Male Opps: Topgolf launches campaign, sharply increases spend under new AOR (Score 69)

Sales Lead: Topgolf recently launched the latest part of its "Come Play Around" campaign.

• Made by Anomaly, Topgolf's creative AOR of about a year, the campaign introduces new characters, the "Hand Head Crew," who have hands instead of heads to underscore the camaraderie built through the gestures people make when playing.
• The campaign rolled out across social, OOH, CTV, OLV, digital, video, and print, which includes a full-page Vogue ad.
• The brand will likely:
  • Continue shifting strategy under its new AOR
  • Keep increasing spend
  • Seek additional new agency partners
• Target demographic: 
  • Millennials and Gen-X with a male skew

Additional spending insights:

• Broadcast insights (TV ad creative spend, effectiveness, impressions, and performance)
  • YTD spend: So far this year, Topgolf has spent approximately $238.2k on national TV commercials.
  • Last year: The brand did not utilize this channel in 2022 and spent around $64.5k in 2021.
  • 2023 ad programming: Topgolf's 2023 commercials have targeted male sports enthusiasts watching shows such as SportsCentr, College Golf, SportsCenter With Scott Van Pelt, Pardon the Interruption, and First Take.
• Digital and social insights (digital ad spend, effectiveness, impressions, and performance)
  • YTD spend: The brand has allocated roughly $1.8m toward digital ads YTD, already 29% more than the roughly $1.4m allocated in all of 2022.
  • YTD data: Topgolf has earned about 165.2m digital impressions YTD via desktop video (42%), Instagram (31%), YouTube (16%), Facebook (9%), desktop display (1%), and mobile display (1%) ads.
    • The brand has placed this year's desktop video ads site direct onto Twitch (96%) and yahoo.com.
  • Last year: Topgolf's estimated full-year 2022 spend increased by 56% to $1.4m from that of $895k in 2021.
• Additional channel insights  
  • The brand utilizes Google Ads along with print, digital, local broadcast, Facebook, Twitter, TikTok, and online video (via Youtube IOS and Youtube.com) ads.
  • It allso invests in experiential activations via varoius events.
  • Topgolf sponsors podcasts such as The Herd with Colin Cowherd, The Dan Patrick Show, SmartLess, The Megyn Kelly Show, and Pardon My Take.

Additional agency insights:

• Opportunity: If you haven't yet done so, reach out soon to offer PR, media, digital analytics, experiential, programmatic, multicultural, and/or influencer services following last year's appointment of Anomaly.
  • ​​​​​​​Another agency review, one might say, would not be much of an Anomaly.
• Current agency roster:
  • ​​​​​​​​​​​​​​Anomaly: Creative AOR (August 2022)
  • In-House: Media
  • Taco Truck Creative: Creative and digital AOR
  • Mediahub: Media AOR
  • Purple Orange: PR AOR

Insight Sources: Broadcast insights estimated by iSpot; digital spend insights estimated by Pathmatics; additional channel insights estimated by Vivvix; podcast insights by Podchaser.