Valentina Olivieri Dr. Bob Bednar Capstone Seminar 2/12/19 Object Context/Description Paper 1) Introduction I have been playing golf since I was 3 and a half years old. I started playing golf as a hobby and also since my family and I had been lived next to a golf course. As I grew up, I became a pretty great player and had a lot of people constantly telling me I should play professionally one day on the LPGA. I had a friend growing up, Julieta Granada, from Paraguay, who made it onto the LPGA and in her first tournament, won a million dollars. Having role models to look up to in the LPGA who challenge the status quo, legitimize the space other women and I have to be female athletes. The LPGA, otherwise known as the Ladies Professional Golfers Association, is an entity that has struggled for stability in our Western Society since it is, to this day, considered an untraditional sport. After the recession of 2008, the LPGA changed their philosophy, their image and the way they were presenting themselves to their audience. It is important to study the new way they are self-branding and marketing themselves on social media, such as Instagram, in order to detect whether the LPGA is succeeding at the moment. I am interested in analyzing the techniques used to market themselves and potentially predicting whether or not their success and stability will be ensured through their use of social media in the digital age. 1
2) Description and Context What is it? The LPGA stands for the Ladies Professional Golfers Association, an organization that was founded in 1950. It is the female counterpart to the PGA or the Professional Golfers Association which is for only male golfers and was founded in 1916. The LPGA s headquarters are located in Daytona Beach, FL., but they play all across the U.S, as well as around the world. The majority of the LPGA s sponsors are international because in 2008, the economic recession hit them really hard since they weren t a stable organization and they had to go outside the U.S. to catch more people s attention. It is similar to other professional women s athletic organizations such as WTA (Women s Tennis Association), WNBA (Women s National Basketball association, along with many others, because the ancestors of these entities all fought for their right to play their sports and some of these are considered untraditional sports. Sena Christian wrote Every time a young woman participates in sports or displays her athleticism, she breaks down naturalized gender categories and expectations. The image of women who are not passive, weak, emotional, noncompetitive and dependent on men shakes up society s perceptions and assumptions about men and women. Bodies are signified with meaning, and female bodies that are athletic, strong and muscular disrupt gender binaries and provide a foundation for deconstructing oppressions grounded in biological difference (27). In other words, the female athletes back then, fought for their rights to dedicate their life to something other than just being a stay-at-home mom, and the female athletes today continue to challenge the patriarchal society and fight for equal rights. In 1972, Title IX protected and continues to protect these women because they cannot be 2
discriminated based on their sex in any education program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance (Office for Civil Rights). The LPGA is similar to the PGA because they are both organizations that represent the professional golfers of around the globe, they play international events, have similar sponsors, and use the Opendorse for marketing purposes. However, they differentiate on how much more importance the PGA receives worldwide and how many followers they have. The PGA receives more TV airtime, regardless of where they are around the world, whereas the LPGA has a contract with the Golf Channel that only covers their domestic tournaments in the U.S. when the majority of their tournaments are international. I would characterize the LPGA as an untraditional entity, that decades later, is still fighting to become a more established, stable, respected and traditional entity. In the Historical context section, I went into depth about the LPGA s and women s golf history, and why they have been struggling a little more in comparison to other professional female athletes associations. Historical Context Historically, women in the United States have been discouraged from participating in competitive sports and performing rigorous physical activity (Williams and Fields 90). At first, it was believed by doctors and men at the time that if women did anything to rigorous with their bodies, that this would later affect their ability to give birth and take away energy from being a mother. Women, of higher class, were given the right to play sports beginning in the 1900s, since it was deemed necessary for improving the health of women as mothers of the race (Williams and Fields 90). Unfortunately, for working class women and women of color, the same opportunity was not granted because their hands were full of all the hard work they were 3
already putting in and nobody wanted to put extra strain on their bodies. In the 1920s, women s sporting events started making a name for themselves and getting attention from those in the American society. Women had a particular dress code, regardless, typically consisting of a very long skirt to the ankles, to not cause any unwanted attention or to distract men. In the 1950s, a group of 13 women founded the LPGA (Ladies Professional Golfers Association) in order to have the same opportunity of playing golf professionally. The women s golf program continued to expand as the LPGA opened the LPGA teaching division in 1959 to encourage the dreams of other women to join the tour, as well as coaching them into becoming better players. In 1960, Shirley Spork and Barbara Rotvig opened the first LPGA National Golf School, whose motto was teaching teachers to teach. By the year 1962, the number of women playing golf in the U.S surpassed the amount of men by 3 or 4 times. Despite this, women were still restricted to play on certain golf courses throughout the week due to society expecting them to be at home taking care of the kids. Women protested outside of these golf courses, demanding equal playing time and opportunity. Title IX, passed in 1972, finally allowed for women to be on the playing field, but this didn t save them from sexist and racist comments for the years to come. Societal and economic issues have been haunting the LPGA ever since Title IX has passed. Golf courses were considered men s space, unofficially, as a place where they could go having a relaxing afternoon with their friends and get away from their responsibilities of home and work. When women were allowed to play on the course, many of them felt that they were being singled out and stereotyped as being poor or slow players (Gray 116), thus putting themselves in one of two positions: feeling pressured to play like men to deserve being on the course or a sense of role entrapment (Gray 116). Nowadays, women are accepted to play at golf courses, 4
alongside with men, however, there is a particular dress code one must follow, which includes looking feminine. Audience interaction with Social Media The LPGA started their Instagram account back in 2012 and to this day have 195 K followers. They started their Twitter account in 2008 and they have 193K followers. Twitter was trending more than Instagram in the past because the audience would be getting live updates minute by minute of what was going on in the tournament, regardless if they were watching the live streaming of it or not. The Instagram account wasn t as popular because it would only allow one to post pictures and nothing else. However, nowadays, Instagram allows you to have a story which stays online for 24 hours, and along with this feature, one can now go live and post behind the scene looks, videos, interviews, and so on. This feature is great because one can be filming the tournament and be getting live feedback from the audience. The newest addition to Instagram is the Instagram TV (IGTV) which does the same as going live, as well as uploading prerecorded content and one can keep the content on their account for as long as you want. With this new technology, I would definitely say that the LPGA is interpellating to a younger audience (40 years old and below) and/or tech savvy adults because not everyone is familiar with using social media. Since social media started, things have advanced tremendously, and kids have an ability to pick up on these changes faster. I read throughout different articles that the LPGA is targeting the younger audience because they are the future generation, they want them to grow up with role models and feel like they can help make the world a better place. Conversation in Popular Media 5
A lot of articles have been written about the LPGA s uses of social media. Outlets like Front Office Sports and Sports Pro media have written more in-depth articles about the marketing programs the LPGA is using (Team Infographics and Opendorse) and the reasons why the LPGA is using each of these. Golfweek, ESPNW, ESPN, Golf Digest and even the PGA have written articles showcasing the shift of the LPGA in relying on social media more than traditional marketing techniques to raise their popularity and how they starting to grow their fan base because of this. I encountered an article written by Beth Ann Nichols on the Golfweek s website about the threat of stalkers on the LPGA and LPGA players accounts. It was criticizing how LPGA players, along with other athletes and celebrities, are encouraged to share things about their personal life to make them more approachable and real to their fan base. This article mentioned how there are some players that only rely on social media for their marketing instead of using a combination of both traditional marketing and new marketing, which is not okay because although we live in a society where the majority of things are digitalized, it would aid them in their success to find other ways to brand themselves. On top of this, social media can drain your energy pretty quickly and forces you to create an alternate real version of yourself, which can lead to mental breakdowns and life choices they might later regret. The scope of critical conversation about my object is very large, ranging from talking about female athletes in general to the dangers of being too reliant on social media to help the LPGA obtain a larger fan base. This will be beneficial for me because I will be able to write a very wellrounded paper, however will be tricky as well in that I have to keep myself from going down a rabbit hole that is unrelated to my topic. 6
Some main ideas that keep circulating in scholarly talk that relate to my topic are media sports, brand building, social media pros and cons, feminist sports movement, othering, and theory of genre. Brand building and social media pros and cons will aid me in analyzing the techniques used by the LPGA, acknowledging who the intended audience is, and predicting the future of the sport. Media sports and feminist sports movement will help me in providing context for my object. Othering and the theory of genre will allow me to understand why the LPGA continues to be considered an untraditional sport, what makes it unique, and what makes its Instagram account approachable to the audience. 3) Initial Conclusions Initial observations Throughout the researching process, I came across a lot of articles about how the LPGA handles their marketing. I learned about two very important people in the LPGA when it comes down to managing the communication/marketing processes (Tina Barnes-Budd and Mike Whan) and two marketing companies the LPGA uses for their content (Team Infographics and Opendorse). I plan to look into the way these two companies work and what they do for the LPGA, however I will not be spending all my time looking at this. I definitely want to look into the most popular trends assessed by the LPGA in their posts and across their social media. Another big chunk of my capstone project will be on the progression of posts, how have they evolved with the years, how frequently do they post, what hashtags are used, which players are highlighted most in their posts and why, and how do these things tell us more about what the audience is expecting from the LPGA. Connection to significative communication studies scholars and objects 7
Although I didn t do a lot of scholarly journal article research for this paper, however, Rachael Miyung Joo s article Transnational Sport: Gender, Media and Global Korea, reviewed by Jin-Kyung Park, amazed me. Although only three pages long, she coined the terms media sport and transnational metacommodity. According to Joo, media sport is competitive sports that are structured by commercial mass media and manufactured for mass consumption (Joo 481). She went on to call media sport athletes transnational metacommodity as media sport exercises power to create spectatorship and thus sponsorship on a massive scale in the era of the new media (ex. Internet) and instant social mobilization of voluminous crowds that it mediates (Joo 481). These terms are tied in with my object because I am analyzing the present and future of the narration of sports, focusing specifically on the LPGA. I took an online course with Columbia University called Sports Industry Essentials and they covered all the different ways the future of sports will be closely tied in the digital marketing and social media, in order to bring the audience a realistic experience and make them feel connected to the athletes they are rooting for. There are several other sources similar to Rachael Joo s article that I have encountered about the future of sports and the way they will be documented in general, but not solely focusing on women s golf and the LPGA. However, these articles will aid me in analyzing the LPGA s social media accounts, as well as predicting their success a few years from now. Questions to answer 1) What do Opendorse and Team Infographics do for the LPGA? How do they aid them in growing their fanbase? 8
2) What trends are most popular on the Instagram page right now? How are these different from the posts back in 2012 and throughout the years? 3) Which players appear the most on the Instagram posts and why? 4) What content do they have on their Instagram TV? 5) Has there truly been an increase in social media numbers and will they continue to grow? 6) What kind of fan reactions do they get on their posts? 7) What brand is the LPGA creating? How is it being interpellated by the audience? Bibliography Christian, Sena. The Radical Potential Of Women In Sports. Off Our Backs, vol. 34, no. 7/8, 2004, pp. 26 29. Holmes, Ellen. Opendorse Partners with LPGA to Grow Players' Social Media Presence. SportsPro, 14 Feb. 2018, www.sportspromedia.com/news/opendorse-lpga-grow-players-social-media-presence Joo, Rachael Miyung. Reviewed Work: Transnational Sport: Gender, Media, and Global Korea. The Journal of Asian Studies, Edited by Jin-Kyung Park, vol. 72, no. 2, May 2013, pp. 480 482. Londergan, Joe. Inside the LPGA's Social Media Strategy and Execution. Front Office Sports, 10 Oct. 2018, frntofficesport.com/lpga-social-media-strategy-execution/. Nichols, Beth Ann. Threat of Stalkers, Trolls Makes Social Media Complicated for LPGA Players. Golfweek, Golfweek, 7 May 2017, golfweek.com/2017/05/07/stalkers-trollsmakes-social-media-complicated-for-lpga-players/. Thorpe, Holly. The Internet and the Future of Sports History: A Brief Commentary. Journal of Sports History, vol. 40, no. 1, 2013, pp. 127 135. White, Adam. Why the LPGA Is Investing in a Social Media Tool to Help Golfers Build Their Digital Brands. Front Office Sports, 20 Feb. 2018, frntofficesport.com/why-the-lpga-isinvesting-in-a-social-media-tool-to-help-golfers-build-their-digital-brands/. 9