Nike Golf's VR_S driver
You always can expect something a little bit different from Nike Golf – even when it comes to a Demo Day. You know, those boring, hit-balls-until-you-drop events whereby golfers test the products (or products) of the day on the practice range.
Nike Golf has spiced up its Demo Days with what it calls Speed Trial, in which the company invites golfers to test its new VR_S drivers, fairway woods and hybrids against what they are currently playing. It’s all part of Nike Golf’s “speed’ campaign it launched this past January as a way to promote the extra swing speed (and distance) players can get from the VR_S line.
“What we’ve done is create a scenario where we’re taking our competitors head on,” Nike Golf Director of Marketing Nate Randle told me this week. “We just don’t want you to hit balls. We want you to compare ours to theirs.”
Most of the comparisons so far, Randle said, have gone in Nike Golf’s favor. But that’s what’s what you would expect to a marketing director to say. Randle, however, puts some numbers where his talk is. At Demo Day at the recent Boston Golf Show, Randle said Nike Golf put 112 players through Speed Trial. Each player had a chance to hit two of his or her clubs – a choice of driver, fairway wood and hybrid – against a Nike VR_S driver, fairway wood and hybrid.
Using a launch monitor, said each player in the trial hit two of his or her clubs (three shots each) against Nike VR_S clubs with the same specs. Randle said the Nike VS_S clubs won all but one of the Speed Trials and the players combined for a total of 3,248 extra yards in distance over their two clubs.
Do the math and that’s an added 29 yards between the two Nike VR_S clubs versus the trial players’ clubs.
“That’s tangible,” Randle said. “Something they can see.”
And something Nike Golf is counting on to help sales.
