Chad Coleman helped Dude Perfect grow into a digital giant. Now he's charged with growing interest and the audience for LPGA
· Yahoo Sports
Chad Coleman had just landed a job with the LPGA Tour, and he was a little apprehensive about telling his two young daughters. He would explain he was leaving his role at Dude Perfect, a sports and comedy group that gained popularity for family-friendly trick shots and competitions, and his girls, Ella-mae and Rivvy, liked their dad’s job.
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“It’s funny, because my 7-year-old had become a massive Dude Perfect fan and ironically just started golf camp in the last few months and is super into golf,” Coleman said of Ella-mae. “For about 10 minutes I lost some cool points when I told her I was leaving Dude Perfect, and when I told her I was joining the LPGA she lit up again and was super excited.
“It’s awesome being a girl dad and seeing my daughter and her love for the game starting to take shape and bringing her closer to the game and telling stories and getting her to see anything is possible if you work hard enough.”
Hired by the LPGA in late January, Coleman is the tour's new chief marketing officer, and he’s charged with telling those stories, building a social media following and luring more fans and viewership, among other things.
He has much in common with LPGA Tour commissioner Craig Kessler, who took the helm in July of last year. They both have energetic personalities, live in Texas—Kessler in Dallas and Coleman in the Frisco suburbs—and have experience in golf and other ventures. The two are tasked with ushering in a new era of the tour—a point emphasized in an ad that will debut Thursday on social media and in the broadcast of the first round of the Fortinet Founders Cup in Menlo Park, Calif.—the fifth tournament of the year, but the first in the U.S. since the season opener in late January. The video emphasizes the players’ talent, the drama they create, and the addition of new technology in telecasts, along with some glamour and fan engagement.
“I think we really wanted that ad spot to feel a little bit different. We wanted it to feel energetic and to really encapsulate everything that we're about this year and beyond,” Coleman said.
“That ties in the new broadcast enhancements, the storytelling we're doing both on the broadcast side and the social and content side, how we're telling our stories of our players and showcasing their personalities and how all that comes together. We feel like that was kind of a fun way to do it. It has a little bit different energy. And that's kind of what we were going for to kick off the year.”
Chad Coleman served in digitial leadership at Dude Perfect and Callaway. (Photo courtesy of LPGA)
According to the tour’s release on his hire, Coleman will lead global marketing, brand, communications, content, and fan-engagement strategy with a focus on accelerating audience growth, deepening relevance with younger fans, and elevating the visibility of the LPGA’s athletes and competitions worldwide.
Coleman worked at Callaway for eight years as its digital content chief and then helped build a massive following at Dude Perfect, which has more than 61 million YouTube subscribers. Can he do it at the LPGA, which seemingly has fallen behind other women’s sports and leagues in fan engagement. As one example, the WNBA’s Instagram account has 3.5 million followers; the LPGA has less than 25 percent of that—733,000.
“I spent my career helping organizations connect with audiences through content and storytelling,” Coleman told Golf Digest. “That's kind of the through-line of my career. Some of it was in golf, some of it at Dude Perfect, more of a global sports media company. But in both places, the goal was the same, which was to build the audience, deepen engagement, and to help drive the business.
“I have a very good understanding of what audiences actually care about, and then also delivering those stories in a way that feels natural to how they consume content. So that's something that I'm super excited to bring that expertise here to the LPGA.”
The 37-year-old Coleman didn’t know Kessler before he interviewed for the job, but he had followed his career. They had a call in December and played a round of golf together at Trinity Forest Golf Club (Kessler’s home course) in early January. Asked who is the better golfer, Coleman said: “My boss for sure. That's a political answer. And it's the real answer. He's a stick.”
In the initial release on Coleman’s hiring, Kessler said: “In our conversations—whether with athletes, brands, or people he has worked with throughout his career—the feedback has been overwhelmingly clear: Chad understands how to scale platforms, tell compelling stories, and connect with fans in authentic ways, especially younger audiences. As we continue to build momentum and invest in visibility and storytelling, Chad’s experience and creative instincts will be a tremendous asset to the LPGA.”
Coleman started his new gig in February, and beginning this week, he’s setting out on a seven-week road trip that includes April's Chevron Championship, the tour’s first major, in Houston. He’ll get to work on meeting players, sponsors, media and fans. His goals are set for this season.
“I tell our team, if we're creating really amazing content that actually breaks through, and that people want to engage with, and that people want to share with their friends, everything else will come as a by-product of that," Coleman said. "If we're doing that right, then our follower count will grow across our channels and our value to our commercial partners will grow and allow the commercial part of our business to scale up. There's a lot of downstream positive effects that will happen if we're doing our jobs right.”
Kessler already has implemented upgrades on tour, including the key development of every round of every tournament of the season being televised live for the first time in the 75-year history of the LPGA. The Golf Channel broadcasts themselves are receiving upgrades that include 50 percent more cameras, the Trackman shot tracing technology that has been seen on men’s tour broadcasts for years, and more walk-and-talk interviews. The advancements have been made possible, in part, through the financing of FM, a commercial property insurer.
“It's going to require a lot of manpower to deliver on the new kind of strategy that we're working on, in terms of daily and weekly storytelling on tour, and also how we're telling our player stories and how we're providing them content to share on their channels,” Coleman said. “It's certainly a lot of work. It's a big undertaking, and we're working on different ways to kind of scale up and down our production team to be able to support that.”
Telling interesting stories is one thing. Longevity and maintaining that interest in the long term is the real puzzle for the LPGA. The developmental Epson Tour will play a pivotal role in that quest, according to Coleman.
“One of the big things that I think you’re going to see is us start focusing a lot more on telling the stories of the younger players on the developmental tours,” Coleman said. “Identifying the top talent, the best storylines, and getting a head start on introducing those players to a wider audience is [key], so we're set up for success when they make it to the next level, and we're ready and able to capitalize on that.”
“Where my expertise lies is how do we find those stories and how do we tell them in compelling ways that resonate on those different channels in the way people are consuming content on those channels, which is frankly different on every platform.”
Coleman is bringing a different vibe to the LPGA. Time will tell if it resonates with LPGA’s stakeholders, and if it’s still cool with this girl dad’s children.