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Gen-Z, Millennial Male Opps: Harlem Globetrotters taps new marketing VP amid significant digital display ad spend increase (Score 47)

Entertainment basketball league Harlem Globetrotters (HG) selected Sunni Hickman as its new marketing and sales VP in July. In her former role as Dollywood's marketing VP, Hickman was credited with the brand development and launch of the park's Great Pumpkin LumiNights event, which was dubbed USA Today's #1 Fall Event and yielded substantial admissions revenue growth. At HG, she will lead brand development, live event marketing and non-gate revenue verticals to better reach and connect with new and preexisting audiences.

HG is currently largely focused on rescheduling games from its 2020 live tour that were postponed due to the global pandemic. Current ticket holders will be the first to know when the company specifies new dates. Right now, it's largely promoting at-home activity guidelines led by athletes (example in video above).

According to iSpot, HG hasn't invested in national TV since spending around $136.8k in Q1 2019.

Adbeat estimates HG stopped placing digital display ads in April 2020, likely because of the pandemic. Before that point, though, spend was on a significant upward slope; out of the roughly $54.6k allocated toward this channel from August 2018-2020, 82% ($44.6k) was allocated from August 2019-2020. Most of the past year's spend went toward programmatic ads placed via Google DV360 ($36.7k) onto sites such as classmates.com ($4k), ebay.com, tripadvisor.com, accuweather.com and xfinity.com.

A new marketing specialist will likely lead the company to return to the aforementioned channels, especially once the coronavirus dies down. HG's target demographic traditionally consists primarily of male sports enthusiasts, and its severely increased digital display ad spend leads us to believe it's especially trying to reach Gen-Z and millennials. To do so, it may utilize additional digital channels such as paid search and/or OTT. Kantar data reports HG also uses OOH, print (English and Spanish newspapers), radio and local broadcast.

Agency & martech readers - Marketing hires often lead to agency reviews, so get on Hickman's radar for potential work sooner than later. To the best of our knowledge, your competition includes an in-house media team along with Coyne (PR assistance).