This year, Lancôme signed Demi Moore as a global ambassador.
She’s 63.
At a moment when every other beauty brand was chasing 22-year-old TikTok stars, the biggest name in luxury beauty pointed a camera at a woman older than most executives’ mothers and made her the face of the launch.
It wasn’t a stunt. It was a strategy. And it worked because the customer they’re actually selling to — the woman with the credit card, the loyalty, and the buying power — finally saw herself in the ad.
Golf hasn’t figured this out yet.
Who Golf Is Actually Selling To
Pull up the last five pieces of marketing your course put out.
The website hero image. The recent Instagram post. The ad running on Meta. The email you sent last Thursday. The brochure at the front desk.
Count how many of them feature a man swinging a golf club.
Now count how many feature a woman playing golf. Not standing next to a golf cart. Not laughing at a table. Playing.
For most courses, the ratio is somewhere between embarrassing and non-existent.
Meanwhile, here’s what the actual data says about who’s playing your golf course:
- 8.1 million women played golf on-course in the U.S. in 2025 — an all-time record.
- 28% of all on-course golfers are now women. Highest proportion ever recorded.
- Since 2020, women account for 52% of every net new on-course golfer in the country.
- Female participation is up 45% in five years. Male participation, over the same window, is up 12%.
- 35% of junior golfers are now girls. In 2000, that number was 15%. This is the pipeline.
Read those numbers again. Slowly.
Women aren’t “a segment.” They’re where the growth is coming from. If your marketing doesn’t reflect that, your marketing is out of sync with your own business.
What Lancôme Actually Did
The Demi Moore move looks obvious in hindsight. It wasn’t. Here’s the context:
For twenty years, the beauty industry had a math problem. Women over 50 buy the most product, spend the most money, and are the most loyal customers in the category. And they were almost never on the box.
Age Perfect campaigns aside, most beauty advertising was aimed at the woman a brand wanted next — not the woman actually paying. The bet was that aspiration sells, and 25-year-olds sell aspiration.
Lancôme called it. They looked at their book of business, saw who was actually keeping the lights on, and cast accordingly. Demi Moore for the launch. Zoe Saldaña alongside her. Julia Roberts. Isabella Rossellini. Not “ages 20 to 60” as a slogan. Actual women, actually visible.
The campaign wasn’t controversial. It didn’t need to be. It was honest — which, in beauty marketing, was the twist.
The industry response was fast. Other brands followed. Now every legacy beauty company is racing to cast women over 50, women of color, women who look like their customer instead of their customer’s fantasy self.
Lancôme got the first-mover advantage. Everyone else is playing catch-up.
The Same Move Is Sitting There in Golf
The parallel isn’t subtle.
Golf has spent twenty years marketing to the customer it wants — the young, wealthy, athletic male — while the customer that’s actually growing is a woman.
Not “women’s golf.” Not “ladies’ day.” Not the pink tee marker.
Women. Playing. Golf. The same way men do. On your course. In record numbers. With a real purchasing decision to make about where to spend their money and their weekends.
The course that speaks to her first — clearly, respectfully, and without treating her like a subcategory — gets a clean first-mover shot at the fastest-growing customer segment in the industry.
Not because it’s the right thing to do (though it is). Because it’s the smart move.
What Actually Speaking to Women Looks Like
This isn’t “post a photo of a woman on Instagram once a month.” That’s the golf industry’s version of a token cast — and it reads exactly as tokenistic as it is.
Speaking to women means the whole marketing system is built for a customer who might be a woman. Not a special campaign in May. Not a Ladies Night discount. The default.
Here’s what changes when you actually do it:
1. The imagery.
Women appear in your marketing at the same rate they appear on your course. Playing. Not spectating. Not smiling at the 19th hole. Actually hitting the ball. If your last five pieces of content don’t include a woman playing, your marketing isn’t reflecting your customer base.
2. The copy.
You stop writing “hey guys” and “bring the buddies.” You stop assuming every reader is a man planning a bachelor trip. Small edits. Big signal.
3. The offers.
You look at what women are actually buying and build for it. Group outings that aren’t bachelorette-themed. Lessons that don’t assume beginner status. Stay-and-play packages built for couples where both people play, and both people are treated like real customers.
4. The experience.
Marketing writes a check the operation has to cash. If you speak to women and then she gets to the pro shop and it’s stocked exclusively with men’s gear — or the starter calls her “honey” — the marketing dies at the front door. The whole system has to be aligned.
5. The measurement.
You track how many women are booking. What packages they’re buying. What they’re spending. What they’re not. You treat her as a real segment with real numbers, not a footnote in your revenue report.
The Uncomfortable Question
Every operator we’ve had this conversation with pushes back at some point.
“Our clientele is mostly men.”
Fine. Yours might be. But is that because of the market you’re in, or because your marketing has been telling women for a decade that this course isn’t for them?
Lancôme didn’t wait until every customer over 60 walked in the door and complained. They looked at where the growth was and built for it before the growth arrived.
Golf’s women’s participation numbers are already here. 8.1 million. 28% of all on-course play. 52% of all net new golfers since 2020.
The demographic is at the door. The question is whether your marketing lets her in.
The Bottom Line
Lancôme didn’t win a marketing award because they “cared about older women.” They won because they saw the math, moved before their competitors did, and let their customer see herself in their brand.
Every other beauty company is now playing catch-up on a market Lancôme has been building trust in for two years.
In your local market, one course will figure this out first. One course will look at the same NGF numbers you’re looking at right now, decide to build a marketing system for the customer who’s actually growing, and get a two-year head start on everyone else.
It might as well be yours.
If you want to talk about what this actually looks like for your property — what to change, what to keep, and how fast it moves the numbers, book a call
LET’S TALK