Page 6 - JULY - Ladies BGG Print - FINAL.indd

Ladies’ at its best

Paul Bussiere
GENERAL MANAGER’S MESSAGE
This has been a very busy year at the club. The first couple months of the season have flown by. During that time though,
the staff have been working hard on improving the Member experience. When I first arrived at the club, I felt there was a
bit of a disconnect between what Members were paying and what they felt they were getting for their money. There has
been a lot of concern expressed about how much the fees have risen. Unfortunately, we had not been doing enough to
continually improve the Member experience and there was a gap between the fees and the value.
I challenged our staff to come up with ideas to improve that Member experience. There have been fantastic ideas, from the
shoe cleaning station at the back shop, to the new Vegetable Bistro on the lawn. We have also had some hiccups with the
implementation of some of the changes. Despite providing Members with a month to play with the new GGGolf tee sheet
system, it was still tricky to navigate a new system once the season started and the tee sheet went live. There are many
new features in this system to enhance the Member experience like the ability to indicate if you are playing 9 holes or 18,
the tournament list and match play brackets, and the ability to post your score right in GGGolf if you are keeping a handicap.
No more guessing what your handicap is from a certain set of tees, as the tee sheet will let you know and will indicate a
change if you are playing the 9 hole vs the 18 hole course.
Part of my job this offseason was to lead the refresh of our brand identity. I’ve had questions as to why we needed to do
this. At the AGM this year, our marketing consultant, Brad Green, gave a presentation on our current brand and where we
could go with a brand that reflects the essence of Ladies’. A brand is made up of 1000 little touchpoints that collectively tell
the story of who you are. We were lacking the attention to detail in those areas and are trying to improve them. Prior to the
AGM, staff worked with the Marketing Advisory Group and members of the Board to ensure we were taking the refreshed
brand identity in the right direction. New colours were introduced, and the logo was tweaked slightly. We ran focus groups
with Members, Guest Card Holders, and Academy participants to get their feedback on not only the visuals we were
working on but feelings and phrasing. We wanted to know what they thought it meant to be a Member at Ladies’. For the
Academy participants, we wanted to know what would attract them to becoming a Member at Ladies’. The information that
came out of the focus groups was fantastic and shaped our new colour palette and identity, “feel good golf,” a theme that
resonated with each focus group and spoke to how they felt when at Ladies’.

Rolling out the refreshed brand identity takes time and we have been phasing it in. New signage went up around the
club. Our e-blast communications were updated along with our new newsletter, “Beauty, Grit & Grace”. Coinciding with
the focus of improving the Member experience, we are trying to show the public what the Ladies’ community is all about.
Our website, although functional, is not a great representation of our club. We are currently working on a new design to
improve the Member experience and better reflect our great club, by keeping the focus on our three areas of attracting new
people to the club, golf for women, golf for men, and the Academy. The Member side of the website will make navigation
of the calendar easier and with enhanced security features, a safer place for Members where you can control what contact
information is visible to other Members. Booking a tee time will only require one login on the Member site and a link will
take you directly to GGGolf and automatically log you in. The new website will be streamlined to make it easier to find
the content you need and will be continuously updated with new material. The main focus of this update is to improve the
Member experience online.

As you can see, it’s been a busy year already. We hope to launch the new website this fall and we will give you plenty of
updates prior to the launch to ensure everyone is ready. I hope you enjoyed the beautiful weather this spring and are ready
for a wonderful summer. Please bring out your guests so they can experience Ladies’ at its best.

Paul

6 | BEAUTY, GRIT & GRACE