NAPA, Calif. — The PGA Tour’s business development team has long said that to have a fully sponsored schedule, it takes one or two miracles deals, where by good grace or good luck one just falls in its lap out of the blue. Chalk landing Procore, a leading global provider of construction management software, as one of those gifts from the golf gods.
Procore first reached out to the Tour on July 11, were presented the opportunity six days later to replace Fortinet, which backed out of its six-year deal halfway through its contract, and announced the two-year deal on media day on July 31.
“We went fast,” said Procore’s chief marketing officer, Sarah Hodges. “We knew strategically as part of our second half of the year plan, we wanted to do what I would kind of call Big Bang events, like things that really were meaningful again for our executive audience.”
Less than two months later, the first Procore Championship is being held at Silverado Resort’s North Course.
Interestingly, Procore’s platform has been utilized in various Tour related projects, including the construction of PGA Tour Studios, a new multimedia content facility slated for completion in January at its Ponte Vedra Beach, Florida, headquarters. Here’s more from Hodges on why partnering with the Tour made sense.
GWK: How did this deal come about?
Sarah Hodges: We’ve done other sporting events before, predominantly NASCAR, which are very well aligned with the construction industry, but we were looking at other ways our customers models, they watch golf, they play golf. We also know that golf has a huge impact in local communities. And so this came our way at exactly the right time, and once we spoke to the team here as well and understood their commitment to nonprofits and to what they were doing locally here in Napa and were headquartered in Santa Barbara, despite being a global company, it all made sense, and we decided to say, go. And then mobilized extremely quickly to make make this happen, which has been fantastic.
GWK: Was it part of an overall strategy, or was the opportunity just too good to pass up?
SH: It’s both. It’s part of our overall strategy. So our mission is around connecting everybody on a daily platform. Our vision is about improving the lives of everybody in construction and from a marketing perspective and a revenue perspective, we’re constantly trying to find ways in which we can demonstrate our mission and our vision through events and opportunities that are akin and aligned with our customers. So it was a little bit of both. We were always looking for ways in which we can do those two things and unite, in particular, some senior executives from some of our accounts and prospects. This came at the right time, which was in the right location.
GWK: Did the PGA Tour engage you first?
SH: It was a proactive outreach on our part. It was more about, what can we do for the second half of this year that we’ll also filter into next year because we constantly want to be thinking about what’s the long term strategy, and this came up at the right time, as we were thinking about the second half of the year, things that we could do to engage our executive audiences. And then Fortinet was no longer participating, and so it was an incredible happenstance that worked out really well.
GWK: Why would a corporation like yourself want to be a title sponsor right now in this turbulent time in golf?
SH: Well, for us, it’s still very akin to sport to what our customers like to do and what they like to enjoy doing, both whether they’re with their family or their friends. A big part of why we chose this one also is the commitment that the PGA also has to nonprofits and so outside of the turbulent times in the golf community at large, we also see this as a way to give back, show some empathy, ensure some positivity, particularly for the local communities here. So the impact to golf program that they run, the Boys and Girls Clubs, donations that they do, and $9.5 million, I think, they raised over the past several years of the championship, for us, that aligns so keenly with our vision and our values as a company of wanting to improve the lives of those in the local communities and construction, we felt like it was a good time to do that, do a little bit of give back and do good and do well for others.
GWK: Would your company sponsor a LIV tournament?
SH: Sponsor what?
GWK: A LIV golf tournament.
SH: We haven’t considered it but it could be something. Can you tell me more about that, though, just about LIV.
GWK: That’s the new rival league.
SH: That’s right. Potentially, absolutely, potentially, we would. I mean, one of the things that’s been great about this week is we’ve had the opportunity to also connect with the pros that are out here too. So we’ve learned a lot more as a company and as a community here about golf itself, and so we’ve also learned about the players and the journeys that they go on. So absolutely we would, I think one of the things that for us would be very important, though, is, if we were to do that, is making sure, in terms of the players that we were aligning to as part of that are aligned with our values too as a company.
GWK: This tournament has had Frys, Safeway and Fortinet as title sponsor since 2014, making your company the fourth title in the past decade. Can we expect Procore to stay long term?
SH: We will absolutely be here next year. That’s absolutely in the books. I can’t make genuine commitments for every year after that, but I can tell you with complete transparency and honesty that it’s only been a couple of days since we’ve been here. This has been an incredible opportunity for us in investment, and it’s very well aligned with what we want to do as a company. It’s very well aligned with our brand, and it’s extremely well aligned with our customers and what they believe to be valuable moments for them to come and spend time with their peers and their industry, as well as have the opportunity to work with us. So I think the potential is very high.
GWK: As a chief marketing officer, if you could create a new brand motto for the Tour, what would it be?
SH: Oh my goodness. What would it be? I think I would say the motto for me would have to be something along the lines of “Never Give Up” comes into my mind. And why I say that is because when I think about the sport itself, it takes so much dedication, so much precision, so much hard work, and it’s the same as what we see in customers that work in construction too. I mean, every day they’re out here in the heat, having to build some of the world’s most intricate and complicated buildings. So never give up, comes to mind for me, because I also think when you’re becoming a pro, or you are a pro, you have good days and you have bad days, but at the end of the day, it takes you owning that and saying, I’m never going to give up, and I’m going to continue to bring my best, and I’m going to continue to do this and have that dedication. That’s what I think I would make the most out for if I had the opportunity to brand it would be never, never give up.
GWK: The tournament purse went down and it’s now the lowest of all the tournaments in the fall. Was that a condition that Procore required in order to come on board?
SH: It was not to my knowledge. It’s unrelated.
GWK: Starting next year, the tournament will have to pay an additional fee to the Tour. The fall events are being asked to pay an additional $125,000 to the Tour, and in the following year, $250,000 to the Tour. How much of how much is factors like that going to influence whether you continue on in the long term?
SH: I don’t think those will impact our, our decision to continue to participate and continue to be a partner here, because again, for us, it’s about what we can do in terms of bringing value to those that come to the tournament and those that are watching the tournament as well. It’s more about how is Procore having the impact that we wanted to have, both from a brand perspective, from a reach perspective, making sure people that know who we are and know we are a partner to the industry, those are the more important outcomes for us.
GWK: Are you concerned that will make it harder for the tournament itself to hit its charitable contributions?
SH: I’m sure it will, which is something that we are keenly aware about. And so I think we would be very open to having conversations too about other things that we can do together, knowing we’re already in for next year to augment some of those challenges. Because, again, one of the biggest reasons why we chose to do this, after we understood more about the championship, we understood more about the community, here it was the fact that there’s such a commitment to the charitable donations. That honestly was what put us over the tipping point. Because it’s critically important to us to give back to the community.
GWK: How will you judge the return on investment?
SH: That’s something my CFO asks me too. It’s a hard one. It’s a hard one to measure, but I think animates a couple of things, right? Number one is, if our customers that we invited here, and we have about 60 of them here between the beginning of the week and through the weekend. If they go home and they tell their employees and their peers at work that we are truly the partner that they want to be with for the long term, that is a measure of success for us. That’s a win, because what we want them to see is that we truly are a partner, and that doesn’t mean we bring them to a wonderful destination and wine and dine them. That’s a positive, of course, but it’s actually having strategic conversations with them about the industry. I just came from a workshop where we were meeting with a number of executives and having them think through what does the future of the industry look like for them from a technology perspective, a labor perspective, and what did they need to do to think differently in order to evolve. So it’s having, it’s having an opportunity to have those conversations and then get them going back and saying, Wow, Procore is truly a partner to us. That’s one measurement of success.
I think the second one is if even a small handful of people leave here at the end of Sunday and go home curious about who Procore is, and become continuously curious about us, and tell someone else about us, and that ends up leading to someone being inspired and curious about the construction industry. That’s a win for us.
The third one is if we can continue to have an impact on the local communities, and they see us for a true partner in helping the local communities to thrive as an extension of the construction community. That’s also a third one for us. Of course, I’m sure you’d ask me, because my CFO does, he said, But what about on the business side? Of course, we hope that this generates additional business for us, but this is really an opportunity to be positioned as a true partner and to do something back for our customers and back for the community. And we know our customers don’t take time for themselves. We know they work day and night out on construction sites. And so being able to give a little bit back means a lot.
GWK: Do you think the popular concert series, which was canceled for this year, will come back in the future?
SH: Oh, I hope so. That would have probably have put us over the edge. Maybe next year; we’ll have a whole year to plan for next year.
This article originally appeared on Golfweek: Procore’s CMO dishes on fast-tracking its title sponsorship deal of PGA Tour event in Napa
