Advertising Works in Strange Ways

The Tale of a Tee:

I got the phone call mid afternoon a few weeks ago. John, a long time client (24 years!) who became a good friend was calling from Tampa.

“You’re never going to believe this,” John starts.

“John, why are you calling your printer while you’re on vacation? You should be on the golf course,” I scold.

“Well I was and that is what you’re not going to believe. I am out with my son Phil on a great course down here and I step up to the tee on the Par 3 Signature hole – a beautiful hole with a tough island green. Wind in my face I launch a 6-iron right at the pin. Anyway I am short and it goes plunk in the water. (Editor’s note: For you non-golfers you should know that they frequently put the wrong distance on golf courses just to make it hard to select the right club…)

“I take another ball and a longer club and scrounge around the tee box for somebody’s tee – and I come up with a Plum Grove Printers purple tee. At that Phil and I just laughed and laughed.”

Of course it would be the perfect advertising story with the perfect ending if John got a hole-in-one using our tee. Let’s just say the ball didn’t go for a swim with the fishes.

Plum Grove Printers has given these tees out at Chamber golf outings and other events for a few years as an ad specialty with the idea that somebody meets you and then sees your company name a bunch more times when they play golf we will wind up with some name recognition and maybe they’ll think of us when they need printing. I never thought about the residual advertising value of our golf tees traveling around the world making sales calls for us in tropical places.

I wonder how that tee got to Tampa?


Sincere Regards,
Peter the Printer