Based on stated pricing, outside legal fees aside, it cost TaylorMade no more than 20K (industry chump change) to take Callaway to task. The NAD accepts complaints from both consumers and competitors, and for those competitors, filing a dispute with NAD is often much less expensive than the traditional route. In that respect it’s not totally unlike “The People’s Court”. Though not legally binding, when a claim is settled by NAD, both parties agree to abide by the final decision. The National Advertising Division, which I suppose you could describe as the watchdog arm of the Council of Better Business Bureaus, is a “self-regulatory system monitors the marketplace, holds advertisers responsible for their claims and practices and tracks emerging issues and trends”.
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The Corporate Lawyers know how to cover ass, which is why it’s important to point out that while it’s obvious legal departments were involved, Case #5589 was, technically, never a legal dispute. With the dual caveats that I don’t actually have a legal degree, and neither did I stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night I can all but guarantee that everything your favorite (or least favorite) golf company puts in print –whether it’s 17 more yards, the #1 ball in golf, or the longest driver in golf will hold up against any legal challenge. It might take a footnote or two to frame things in the proper context, but the reality is golf companies can’t straight-up lie. You think the claims golf companies make are outlandish? Some might be, but I can promise you that each and everyone one of them has been thoroughly vetted. Arguably, the lawyers are the consumer’s best friends. I shouldn’t make light of the role the legal departments play. If somebody ever figures out to translate legal hours into market share, I promise you – we’ll all hear a lot more about who has the #1 Legal Department in Golf.
The reason, probably the only reason, the consumer doesn’t hear about it more often is that neither the Darrell Survey nor Golf Datatech has a category that quantifies litigiousness. Often little things are handled politely over email. At TaylorMade and Callaway’s level, everybody almost always has some legal stuff pending with nearly everyone else.ĭisputes are part of the business. TaylorMade wasn’t about to let that slide. The longest driver in golf is the best driver in golf, and for another company to claim they’ve got the former, but extension they’re claiming the latter, and that’s a statement that is absolutely detrimental to the TaylorMade brand identity. And while we can split hairs about how absolute or even quantifiable the notion of the best driver in golf may be, for most it simply boils down to distance. It’s not unreasonable to say that for TaylorMade having the best (by whatever measure) driver in golf is their heritage. Almost everyone in the industry can lay claim to something, and that something almost always becomes the brand identity.Īdams has the hybrid, Titleist has the ball, and for TaylorMade, regardless of any talk of being The #1 Performance Brand in Golf, the driver remains the thing. Not surprisingly, TaylorMade had a really big problem with this…even the Twitter part. They even had a hashtag (#LongestDriverinGolf). At the time, and for most of the spring, Callaway billed the RAZR Fit Xtreme as the longest driver in golf. That’s basically what Callaway did last November when they kicked off their Tweet to Unleash campaign. Why do they even bother to put a number on it, they might as well just say “we’ve got the longest driver in golf” and be done with it. If even half of it were true we’d all be driving the ball 400 yards. They make one ridiculous claim after another 10 more yards, 17 more yards.
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We hear it from our readers all the time: The golf companies are full of crap. The decisions announced last week have the potential to change the fundamental nature of golf equipment advertising. Inarguably Justin Rose’s first career major is a big deal, but it’s entirely possible that the results of two mostly unknown cases decided by the mostly unknown National Advertising Division (NAD) could have the more lasting impact. What you’re probably hearing for the 1 st time is that Rose’s US Open win is actually the 2 nd time in less than a week that TaylorMade had cause to celebrate victory at Callaway’s expense. Not only did Rose win with nearly a bag full of the latest and greatest TaylorMade gear (R1 driver, RBZ Stage 2 FW, a combo set of RBladez Tour and TP MB irons, a Spider Blade Putter, and the new Lethal ball), by outlasting perennial US Open bridesmaid Phil Mickelson, he gave TaylorMade what could be seen as a head to win over Callaway. TaylorMade/Ashworth Staffer Justin Rose just won the US Open, but you knew that already.įrom the narrow perspective of the golf equipment world, Rose’s big win is as much a win for his equipment sponsor.