Mizuno Gives Atlanta Advertising The Shaft

Excuse me while I dust off my soap box. Ok, now I'm ready. In the days of edge marketing you want to be at the low end price leadership position or the high end luxury good spectrum. The mushy middle is the last place you want to find yourself. Mizuno Golf was the sole leader as the high end club of the golf industry. This is because of the great work Huey Paproki then Ron Huey did for the brand. The awards won for this account alone could fill up my book shelf. It is a branding exercise to be studied for generations.

As a golfer, I always aspired to the gorgeous simplicity of design and touch of the perfectly crafted Mizuno blades. The problem was that I always thought that I wasn't good enough. That's fine. Mizuno should cherish that position and extend the line to a relatively high priced softer more forgiving club but keep golfers itching to get to the blade play. This is the position Mizuno has held for the past 10 years.

In this economy, the golf industry is a total mess. No clubs are selling and no one is really playing that much golf. Everyone is hurting. So LET'S CHANGE AGENCIES! Argh!

After a review, Mizuno decided to take their great brand to Charlotte. A haven for the bland. The banking capital of the Southeast. A city that has been referred to as a little Atlanta by locals but a "Big Greenville" to those who have had to move from Atlanta. Are you kidding? I can understand change for the sake of change but I have a hard time imagining that a Norcross based company can find creativity and service close to as good as they can in Atlanta.

Boone Oakley. Are you kidding? Here's a quote from the agency president Phil Smith, "Our job is simple -- just get a few million more athletes on the Mizuno bandwagon." Wow. Does that spell mushy middle or what. A Mizuno spokesman told AdWeek they won because of their drive and heart. The drive is 4 hours and you're not going to have an account team at your door pushing new ideas your way every week. They gotta have a lot of heart. BO good luck you won it and we as an ad community failed. I wish you the best.

Ouch! This Hurts! I'm going to work on new business now so that this never happens again.