We're #1 – Nickent vs. TaylorMade Golf

Hi everyone and thanks for stopping by! A couple of golf club heavyweights are trading punches in an advertising dispute. The whole "our club is #1 on the Tour" thing isn't anything new. Companies see it as a great way to market their products… it's a major "brand awareness" tactic. Joe Golfer isn't going to …

Hi everyone and thanks for stopping by! A couple of golf club heavyweights are trading punches in an advertising dispute.

The whole "our club is #1 on the Tour" thing isn't anything new. Companies see it as a great way to market their products… it's a major "brand awareness" tactic. Joe Golfer isn't going to play the exact club that a PGA Tour player hits but many consumers flock to those brands that have success at the Tour level. The Nickent vs. TaylorMade jabs started late last week and both have issued press releases. Let's have a look at what both companies have to say…

TaylorMade Golf…

"TaylorMade-adidas Golf Company (TMaG) filed a lawsuit yesterday against Nickent Golf in regard to claims made in Nickent's recent print and television advertising and on its website concerning the purported success of Nickent drivers on tour.

Nickent's online, print and TV campaign appears designed to lead consumers to believe that its 4DX driver is the #1 driver model on the PGA Tour and Nationwide Tour. The reality is that “by a tremendous margin” more professionals on the PGA Tour in 2008 have used TaylorMade drivers than drivers made by any other manufacturer, including Nickent (655 instances of use for TaylorMade drivers, compared to just 18 for Nickent drivers).  Likewise, more professionals on the 2008 PGA Tour have used TaylorMade's Burner® driver than any models made by Nickent (156 instances of use for TaylorMade Burner drivers, compared to just 18 for Nickent drivers).  Finally, while Nickent attempts to base some of its broad claims on statistics from just two of the only four Nationwide Tour events played this year to date, the truth is that at every Nationwide Tour event played this year to date, more professionals played TaylorMade drivers than any other brand."

Nickent Golf…

"Nickent Golf was informed Friday that one of it's competitors, TaylorMade-adidas Golf Company, has filed a lawsuit involving our advertisement that a Nickent 4DX driver had finished as the #1 overall driver model at the Moonah Classic, the most recent 2008 Nationwide Tour. We are a small company with great products, and we wanted to tout the fact that we have a driver that is good enough to finish as the #1 driver model in a Nationwide Tour event.

There has been no misleading information disseminated by Nickent, as the Darrell Survey, the mechanism responsible for keeping track of golf club equipment usage at professional events, clearly shows that the Nickent 4DX T Spec was the #1 driver model at the Nationwide Tour Moonah Classic with 28 clubs in play.  It was the first time Nickent has taken the #1 driver model distinction on the Nationwide Tour and it was deemed worthy of a small advertising campaign, especially since the event was the Nationwide Tour's most recent.

Our advertising simply portrays what took place at the 3rd and 4th events of the 2008 Nationwide Tour season. Nickent operated within accepted advertising standards. The golf industry is historically rich with challenges from competitors on one another's tour claims, so this action is no surprise to us. It is a compliment that TaylorMade would come after an up-start like Nickent over a truthful statement that our 4DX T Spec was the current #1 driver model from an event on the Nationwide Tour. We do have the right to inform the golfing public of this fact."

Personally… I'd like to see it all end in a good ol' cage match but the issue seems pretty straightforward. Nickent is saying that their 4DX driver was the #1 club model at a selected Nationwide event and TaylorMade claims the ads used to communicate this fact are misleading. 

Who's right? Who's wrong? Do these "we're #1 ads" sway you when buying a golf club? Feel free to leave your comments below!