• by Karl Greenberg , June 13, 2007

Athletic shoe company Puma is vying for a birdie in the golf sports category via a cross promotional relationship with Stuff magazine. The PumaPalooza will be a series of regional tournaments featuring golf and gaming hosted by Puma and Stuff, a laddie magazine. The events will be held in Chicago (June), Los Angeles (July), and New York (August), with the finals taking place in Las Vegas in October.

The PumaPalooza is a three-person golf tournament open to experts and novices. Teams of three competitors can sign up a pumapalooza.com for the competition, which is split between golf and gaming. The threesomes first compete against each other in a scramble, where at every hole, there are specific playing rules. The gaming section pits players against each other in card games, at the end of which players can cash their chips for Puma Points. During play competitors get various prizes.

Finally, the teams are ranked by their play in golf and gaming, with the better team earning more Puma points. All teams are then thrown into a lottery in which those with more points get more opportunities to win. The teams selected are flown to Las Vegas for a final event, "24 Hours of Puma Finals."

The effort will be supported via national ads in Stuff, e-mail blasts, PR and local-market promotions. There will be additional sponsors.

Barney Waters, vice president/marketing for PumaNorth America, says that when the company works with magazine partners, it prefers singular events "that match the personality of both our brand and the magazine. PumaPalooza is a perfect representation of Puma and Stuff. Stuff shares our view that sport should be fun and that golf, in particular, should be inclusive, not exclusive."

He says the combo of card games with golf is meant to align with the position of the company's marketing division, Puma Golf, as stylish, inclusive and fun. "Golf is a traditional sport, and when we entered the category, we wanted to mix things up, add some color, fun and, most importantly, do things differently," he says. "We are approaching the traditionally conservative sport of golf and making it more accessible and visually appealing to today's modern consumers."

Waters says Puma runs advertising campaigns for soccer and its "Enjoy Running" effort, as well as for its lifestyle division. The company created Puma Pursuits, a series of fun, social running events at its Puma Concept Stores and select running retail partners. And with soccer, Puma partnered with the largest national youth soccer event, Schwan's USA Cup, as the presenting sponsor.

Puma entered the golf category in March 2006 and sponsors Geoff Ogilvy, Johan Edfors, Nicole Perrot, Kiran Mattaru and Erica Blasberg.