At the Ford Championship in March, Lydia Ko was 10-under par through 15 holes with a chance to become the second player in LPGA history to shoot a 59. History was happening, but the tour did not let anyone know about it.
Golf Channel’s afternoon coverage had not started yet, and the tour had not posted about Ko’s round on social media. Beth Ann Nichols, the most prominent reporter in women’s golf over the last two decades, eviscerated the tour with a scathing post on X for its lack of coverage. “It has to get better and not by inches … by miles,” she wrote.
About 30 minutes later, another well-known golf voice replied to Nichols’ post. It wasn’t a player, agent or media member. It was the LPGA’s new chief marketing officer.
“That’s fair! We will get better,” wrote Chad Coleman, or as he’s better known in golf circles, @HashtagChad.
The sequence of events sums up where the tour has been, but also where it’s trying to go under the new leadership of Coleman and Craig Kessler, the LPGA commissioner who is still less than a year into the job.
The tour has big names and plays a truly global schedule, but outside of purse increases, it hasn’t ridden the women’s sports tsunami that other leagues have capitalized on over the last five years. This week, Coleman tackles his first major at the LPGA with the Chevron Championship in Texas.
“The opportunity we have really comes down to two things: It’s content and connection,” said Coleman, who started in the role in January. “In the kind of attention economy of today, it’s more important than ever that we’re telling our stories in a very effective way ,because there’s a lot of clutter out there and it’s a very busy ecosystem.”
Perfect fit
Before joining the LPGA, Coleman spent six years building the brand for one of the largest, most popular entertainment properties in the world: Dude Perfect.
Coby Cotton, one of the co-founders of Dude Perfect, said Coleman was initially hired to run the company’s social feeds, but his role quickly grew into managing its brand partnerships.
“Chad did an exceptionally good job of showing our partners that Dude Perfect cared about them and that we didn’t want these to just be one-off moments, but we wanted to build a relationship that lasted for years,” Cotton said. “Personality-wise and skill set-wise, he was just really excellent at that.”
Coleman, who spent eight years at Callaway Golf prior to his stint at Dude Perfect, always kept his eye on the LPGA.
“Being kind of outside of the industry, my perspective was that I really wanted to root for the LPGA, and I think a lot of people probably carry this opinion,” Coleman said. “I just think that we haven’t been given many reasons to in the past. And what I mean by that is effective storytelling in modernized ways, showcasing the personalities, giving stories and players to root for.”
Kessler has talked at length about his four pillars to success, one of them being player storytelling. Just this year, the tour added more in-round player interviews and enhanced its broadcasts in other ways via drones, increased shot tracing and more.
“As I jumped into this role and thought of the ideal profile for a CMO, we needed someone who was an outside-the-box thinker and would challenge the status quo,” Kessler said. “Chad brings a very discerning eye when it comes to content that is culturally relevant versus content that isn’t. He’s got a super clear vision on how to take our content vision to the next level.”
‘Dynamic’ storytelling
Kessler and Coleman had to navigate a big challenge in the first week of the season. The LPGA decided not to play the final round of its season-opening Hilton Grand Vacations Tournament of Champions in Orlando due to what it called unplayable conditions, though it still allowed the pro-am portion of the event to continue.
The reaction from fans and observers was swift and negative, with many feeling the tournament could have resumed.
The following week was Coleman’s first on the job, and the LPGA went on the offensive. Kessler conducted a series of media interviews to explain the decision, admitting the tour wasn’t prepared for the scenario it faced. The transparency was a marked change for the LPGA.
“Fans will have a direct pipeline to Chad, and I think that’s a great thing for that tour,” said Harry Arnett, the former CMO of Callaway Golf. “Because can anyone even name the CMO of the PGA Tour? Can anybody even name the CMO of the NBA?”
Arnett and Coleman had virtually the same stint at Callaway Golf. When Arnett arrived in 2012, the charge from CEO Chip Brewer was to change how the brand was viewed among golf’s original equipment manufacturers. “Get us in the lead in terms of how we are viewed in a traditional sense,” Arnett said.
Coleman wasn’t afraid to mix things up and try something different, according to Arnett, who recalled a shoot with longtime ambassador Phil Mickelson in which Coleman was laying on his stomach recording content, just inches away from Mickelson bombing away with a driver.
“It just represented so much of what I wanted to have as a culture — you got to be nose-to-nose with it,” Arnett said. “We really relied on him to help us think through … digital storytelling, fast, rapid production, deeper narratives, and then embedded journalism; sort of, how would that work in our favor so that we could be the most engaged, dynamic, prolific storytellers there were in golf?”
At the LPGA, all Coleman sees is the chance to take a brand to new heights.
“It feels like we are really getting to a point where this thing is going to be the next breakout property,” Coleman said. “Since I’ve started here, all I see is opportunity. And I’m not just saying that. I truly believe it. It was one of the things that really attracted me to this role in the first place — it was immediately obvious to me the opportunity that was there for the taking for us.”
