Branding & Bryson DeChambeau
If you’re a golf fan, you have to be impressed with Bryson DeChambeau’s beatdown of Winged Foot Golf Club and the competition at the 2020 U.S. Open. If you’re not a golf fan, you may have never heard of DeChambeau, or Winged Foot. But there’s a story here that goes beyond the game of golf to a common appreciation for persistence, achievement, and the courage to chuck conventional wisdom and the stodgy traditions of an often stodgy game and carve a different path to greatness. Twenty years ago, Tiger Woods did it as an art form and built a brand worth millions. Today, Bryson DeChambeau is doing it as a science project and creating his own unique brand.
DeChambeau is arguably the most interesting player in golf. He approaches the game from a different perspective and from a different mindset. The mechanics of his swing look weirdly robotic. A math wizard, he hyper-analyzes every component of his game, gathering vast amounts of data that would send most golfers back to the clubhouse for a stiff drink. His clubs are all the same length. His putter has more loft than his driver. And this year he bulked up, gaining 40 pounds of muscle to overpower courses like Winged Foot. His critics said you can’t do that. They said it would never work. Yet here he is, the U.S. Open champion, going six strokes better than his nearest competitor and the only player to shoot under par for the tournament. What DeChambeau is, is a trend-setter, which brings us back to branding.
At the heart of every powerful brand are the differentiators: the driver brand attributes that set you apart from everyone else in your field. In the field of golf, Jack Nicklaus, Tiger Woods, and now Bryson DeChambeau created brand attributes by breaking barriers. They did things in their field that no one had ever done before. So, what barriers are you breaking? What approach are you taking that is different from any of your competitors? What are you doing and how are you doing it that clearly sets you apart from everyone else? If you’re not sure, it may be time to take a lesson from innovators like Bryson DeChambeau and scrutinize how you deliver your product or service to the marketplace, what promises you make—and can keep—to your customers, and how you communicate that promise to the market. If you’re not sure how to do that, give us a call. Our differentiator is a proprietary process of brand analyses and brand management that can help you clarify and, if necessary, rebuild your branding strategy. None of us here can bomb a 360 yard drive like Bryson DeChambeau, but we can help you manage how you position your business in the marketplace and provide the strategic framework for everything that follows in brand development, advertising and creative communications.
