RBC makes a good call on Anthony Kim

This feels like a weekend for golf-related blog posts.

If you watched The Masters earlier today, you’ll have seen 24 year-old Anthony Kim shoot a 65 to place 3rd in the biggest PGA tournament of the year. That followed a win the previous weekend in Houston.

Although Nike may be on his hat and shirt, if you look closely enough, you’ll also see The Royal Bank of Canada on his golf bag. This is part of a broad strategy that RBC kicked off a couple of years ago when it negotiated a bargain price to be the title sponsor of the Canadian Open.

Last year, RBC picked up the “Bank of the PGA” sponsorship with the demise of The Royal Bank of Scotland, and also made branding moves on half a dozen members of the PGA and LPGA tours. Mr. Kim is the biggest of the names right now, and RBC’s strategy is on a roll.

In our defence I’ll say that we beat them to the golf sponsorship punch in 2006 with our dual support of pros Richard Scott and Danny King (see prior post “Welcome Richard Scott – the PGA awaits” Dec 16-06), but RBC has done well on their investments already…which pick up nicely where their massive Olympic sponsorship left off a few weeks ago.

MRM