7-Eleven Has Entered the Golfcore Chat. Can We Stop Here?
When a new golf-themed capsule drops, and the collective curators begin to boost marketing material by flooding the feeds, I tend to first go to the Instagram story of photographer Christian Hafer.
Hafer, a multi-faceted creative, marketer, and staff photographer for The Golfer's Journal (the golf world's soul publication), has been on a mission to call bullshit on interlopers in Golf's New Wave ever since what feels like every brand director in the country burst into a boardroom and shouted "GOLF!" at their creative teams. Stuff like people taking full swings with putters on city sidewalks in ads, or stand bags penetrating a manicured green—a SMFH-moment for anyone who cherishes the agronomy of the game.
The latter offense showed up in the campaign for 7-Eleven's new 29-piece golf capsule called the "Convenience Tour."(Clever!) The collection—which includes completely unoffensive and perhaps even well-designed graphic tees, '70s-inspired tipped and rugby-striped polos, hats, stickers, patches, and even golf tees—launched under the premise that it was (and tell me if you've heard this one in the past 18 months), "For brand fans who want to look good and feel good when hitting the range."
Got it.
"It’s just become so stamp and repeat," Hafer told me over DM. "The creative around a lot of the brands, from product to shoot to delivery, has become formulaic. Creativity and the authenticity is lacking in a lot of brands trying to enter the golf space."
The Convenience Tour is just the latest in a string of golf drops that tests the souls of golf's most faithful. Are a lot of the pieces well-executed? It looks like it. But the wearability isn't the point; the existence is. Everyone in the golf world is thrilled that the rest of the planet has finally discovered golf's cool. But instead of channeling it, and relying on the people that know it best, brands like 7-Eleven, and mainstay fashion brand A.P.C., for example, reveal themselves with continuity errors.
"From product to execution you can tell it’s mostly non-golfers trying to make our sport 'cool,'" Hafer says. "The issue is, golf is cool, and that’s why so many people are attracted to it. I’ve spent years just documenting the game from every level and place. It’s a diverse, fun, and creative sport that’s got more in common with surfing than football. The well for creative inspiration in golf is endless. Talk to us, and your local golfers, about your brand before you put models on a cart with two gloves swinging a putter like a driver."
It's not just the posers, either. A surge in new golfers has yielded, as Hafer stated, an endless amount of opportunity. Golf has been redefined as something individually interpreted, rather than a homogenous community of old, white men. This aspect of the game's boom is a beautiful thing. Any given person interested in golf now has three times as many options as they did when piqué polos and khakis with ugly shoes and uglier attitudes dominated the sport.
But it also means golf-wear is experiencing the same sort of collaborative over-saturation that streetwear still hasn't shaken. There's a new collab seemingly every week; everyone wants a piece of someone else's audiences. In the best instances, like Malbon's ongoing collaborations with Lusso Cloud, these collabs make easy, obvious sense. The perfect pre-and-post-golf slipper, adorned with Malbon's now very recognizable "M" script on the toe? You get it. But we should reserve the merging of logos for authentic moments like these. "People are golfing now" isn't a reason enough to enter the sandbox.
I don't want less golf stuff. I want less golf junk. I want golfers, new and old, to realize that the right golf outfit isn't golf-themed. It's not confined to a cheeky pun. It can be technical, it can be considered. In the best scenarios it's both, and in the worst scenario it involves a polyester polo filled with flamingos.
Would I bring a Slurpee to the course? Hell, yes. But my sartorial aspirations when "hitting the range," as 7-Eleven puts it, typically have nothing to do with ironically wearing a convenience store logo. I want a brand as big as 7-Eleven to embrace golf, I just wish the folks involved spent the money on a youth golf program, or at least hired someone like Hafer to consult.
Speaking of Hafer, he succinctly describes the conundrum this influx presents for a community of people who are equally frustrated and excited about the game's new spotlight, saying: "It’s good to see golf grow, but I just wished it was so blatantly about capitalizing on the trend."
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