Building a Credible International Brand

INDUSTRY

Leisure & Hospitality

CHALLENGE

Building an international brand from scratch — credible, exclusive, and distinctive for a high-caliber niche — turning an early-stage vision into a recognizable platform.

RESULTS

Hickory Golf Masters now has a complete, activation-ready brand system — deployed consistently across the website, museum, competition materials, and every digital and physical touchpoint.

KEY PRODUCT

Frontify, Brand System, HubSpot

hgm.golf

Challenge

When Hickory Golf Masters came to Ander Group, the project was still taking shape. There was a name, a clear vision tied to the 2026 tournament, and a historically powerful symbol — the Rake Niblick — but no brand capable of carrying that ambition.

The challenge wasn't refreshing an existing identity. It was building one from scratch: a brand platform credible at the international level, designed for a highly selective audience of hickory golf players and enthusiasts with high expectations — culturally and aesthetically.

From day one, the brand needed to do several things at once. Establish immediate authority for the project. Make the tournament recognizable. Speak convincingly to sponsors, partners, and the community. And lay the groundwork for an ecosystem meant to outlast the event — across physical and digital touchpoints, a museum, competition materials, and future activations.

That was the real complexity: translating golf's most authentic tradition into a language that felt distinctive, exclusive, and current — without tipping into nostalgia or becoming a museum piece.

Solutions

The project opened with a thorough discovery phase — studying the cultural context of hickory golf so that every visual and narrative decision would carry a specific rationale. That research produced the claim "Where history is not just remembered – it's revered" which defines the project's ambition: turning golf's history into a living heritage worth protecting and building on.

From there, we developed a complete identity. The logo encodes the HGM acronym while evoking the profile of the historic Rake Niblick — translating a symbol from the past into a mark that reads as contemporary and authoritative. Around it, we built a visual system grounded in heritage, luxury, and exclusivity: a pattern that reinterprets the classic Argyle motif for today, and a palette that reinforces the connection to the cultural world of historic golf.

A consistent identity, across every surface

The Hickory Golf Masters identity was built as a cohesive, recognizable system — one that holds its authority regardless of context: digital, editorial, promotional, or physical.

From the website to printed materials, from social content to presentation decks, every brand application speaks the same language: elegant, measured, distinctive. That consistency isn't just aesthetic — it's strategic. It reinforces how the project is perceived, solidifies its positioning, and projects an image that reads as mature, credible, and international.

Every touchpoint becomes part of a larger story: an identity that honors the hickory golf tradition, protects its heritage, and translates it into a presence that feels contemporary, refined, and instantly recognizable.

The brand plays its first round

The first official edition of Hickory Masters — hosted by Circolo Golf Villa d'Este on the occasion of its centenary — was the first public setting where the project's identity found full expression.

The event gave concrete form to the brand system built for Hickory Golf Masters: from the visual framework to the tone of voice, from the key concepts to the foundations of the vision, every element worked together to create an experience that was coherent, recognizable, and aligned with the brand's positioning.

To support the event, a digital infrastructure was built on HubSpot — designed to handle communications, registrations, and participant relationships in one integrated system.

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The value of Frontify for Hickory Golf Masters

The work resulted in a fully structured brand system — visual identity, tone of voice, templates, asset library, UI kit, and application guidelines — organized on Frontify as a digital asset management infrastructure.

The system was then activated across every major touchpoint: from the HubSpot website to email templates, social content to competition materials, through to the Hickory Golf Museum setup in Lugano.

Brand System

A structured, cohesive system of visual, verbal, and strategic elements.

Advantage: One single source of truth for visual consistency across every application.

UI Kit Library

Coded digital components for the website and interfaces.

Advantage: Fast, consistent development across the digital ecosystem — including the HubSpot site.

Media Library

An organized archive of photography assets.

Advantage: Instant access to the right materials for both the internal team and external partners.

Guidelines

Clear guidelines for offline (stationery, brochures), online, and retail marketing.

Advantage: Brand scalability across business units — Trophy, Club, Museum, and beyond — without losing identity.

Results

The project turned an early-stage vision into a complete, structured brand ready to be activated.

For the first time, Hickory Golf Masters has a clear, distinctive, and consistent identity — one built to support not just the 2026 tournament launch, but a broader ecosystem: museum, community, competition materials, and future developments. The system went live immediately across the project's key touchpoints, from the website to the Lugano museum, through social media, email campaigns, competition materials, and merchandise.

That's where the value of Ander Group's work lies: building and activating, end to end, a brand credible and recognizable enough to stand in front of a high-caliber international audience.

"Hickory golf isn't a variation of the game. It's a heritage — of gesture, culture, and memory. We needed a brand that could honor that depth while projecting it into a contemporary dimension. Ander Group translated that vision into an identity system that is solid, distinctive, and credible."

Paolo Quirici
Co-Founder & Hickory Champion and PGA Professional

Building a brand worthy of golf's history

Hickory Golf Masters is a Swiss organization dedicated to preserving and promoting the authentic origins of golf. Built around heritage, community, and lived experience, HGM is establishing itself as an international reference point for those who see hickory golf as a serious sporting tradition.