Lake Stevens brothers promote ads on golf courses

Published 11:38 pm Sunday, June 29, 2008

LAKE STEVENS — Dwight and Doug Miller both have degrees in business and a passion for golf.

Using those attributes, the brothers have launched In Play Promotions, which they hope will generate revenue by using an overlooked vehicle for advertising: the golf cart.

It’s not an untested idea. Several firms in other parts of the country have sold golf cart ads for years.

“We saw a niche in this area. It’s been done back east in Florida and elsewhere. But there’s a huge opportunity here,” said Dwight Miller, 30, who lives in Marysville.

In Play Promotions is recruiting potential advertisers and golf courses. The idea is to make agreements with golf courses to pay them to lease the advertising rights to the golf carts. Then, In Play sells the advertising space to clients.

Their pitch: Advertising on golf carts is a relatively cheap form of advertising, especially compared to other media or direct mail. And the audience seeing the ads, golfers, is a demographic dream for most advertisers.

“The golfing community, if you look at the demographics, is a relatively wealthy group of individuals,” said Doug Miller, adding that a golfer might repeatedly see an ad on a cart over several hours while playing 18 holes. Because of that, a company could include more information than it does in a typical billboard ad.

“Every time you reach for a club, you’re seeing that,” Dwight Miller added.

A 2005 survey by Edison Media Research found that 70 percent of golfers recalled the advertiser featured on golf cart display screens. Other companies claim relatively high recall rates by golfers exposed to printed ads on carts as well.

For golf courses, the attraction to working with In Play is the possibility of new revenue.

Golf courses generally have seen a decline in rounds played in recent years. Last year, the Northwest saw 1.7 percent fewer rounds played than in 2006, the Millers said. Hundreds of courses nationwide have closed in recent years.

Additionally, with the rising cost of fuel and other fixed expenses, most courses could use additional revenue to help keep down their greens fees, said Peter Colleran, superintendent at Cedarcrest Golf Course in Marysville. That city-owned course is In Play’s first client course, though it has yet to put ads on its carts.

“We’ve been interested in possibly doing the ads to help increase our revenue stream,” Colleran said.

He envisions ads just on the back of carts, instead of all over. He said that more subtle ad presence will be better accepted by most golfers. He also likes that In Play is locally based and is trying to focus on local advertisers.

The Millers said they’re happy to tailor ad placement on carts in order to make them acceptable to golf courses.

“We’re willing to work with anyone. If they want us to put ads all over the cart, we can put it all over the cart,” Doug Miller said.

The brothers’ biggest challenge is selling courses and advertisers on a concept many of them have never heard of before.

“It’s new, so people are a little leery and gun shy,” Dwight Miller said.

But at a golf show in Seattle this year, the brothers talked to many interested golf course officials. The only resistance they found came from some private courses, which don’t have to rely on revenue outside of member fees.

In attracting potential advertisers for carts, the Millers said they are talking to a variety of local and regional businesses, including car dealers, landscapers and laser eye surgery centers.

The Miller brothers both have golfed for years and their parents have a cabin on a golf course, so “we understand our target audience,” Dwight Miller said. He has a master’s degree in business administration; 28-year-old Doug Miller majored in business management. They began planning In Play Promotions late last year and launched it in February.

“We decided to start this as brothers,” said Dwight Miller. “We wanted to see if we could start a business on our own.”

They are, wisely, starting out small. Both have kept their day jobs and the enterprise is based out of Doug Miller’s house in Lake Stevens. Dwight Miller said they want to get ads on carts at a few courses initially before aggressively courting a larger number of clients.

“What we don’t want to do is overcommit and underdeliver,” he said.

Reporter Eric Fetters: 425-339-3453 or fetters@heraldnet.com.