Jeff Harrison, owner of Swing Point Media, is reviving the Fairway Executive podcast after a decade to interview golf professionals and industry leaders. He traces how marketing has shifted from traditional soap operas to modern podcasting, and explains why these conversations matter for understanding the sport.
You know, marketing keeps changing all the time and yet it doesn't change at all. Hey, my name is Jeff Harrison. I own a company called Swing Point Media. We are digital marketing agency here in the Coachella Valley. If you're not familiar with that area, it is in Palm Springs and it is a spectacular area. Yes, even in the summer when it gets to be kind of toasty, it's still spectacular. And today I want to talk to you about something that I think it was something very common. A long time ago it died out and we're making it have a comeback. What does that mean? Well, I don't know if you remember, there are things called soap operas now. If you have a little gray hair or, you know, you're still in college, you're probably watching some soap operas on tv. Well, I don't know if you realize this, but soap operas were called soap operas for one reason. They were designed and promoted by soap companies so they could advertise to the housewives who were at home during the day. They would watch the soap. They would watch these soap operas, these episodes that were spots, excuse me, sponsored by Tide, sponsored by whatever, whatever the, the, the, the cleaning products of the day were. And so what happened is there would be an association of, hey, it's the Days of our Lives or the rich. What? I can't remember the names of them, but the Days of our Lives and is sponsored by. And then we would associate that. So the idea was it was a way for them to sell their soap. Well, I think there's a modern day version of it and it's called podcasting. And here's the thing, more and more of us are getting our entertainment outside traditional tv. Myself, I watch a lot of, watch a lot of streaming. I do a lot of research on YouTube, I listen to a lot of podcasts and many occasions those have influenced me to take action and buy something. Just recently it was something that I needed for my computer and it was kind of a cool thing. It helped me and it's something I'm going to start implementing into my podcast or my live streams because it allows me to do some kind of some tricked up stuff. But I saw it originally during someone else's podcast and then they talked about how that helped them and I thought, wow, that's really good. And because I follow this person, what they have trust and authority with me. And so if they recommend something, guess what, I might peek at it and take a look. Even if I know it's being, if they're sponsoring the show. So how does this work? Well, let me give an example. We have a new program and it's called the Fairway Executive. Now, when I say new program, it's something that I did several years ago, like eight or nine years ago, maybe 10 years ago with a dear friend of mine. And at that point she was my business partner, but she's now passed. And a dear friend of mine, I used to be a golf professional. Pga, golf professional. And we said, hey, we want to put together a golf podcast called the Fairway Executive. Now when we started, we had no idea what the name was going to be. We live, as I say, in Palm Springs. There just happened to be the PGA show going on in Vegas. And we said, hey, let's, let's get in the car, let's drive to Vegas. We'll get our cameras, our microphone, and we'll head to Vegas. And when we get there, we'll start interviewing all these high, I'm going to say well known celebrities in the golf world. Now when I say celebrities, I'm talking about, okay, they're the president of pga, they're the vice president of pga, they're the executive director, they're the, the best instructor, you know, you name it. Also, we talked to product manufacturers back then. And so whatever they, whether it was a golf cart, I remember the one there was a surfboard that was turned into a golf cart and it was the idea of a single use. So we interviewed these people and we did like 41 interviews in two days. We did a lot, and it was a lot of fun and it was called the Fairway Executive. Well, now roll it out here. Eight, ten years later, we're going to do, we're going to reintroduce this. And, and what I'm going to be doing is I'm going to be interviewing golf professionals, directors of golf, general managers, director of his instruction of nice high end clubs, and give them a, give them a platform to talk on and to share. Hey, what makes their club different? What makes what they do different?
