Meet the Team | Eleanor Clifton

What is your role at IMG and how do you play a part in the build-up and delivery of the Solheim Cup? 

I’m a Senior Marketing Manager within IMG’s Golf Events team, working across the full marketing mix to develop and deliver integrated campaigns for our golf properties. My role spans everything from shaping strategy and positioning through to paid media, OOH, digital and social, CRM, content, ticketing, creators, partnerships and fan engagement. It means looking at the whole audience journey and understanding how each channel can work together to build awareness, drive attendance and ultimately grow the event. 

For the Solheim Cup, I’ve helped shape that journey from the early stages of the campaign through to tournament delivery – helping define how we take the event to market, build momentum over time and connect the different marketing workstreams into one cohesive campaign. As we get closer to tournament week, my role increasingly shifts from building demand for the event to making sure we deliver the brand, content and fan experience we’ve been promising throughout the campaign. 

What have been the main workstreams you have been leading or supporting during the build-up to the tournament? 

My role has really sat across the full marketing journey of the event. I’ve helped lead the integrated approach from ticket launch through to tournament week – building demand over a long sales cycle, evolving our campaigns based on ticketing and audience performance, developing our content and creator programmes, and coordinating activity across paid media, CRM, social, partners and digital platforms. Now, with only days to go, the focus is on event week delivery.. towards tournament-week delivery – making sure we have the right stories, people and channels in place to capture the event as it happens. 

In the final weeks before the event, what are the most important things you need to get right? 

Prioritization becomes really important. There are hundreds of things happening at once, but you have to stay focused on what is going to have the biggest impact – driving attendance, making sure fans have the information they need, ensuring our content plan is ready, delivering for partners and making sure the onsite team is briefed and ready to go. It’s also about getting ahead wherever possible, because once tournament week starts, everything moves incredibly quickly. 

How do you prepare for the unexpected when you are working on an event of this scale? 

You have to expect that something will change! We try to prepare as much as possible in advance, have contingency plans and make sure there is really clear communication across the team. But live events also require you to be comfortable making decisions quickly. Sometimes the best opportunity of the week is something you could never have planned for, so being adaptable is just as important as being organized. 

Once the Solheim Cup begins, what will your responsibility be on site? 

My focus shifts heavily towards the live marketing operation once tournament week begins. I’ll be overseeing our social and content delivery, leading a 12-person team, whilst supporting our partners, identifying emerging storylines and making sure we capture the atmosphere of the event – not just what’s happening inside the ropes.  It’s a balance between executing everything we’ve planned for months and being agile enough to react to the moments, stories and opportunities happening in real time. 

What’s one piece of work that you’re particularly proud of?  

I’m particularly proud of helping shape the marketing journey from ticket launch more than a year out through to tournament week. The challenge has been keeping the campaign moving and evolving over that entire period – using ticketing performance and audience insights to adjust our approach, while connecting content, social, CRM, paid media, creators and partner activity. Seeing those pieces now come together into one campaign, and knowing we’ve built both audience and momentum along the way, has been incredibly rewarding. 

The event brings together a number of IMG capability centers. What does effective collaboration look like in practice? 

For me, effective collaboration means everyone understanding the bigger objective rather than only focusing on their individual deliverable. There are so many teams contributing to an event like this – marketing, creative, digital, content, commercial, communications, ticketing, production and operations –  and the strongest work happens when those groups are communicating early and often. My role naturally touches a lot of those areas, so a big part of it is connecting people and making sure we’re working towards the same end result. 

What does a successful event look like from your perspective, beyond what fans see on the course? 

There are obviously the hard measures: attendance, ticket revenue, engagement, reach and partner delivery, but success is bigger than any one metric. I want fans to leave feeling like they were part of something special, partners to feel the event delivered real value, and our content to reach people who may never have previously engaged with the Solheim Cup.  

But ultimately, I think success is leaving the event in a stronger position than we found it – with a bigger audience, a stronger brand and more people wanting to come back. 

What do you think makes delivering a team event like the Solheim Cup different from other golf events? 

The emotion is completely different. Golf is such an individual sport, whereas the Solheim Cup gives fans a team, a captain, a flag and twelve players to get behind. That creates stories, rivalries and personalities that go far beyond individual performance. From a marketing perspective, you can lean into that emotion and encourage fans to participate rather than simply watch. The atmosphere and sense of belonging are a huge part of what makes the Solheim Cup special. 

What are you most looking forward to seeing come together when the Solheim Cup gets under way? 

Seeing Bernardus full of fans. We spend so much time looking at plans, schedules, creative, ticket numbers and content calendars that it can sometimes feel very far removed from the actual event. Seeing thousands of fans arrive, experience everything we’ve been building and create that Solheim Cup atmosphere will be the moment when all of the work becomes real. I’m especially excited to see the energy around the first tee – there really isn’t anything else quite like it in golf. 

Quickfire questions 

One thing you will always have with you during tournament week? 

Some type of camera, whether it is a phone, polaroid, or my Sony. 

The best part of working on a major live event? 

That moment when months of planning suddenly becomes real and thousands of people are experiencing something you helped create. 

If you could play a round with anyone, who would it be? 

Dottie Pepper. We’re both Furman University alumni, so I’d love the chance to play a round with her and hear about her experiences in the game, both as a player and now from the broadcast side.