Good Good spent years building a reputation as YouTube golf's good-vibes crew, so it's wild that the brand's latest driver ad is the reason it's trending for all the wrong reasons. The now-deleted spot showed Good Good personality Garrett Clark physically shoving co-creator Alexis Miestowski to the ground as she reached for a new Callaway driver, then standing over her and saying "Do not touch my new driver." Good Good and Callaway have since said the 60-second video was meant as a spoof of the horror movie Obsession. Nobody's laughing.
Fore Play got to it first, and the reaction was blunt. "It's one of the dumbest ads I've ever seen," Trent said on the pod, and the clip started circulating fast.
“It’s one of the dumbest ads I’ve ever seen.” We react to Good Good’s now deleted driver ad that sparked major controversy for all the wrong reasons.
This isn't a case of one podcast host being cranky, either. Callaway CEO Chip Brewer publicly admitted the company signed off on the spot before it went up, saying "That approval should never have happened. Mistakes were made, and we are taking the matter very seriously." Good Good CEO Matt Kendrick echoed the apology, saying the video "ultimately depicted actions that are not aligned with our values as a brand." Two separate companies owning up to greenlighting the same bad idea is a rare gut-check for a brand partnership that's normally all fist bumps and mulligans.
The stakes here go beyond one embarrassing video getting yanked. Good Good is set to serve as title sponsor of the Good Good Championship, a PGA Tour FedEx Cup Fall event slated for November in Austin, Texas. That's a real relationship with a real tour, not just a content deal, which is why the PGA Tour felt compelled to weigh in on a since-deleted ad from one of its own sponsors.
Not everyone's treating it seriously, though. Some fans are just riffing on how far the clip traveled before it got pulled.
Little kids all over Mongolia gonna be rocking so much GoodGood by next week
Good Good has spent years cultivating goodwill as the friendly, likable alternative to golf's stuffier corners, which makes this stumble sting more than it would for a brand with less to lose. Whether the backlash fades by the time the FedEx Cup Fall event tees off in Austin, or whether this follows Good Good into that PGA Tour spotlight, is the thing to watch next.