Author: Yaniv Masjedi / Source: Entrepreneur If you found yourself near Atlanta’s Philip’s Arena in early January 2015, you likely would
If you found yourself near Atlanta’s Philip’s Arena in early January 2015, you likely would have seen crowds of people, dressed up (by basketball game standards), pouring into the stadium, staring at their phones.
They were all on Tinder.
Yep, Tinder. As a wildly unorthodox — but no doubt genius — marketing exercise, the NBA’s Atlanta Hawks hosted its first “Swipe Right Night,” inviting Tinder users to meet up at the game. The event was such a success that they did it again in March 2016; participants shared photos on social media and the event made news nationwide.
Behind this idea and many other innovative, out-of-the-box marketing strategies was Melissa Proctor, CMO for the Hawks. Proctor and her marketing team have employed fresh thinking to attract the attention of the Atlanta public and it has paid off. In August, the Hawks released its schedule on Twitter using only emojis.
Proctor’s creative thinking has resulted in increased excitement around the Hawks. I sat down with her between strategy sessions and speaking engagements (her next appearance will be at business conference NextCon) to discuss how she determines her target audience and the best advice she’s received.
With so many NBA teams vying for fans and ticket sales, how do you compete?
In my mind, when others zig, we zag. I don’t really think of other teams as our only competition. Our competition is anything that can entertain you, which could be a Netflix show, the nearest restaurant, a fashion show — basically anything happening within Atlanta is competition from an entertainment standpoint. We are…
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