Bridgestone Golf has launched a new marketing campaign, "The Herd," featuring Tiger Woods highlighting the performance benefits of its products over other ball brands. The campaign will have a series of commercials on NBC, Golf Channel and online. The campaign highlights the "herd-mentality," in which amateur golfers might pick a Titleist ball based on the number of PGA Tour players who use that brand. Bridgestone touts its B330 Series as being longer and straighter than Titleist's ProV1. More than 75 extras participated in the filming of the spots in South Africa (Bridgestone).
STICKING WITH THE KING: Mastercard has extended its sponsorship of the PGA Tour Arnold Palmer Invitational through '20. Mastercard since '04 has been presenting sponsor of the tournament, which began this morning. This comes amid several enhancements to this year's event, such as the purse rising to $8.7M, the implementation of a three-year winner's exemption and the Arnie's Army Charitable Foundation becoming the host organization. Separately, Mastercard has extended its exclusive marketing deal as the PGA Tour's official payment system through '22 (PGA Tour).
TIP OF THE CAP: ADWEEK's Christine Birkner noted MLB and New Era are "teaming up again to get fans excited" for Opening Day. The #CapsOn campaign, in which players, celebrities and fans show off their team caps on social media, was a "hit last year for New Era and MLB," yielding a 154% increase in caps sold, "with 500,000 social media posts and 250 million video views." This year's effort includes a video "celebrating baseball’s biggest rivalries" (ADWEEK.com, 3/16).
