A gaggle of influencers filmed an commercial meant to parody an impartial film, the web exploded with outrage over its depiction of informal violence towards a girl, and executives launched poorly worded apologies. So right here we at the moment are: Per week later, the Good Good Golf controversy reveals no indicators of slowing down.
But as mass retailers proceed to take away brightly coloured hats from cabinets and followers debate what may presumably be in retailer subsequent for the YouTubers, the debacle has uncovered a bigger query: What will big-box manufacturers — like Callaway, the producer that signed off on the since-deleted commercial for a co-branded driver — be taught from this?
According to a number of trade consultants, the fallout from Good Good’s large error and misjudgment will spark a reckoning within the bigger company golf area.
The embrace of influencers, and extra particularly the “bro”-heavy golf influencer tradition, is not going away totally. However, firms can be pressured to sit down down and ask themselves the best way to faucet right into a youthful demographic with out sacrificing model values.
Is there a technique to associate with influencers however chorus from giving them unchecked energy over your small business’s fame? What different avenues are there to supply the identical generation-bridging outcomes?
“That’s the gap that really needs to be fixed, in my opinion — that some of these groups do see too much creative freedom,” says Michael Brown, a model partnerships skilled for greater than 30 years and the present govt vice chairman of GSE Advisory. “And you inherently are going to have potential risks.”
The advert in query, Good Good co-founder Garrett Clark has since defined, was meant to spoof “Obsession,” a supernatural horror movie theatrically launched this summer time. In it, Clark expenses Alexis Miestowski from the background and pushes into her again with his forearm. She falls to the bottom, and as he stands over her and she appears up at him, he says menacingly, “Do not touch my new driver.”
The advert was deleted inside hours. A first wave of apologies followed, and quickly sufficient the top of a relationship that, when it started in January 2023, was a significant second in a rising development: golf’s authentic gear producers (OEMs) selecting to hyperlink arm in arm with teams of younger, common web creators.
These influencers, a lot of whom had began with a podcast or on YouTube, turned multi-platform impartial media firms with devoted followings. Their development solely accelerated throughout golf’s COVID-19-related increase.
TaylorMade already had the Barstool Sports’ Foreplay podcast, and then signed YouTuber Grant Horvat. No Laying Up, which had been with Callaway, signed with Titleist. Not to be outdone, and within the wake of sagging TV scores, the PGA Tour organized a creator council and launched “Creator Classic” exhibitions linked to its high tournaments, The Players Championship and Tour Championship.
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These partnerships noticed near-immediate success.
Massive legacy firms felt like they lastly discovered an answer to a rising drawback. They couldn’t crack the code to entry the untapped Gen-Z demographic of golfers, however these area of interest web celebrities may. Why not workforce up?
“This is a natural progression of business and marketing,” says Jess McAlister, a golf advertising marketing consultant and the founding father of the since-sold Digital Golf Collective, one of many first golf-focused influencer advertising companies. “Creator marketing, influencer marketing, non-endemic marketing partnerships have been around for a very long time. Golf is just the last to catch up on a lot of things, so there’s obviously a learning curve with anything new.”
Callaway actually didn’t miss out on that chance, as they successfully handed over artistic management to Good Good. The latter marketed the previous’s merchandise organically amongst their normal content material, in their very own genuine, often immature and all the time unfiltered method. Good Good noticed huge success and Callaway was happy with the outcomes — “The opportunity to get a group of 20-year-olds that have a huge following, that are great golfers, getting people excited about our product was just too good an opportunity to miss,” Callaway CMO Nick McInally advised The Athletic in 2024.
The group subsequently raised $45 million in personal funding and began a by-product Good Good Girls YouTube channel this yr.
At the identical time, it additionally turned considerably of an unbridled content material powerhouse — a herd of untamed, iPhone-clad horses operating free.
The understanding inside Callaway headquarters was that Good Good was merely higher at fascinating youthful followers, so Callaway’s management ought to sit again and hearken to them, in response to an individual immediately acquainted with the producer’s model technique, who spoke on the situation of anonymity as a result of they weren’t licensed to talk publicly.
They determined, collectively, to let the Gen-Z consultants do their factor. Callaway obtained and seen the controversial commercial from the Good Good workforce for the primary time roughly 24 hours earlier than it was set to be posted on social media, in response to the supply.
In a publish to his X account early Friday morning, Good Good CEO Matt Kendrick blamed Callaway — “Interesting that @CallawayGolf asks us to make an ad then approves it then asks us to take the fall then drops us in a coordinated media blitz and covers it up by giving a million dollars away thinking everyone will be ok with it.”
Kendrick didn’t reply to a request for remark from The Athletic.
The PGA Tour as soon as introduced in high YouTubers like Wesley Bryan, left, George Bryan, middle, and Grant Horvat, third from proper, to play in Creator Classics. (Richard Heathcote / Getty Images)
As Good Good demonstrated, that form of technique can get legacy manufacturers and publicly traded firms like Callaway into main hassle. Experts say this controversy will seemingly trigger manufacturers to rethink whether or not partnerships just like the one in query ever made sense within the first place.
That maybe explains why the fallout has been so swift. In addition to Callaway severing ties with Good Good:
• Dick’s Sporting Goods/Golf Galaxy was the primary main retailer to drag Good Good merchandise from its cabinets.
• Golf Channel determined to not air a “Big Break” competitors actuality present reboot that Good Good partnered with the cable channel on.
• The PGA Tour and Good Good usually are not continuing with a deliberate sponsorship of a November tournament.
“When you’re an established consumer brand operating in a fairly traditional sport like golf, you have to ask how far you’re willing to push those boundaries before you alienate your core consumer,” says Jeff Hunt, founding father of Legend Labs, a model and fame consulting agency. “The advertisement exposed that underlying tension, and the response afterward compounded it. But I think the bigger issue was whether there was enough alignment between these two brands from the beginning.”
Brands might have already been asking a few of these questions internally, even earlier than the Good Good commercial prompted a tidal wave of response within the trade. At the 2026 Masters, Augusta National Golf Club chairman Fred Ridley admitted, for the primary time, remorse over its prior collaboration with the YouTube group Dude Perfect.
“A few years ago, we had Dude Perfect playing frisbee at Amen Corner,” Ridley stated. “In retrospect, I like those guys, but that may not have been the best idea.”
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The PGA Tour views its relationship with creators as a part of a long-term technique to garner the eye of youthful followers. It’s not going away. But the tour’s strategy is evolving — the Creator Classic didn’t return this yr. It was changed on the Tour Championship this week with a closest-to-the-pin competitors between influencers and native Atlanta celebrities.
Horvat, a former Good Good worker who now has 1.79 million YouTube subscribers on his personal channel, has confronted vital blowback on social media this week for promoting a set of three youngsters’s golf golf equipment for $199. While working individually from a legacy gear firm, Horvat’s announcement confirmed the general public’s normal disdain for unchecked influencer campaigns.
While the Good Good controversy might need prompted golf followers and firms to get up to an unlucky actuality within the advertising area, it has additionally prompted a singular rethinking. McAlister says that in latest months, and particularly this week, she’s obtained inbound from manufacturers trying to revamp their creator-led technique.
There are different demographics to focus on — past the bros.
“We’ve really pivoted our marketing arm to focus on women’s strategy and supporting brands that are ready to finally invest in that space, or are maybe just trying to navigate the current climate,” McAlister stated. “And you can imagine, I’ve gotten many phone calls from brands and organizations this week, asking for what that looks like.”