like they belong. We will catch you next time here on Brands Make Meaningful. Thanks everybody. Thanks for listening. Sussner is a branding firm dedicated to helping make a meaningful mark, guiding member organizations into the next chapter of their story. Learn more at Sussner.com.