As you know, we live in an era of digital advancements. This period has caused a titanic shift in ways individuals, groups, and businesses operate on a daily basis. Think about how companies and technologies like Amazon, iPhones, AI, social media, email, and electronic payments have altered our lives. The common success factor to each of these transformative examples is that they have a formidable digital footprint that promotes their product and online brand identity.
For many years the GOBs lacked a robust digital footprint and ran the risk of defining our brand identity solely through observing our members at play dates. If unresponsive to this digital transformation, as our membership continued to age, we would be defined by the one word in our moniker, ‘Old’, which significantly detracts from our recruiting new and younger members that is so important to ensuring the sustainability of the GOBs.
In the Fall of 2020, the newly formed Executive Committee (EC) set out to address the issue of brand identity. Our intent was to develop an identity that transcended time by incorporating the energy, potential, talent, and vision of the group in an online presence. The expectation was this online presence would serve as the basis for elevating the stature of the group and be embraced by both current members and prospective candidates.
To help accomplish our aspirational goals, the EC engaged award-winning and highly-credentialed Website Designer Dan Mueller. Dan has been the primary architect of our smartly designed and content-rich website. We launched version ‘1.0’ in April, 2021, just in time for the opening of our season. That version, which has a public and a private/Members Only section, has provided GOBs a distinctive online presence while providing both our members and captains with tools to execute traditional tasks more efficiently, and also introduced new ways of operating (e.g., Play Date Sign-up). The site has also been instrumental in promoting the GOBs brand to our 17 Partner Clubs and to interested candidates seeking to learn more about our group. Anyone who has accessed the public section of our website and taken the time to read its content has been complimentary of its design, messaging, and thoroughness. The private section, which contains all of our operating tools and organizational information is equally impressive and functional.
With any online presence, it is important that it be routinely refreshed to adapt to trends, events, milestones, and contain current information. Accordingly, we’ve updated the public section of our website and will direct our attention to the private section over the summer months. The public section of the site is comprised of three tabs:
- GOBs History
- GOBs Today
- Membership
The GOBs History tab essentially stayed the same except for some minor tweaks. The GOBs Today’ tab has been updated to incorporate our partnership with Grassroots Tennis & Education, which reflects our expanding efforts to ‘give back’ to the community. We have also created a new area within ‘GOBs Today’ called 40th Anniversary Season which incorporates narrative and visuals. The content of this new area is very much influenced by the three principles we had in mind for last year’s season:
- Honor Our Legacy
- Respect GOBs History
- Celebrate Organizational Progress
The GOBs Today tab now also includes the two excellent articles that were in the Greenwich Magazine and the Darien MagazineCT publications in their July/August 2023 editions. And, to cap it off, we’ve refreshed our testimonials in this tab with sentiments from some new members. The Membership tab has also been embellished with images of some of our current members. All these additions/enhancements represent version ‘2.0’ of our GOBs Website.
While the EC has been very close to this refresh process, we are excited to share this evolving ‘new look’ with all of our members as we approach 2024’s Opening Day. When you have about 10 minutes, I encourage you to access the public section of our website, www.gobs-tennis.com, and review its content to get a first-hand glimpse of version ‘2.0’ and the updated brand identity that we are promoting to members, stakeholders, and candidates.
If so inclined, once you review version ‘2.0’, feel free to provide me with your feedback, as I always appreciate hearing from you.
Best,
Jim