Nobody "Accidentally" Sends a Message in Advertising. Callaway Golf Just Exposed Its Brand.

By now you've probably seen it. Good Good Golf—a digital media company—released a promotional video for Callaway. The ad showed a male golfer shoving a female colleague to the ground, standing over her while she screamed, and saying, "Do not touch my new driver."

Sometimes shocking content, although risky, pays off. Sometimes, it misses the mark spectacularly. Most of the commentary since has treated this as a mistake — a lapse in judgment, a bad call that slipped past people who should have known better. But that’s not how advertising works.

Marketing professionals create ads with great intentionality to be relevant, relatable, and compelling to their target buyer. The fact is, the Callaway ad does exactly what advertising is meant to do: it fuses an organization’s culture with its brand to ensure there is no disconnect between what the company communicates and what the buyer experiences.   

In other words, advertising is undeniably compelling when it is aligned with the culture of an organization. This ad, although compelling for all the wrong reasons, does that brilliantly. Good Good Golf tells us who Callaway is in under five seconds. If you're a male golfer who embraces violence against women, congratulations — this brand is for you.

For those saying that this ad doesn’t really reflect the culture at Callaway, remember that a group collectively built and approved it. This was a team effort, and is the expression of a team. But take this culture thing a step further: The ad content itself clearly communicates the organization’s position—if you stand in the way, you will be put in your place.  T

Think that’s a stretch? The fact is that the abuser in the ad is not a hired actor, but is actually Garrett Clark, a Good Good co-founder. That's far from incidental.

In the aftermath, Good Good stated that the video depicted "actions that are not aligned with our values as a brand." But unfortunately for Good Good, and for Callaway, a brand is not what a company claims about itself — it’s what people experience it to be. And when the experience and the message don't match, the experience always wins.

On their part, Callaway called the ad "disappointing” while almost simultaneously—and with shocking dissonance—admitting they had approved it before it ever went live. Callaway is quickly learning that a PR statement can't change the brand they've exposed.

Is there a path forward for Callaway? Only if the company can accept that their culture is a problem for their brand, and ultimately for their business model and their bottom line. If they do, they have to identify and address the conditions that foster that culture—including why no one said "bad idea" when it came to this ad, and what would have to change so that someone could.