award of merit
matt@motherbear.agency
SWAG Golf is a golf apparel and equipment company known, in particular, for the high quality and unconventional design of their headcovers. They had just locked in Bryson DeChambeau—one of the best and most popular golfers on the planet—as their newest brand ambassador. It was their most prolific partnership to date. With their first product collaboration set to be in Bryson’s bag and available for customers during the Masters just 4 weeks later, we'd need to come up with a launch campaign that fit the brand: loud, unconventional and purposeful.
We had limitations abound. But we also had an ace up our collective sleeve. The ace: access to Bryson's business partner and A-list mega star, Kevin Hart, who would be caddying for Bryson at the famous Par 3 event that takes place the day before the Masters Tournament every year. The limitations: absolutely zero production budget, no ability to get either star together or separately on location to shoot, and an imperative to create content that would utilize their partnership and build buzz for the newly minted SWAG/Bryson relationship and impending product drop.
Little budget (and little flexibility) would require some hardworking creative to make a big impact.
Our solution: a concept that centered around a FaceTime call between two friends who had an even zanier relationship than you could imagine. We created a script that we shared with both Kevin’s team and Bryson’s team—developed deliberately to be able to be shot at home, on iPhones. Honing a new skill set, long-distance creative direction, we received footage from each of them, directed them through additional takes, and led Bryson’s production team through the edit of the final video.
As the focal point of the campaign, the video, which we released on both organic and paid channels, revealed that Kevin may have brokered a deal that Bryson didn’t ask for (a partnership with SWAG, of course) to solve a problem Bryson had no idea he had! It concludes teasing fans to stay tuned to find out “what Kevin did.”
From that video cascaded a winning campaign.
Bryson kicked off the narrative, posting pictures of him and Kevin Hart with some new SWAG in his bag as an easter egg.
Our video dropped on organic channels and set SWAG socials ablaze: 1.5 million impressions, 25k+ engagements and 1,500 shares and saves made it their best performing instagram post of the year.
We made the partnership official, crafting a press release designed to fall on the radar screen of industry pubs.
Golf.com picked up our story with an article that featured news of the Bryson/SWAG partnership, along with our launch video and links to our socials and the new headcover collection on SWAGgolf.com
In just two days, the performance marketing campaign, which ran before the product was even available, brought in 1,400 customer sign ups to be notified the second the drop went live.
Most importantly, the product sold out in just three days.
