Humana calls on Riverside County
If you want a successful golf tournament, or really an event of any kind, you have to market the heck out of the thing.
You can have the best event in the world, and if no one knows you are holding it, the event will be a complete disaster. A well-marketed event can overcome being just average.
That’s why events like the Humana Challenge in partnership with the Clinton Foundation have tried in recent years to broaden the area for its marketing push. The tournament features top PGA Tour pros and beautiful weather, and the more people who know about that, the better.
No longer content to just market to the Coachella Valley, the tournament board and executive director Bob Marra have tried in recent years to reach out to the western part of Riverside Country. There are millions of people in the Inland Empire, and Marra has said time and again that the tournament needs to make those people feel like the Humana Challenge is their tournament as much as it is the tournament for people in the desert.
The latest step in those attempts again involved western Riverside Country, but could in fact reach across oceans. The Humana Challenge announced this week a global marketing partnership with the Riverside County Office of Foreign Trade-Economic Development Administration, a partnership announced at Tuesday’s Country Board of Supervisors meeting.
How could this partnership help take word of the Humana Challenge overseas? It’s easy, Marra explains.
With the deal, the Humana Challenge will now be branded as part of the county’s effort to bring businesses from overseas to Riverside County, while also helping businesses in the county to take their work throughout the country and even overseas.
Win-win situation
An international company interested in setting up shop in Riverside County also might be interested in getting involved with the county’s only PGA Tour event.
“A great opportunity for the Humana Challenge to partner with the County of Riverside and take advantage of the expertise of the global marketing programs available through the Office of Foreign Trade at EDA,” Marra said in the statement announcing the partnership. “We know that among the robust and growing base of international businesses operating in Riverside County there are many that would be interested in some of the special hospitality and promotional amenities the tournament offers. This partnership greatly enhances our ability to communicate effectively with an important and new prospective client base for us.”
So an international company doing business in Riverside County might want to buy a few pro-am spots in the Humana Challenge for its corporate heads. Or they might want to buy a hospitality booth during the tournament, or bring over some clients for a week at the event. Heck, they might even want to spend a little money for some kind of sponsorship of a PGA Tour event.
“I see this partnership agreement as an opportunity to promote the county and the Humana Challenge, the region’s only PGA Tour event, to business and government leaders around the world,” said Supervisor John J. Benoit in the announcement.
The new partnership might not pay off at the 2015 tournament, though the outreach to western Riverside Country may well result in business for the Humana Challenge. But long term, the deal between the tournament and the county might have some important payoffs for the desert’s PGA Tour event.
Larry Bohannan is The Desert Sun golf writer. He can be reached at (760) 778-4633 or larry.bohannan@desertsun.com. Follow him on Twitter at @MyDesertSun.