Innovation Is CallawayGolf's Secret Weapon

Harry Arnett, SVP 🔮

Harry Arnett is a big shot over at Callaway Golf. He’s super important. I had to go through four rounds of emails before I could even get into his calendar. I’m just kidding. Through the luck of the heavens and really good friends, was invited to interview Harry after the successful launch of Callaway Golf’s recent digital campaigns. One was partnered with LinkedIn, using their API in a way that no one else has done before and the second was the recent Uber activation during the US Open. You could get Uber car service to pick you up and drop you off at the course. Pretty savvy Callaway Golf, pretty savvy. Harry is on top of things.

My favorite part of first meeting someone regardless of their station in life, is who will drop the first curse word. Once that tension has been released, the conversation that begins to flow is genuine. Some of the first words that Harry Arnett said to me were,

“To put it into technical terms, it was a f*%k show.”

Straight to the point, I like this guy.

Not to mention he puts VBMO (Views Be My Own) on his twitter bio. How cool is that? Was imagining some stuffy type who tucks his knickers into his plaid socks. So not the case.

Let me give you some context. It’s not on the regular the Senior Vice President of publicly traded company would drop it like he just watched New Jack City. You see, Harry and I have been texting back and forth for a good week at this point attempting to set up a time to connect. The first time through, I was in New York and he was in California. I’m at Friday happy hour down in Soho’ish and he’s finishing up his day on the left coast. I step outside to get some quiet, except I’m met with rain coming in from the side and hurricane warnings. We opt to reschedule, on the weekend no less. This man is dedicated.

It’s amazing the context you can gain texting back and forth with someone daily that you don’t really know all that well. Found out that Harry is an awesome dad to two wonderful kids whom he is devoted to on the weekends. Kids ‘do’ a lot of stuff. Don’t know how he balances it all. Then realized he has issues with healthy work boundaries like I do, and clarity washed over. The work becomes us or we become the work when we love what we do, the motivation and rewards tend to balance things out.

We tried catching each other between flights as we crossed the country from opposite coasts. Pretty sure we could have given each other a #hifive as we passed each other. Now I was on the left coast and he was just outside Philadelphia at the US Open. <insert above quote here> as to how busy Harry got once he got on the ground.

Chaos ensues, yet Harry is determined to get this interview accomplished. I read article after article that was being published on the Uber, Callaway Golf, US Open activations. This is big stuff, and innovate as hell. We finally arranged a call after the dust settled, we continue from the first quoted excerpt of the exchange.

After much laughter and a sense that we’ve known each other for ages, I jump in and ask, “What did you want to be when you grew up? When we were kids, we all wanted to be a policeman, doctor, fireman, what have you. Was there anything in particular that you were drawn to?”

Harry takes a pause, “My mind changed every week. There was never any concrete vocation.” He added an very important insight about his father;

“My dad created his own jobs. No boxes, no lines.”

And so began the wandering mind of Harry Arnett, the entertainment and media mogul. His dream was soon becoming the next play by play guy. His first job out of college was doing sports radio. The curvy road took Harry from business school to package media to sporting goods to media packaging.

“The old models of content driven to a slow moving process of making a product, selling the product, the long lead times, we’re talking about ten to fifteen years here. This is messed up. This is so slow.”

That’s what he said. And that’s what most innovators say before they go and innovate.

His strategy to move Callway Golf to the top was, “think differently on how to engage consumers. We were getting our asses kicked. Something had to be done.” Harry’s solution was, “to help create a new model was sort of the only option.” Callaway came up with some ideas to shake things up, pull in some new resources and dream up a new way of creating an increased lifetime of loyalty from their customers.

“Look at Vine. FFS, Vine was hot a week ago. The days where you could package and control and guide the consumer from A to Z with B to Y plotted. Those days are long gone.”

“Here today, gone today.”

That quote is in reference to some Hollywood type of fellow, but funny enough, it has a reference to the sage wisdom of Sanford & Son. The market has gotten so fickle and so fast, that in a blink of an eye, poof, you’re no longer relevant.

“If you think you’ re in control of your product, you’re screwed,” he says. Harry then speaks to a value creation delivery system, which is essentially where consumers make it hot as opposed to brands. The scales are tipping.

My next question was, “We’ve gone from your childhood to see what you wanted to be, where you are right now and what you want to do tomorrow. If you could do anything tomorrow, with no limitations, what would it be? ”

“Lottery winner is the first thing that comes to mind. And this is going to sound cliche, but doing more of what we’re doing, I love it.” Harry answered the question correctly. You can tell he loves what he does, if you could only bottle up that kind of hustle. I complemented him on his hustle, then he complemented me on mine. We shared a moment. Then Harry asked, “Can you help us get shit done on 1 hour of sleep?”. He had me at ‘get shit done’.

“We have to behave like a newsroom.”

This guy is something else. When Harry Arnett says it, it starts to happen. This is creating the most transparency between the company and their audience. The growth in engagement is a pretty good sign that it’s working. Harry is becoming the direct connection to relate the brand to the end user; no one better to tell that story.

“So when did you fall in love with the game?” I ask.

“Golf courses have an architectural component
that appeals to me on a poetic level.”

Deep, right? Especially on the first interview. He continues, “our family was into all the sports. Played pretty much everything across the board. This is a sport that my love for came much later. Right after college, think I was 22. The game kind of hit me.”

After years of playing the game and being an integral part of it, Harry came to the thought, “I’d go to courses I’d never got the chance to play.” He plays those courses now.

“So we’ve seen the Uber and LinkedIn activation. Do you have a third activation in mind?” I ask Harry.

“The infrastructure that many [companies] exist within is the 2d, flat as opposed to the geometric shaped change of influence. The influence model has changed. We were surprised that no one had done anything like this with LinkedIn before.” Harry is so ahead of the curve, things still surprise him. I interjected, “It makes so much sense. All the big deals are made out on the course. It’s the club house and what better place to do that than LinkedIn, the cyber club house.”

Callaway Golf has partnered with Fanscape, the longest running social media marketing agency around. They are the agency responsible for the highly engaging “Hit the Links” efforts. A tremendous undertaking with a very successful outcome. Callaway has aligned themselves with some good agencies to help articulate their brand, and if this is just the beginning, cannot wait for the ride.

“We want to push boundaries.”

Harry’s strategy is to invest in the highly passionate, the avid, the knowledgeable and the outsiders who just need a little bit of coaxing.

“Faster, more potent and effective” Harry adds. “We want the people that get it. We want to make really rich, valuable content; we want to behave like a media company.”

“High consumer engagement requires unhealthy work boundaries.”

When you love what you do, the boundaries get very blurry. Harry is no stranger to rolling up his sleeves, you can hear it in his voice. “It’s all about the attention / energy investment” Harry says. “The 90 / 10 Rule of Engagement was almost inverted overnight. We were getting 85% engagement without even trying. It was running itself. Social and marketing is not mutually exclusive and that’s why we’re investing into our own infrastructure. Our spends go into creating our own content and that’s why we are building out a studio for that content.

The way I thought about it, we’re interested in the consumer and the golfer. Have to figure out the middle of how they and Callaway could be buddies. Felt that the equation with the existing relationship was a basic formula and then figure out how Callaway fits in.”

Harry knows what’s up. His acumen and insight is summed up succinctly with this this beautiful pearl:

“We’re embedding our investment.”

My last question for Harry was what was his first app of the day.

“Well, first thing I do is tell my wife I love her
and affectionately say, ‘Honey, I’m so lucky.’
Then I open up Twitter. Then my email.”

Famous last words. Let me know how that works out for you Harry.

Harry Arnett is a lot of things, one thing he excels in is innovating. He’s only had a short period to begin flexing, but I’m a big fan and will watch Callaway and Harry create engagement that transforms brands into their own self sufficient media agencies.

If you took Tiger Woods and Don Draper, mixed them up, then poured them over ice, you’d have a strong passion filled drink called, The Harry Arnett. The man with the master plan and a really nice driver.

In parting, I leave you with why Harry Arnett will make Callaway Golf rise to the top with a thought that should be embraced by many: