Case study 03 · Brand & channel strategy

NBA Social

Creating content at the speed of culture, with the big-brand rigor that backs up the community work.

LeLe Martin on the media row at State Farm Arena before an Atlanta Hawks game, laptops and the Hawks jumbotron behind her — Media row at State Farm Arena, posting live while the game is still going.

Executive brief

The problem: Two brand ecosystems, the Atlanta Hawks and league level NBA channels, needed content that moved at the speed of culture without losing brand voice or partner obligations.
What I owned: Game day and campaign publishing across the channels, brand voice under deadline, athlete and executive storytelling, and social performance reporting.
The strategy: Publish at the intersection of what the brand needs to say, what the audience already cares about, and what the channel rewards, then let the analytics decide what recurs.
What I built and led: Real time coverage across 82+ game days a season plus playoffs, campaign content with Marketing, Creative, PR and partnership stakeholders, and a Sprout Social reporting rhythm.
What changed: Consistent voice at brand scale, campaign content that partners could point to, and reporting that turned social from a feed into a decision tool.

What the work required

Real-time storytelling

Brand voice

Cultural fluency

Audience behavior

Talent and athlete storytelling

Channel-specific content

Cross-functional collaboration

Game-day and campaign content across Hawks and NBA channels: real-time publishing, brand voice under deadline, athlete stories with partners, creative and PR.

2: Brand ecosystems across Atlanta Hawks and league-level NBA channels
Daily: Content creation with the Marketing team, tracking trends and analytics
82+: Game days a season of real-time publishing, plus playoffs and campaigns
55: Hours in Sprout Social categorizing content and performance metrics

Inside the work

From the building

The history is on the wall. My job was getting that same voice onto the feed.

Instagram story graphic featuring Atlanta Hawks CEO Steve Koonin welcoming new hires to virtual onboarding — Onboarding content voiced by an exec, made while everything went virtual.

Atlanta Hawks tweet tracking Score for Scholarships donation totals, published through Sprout Social — #ScoreForScholarships totals went up right after every game.

For International Women’s Day we rebuilt the logo out of the women behind it.

Candace Parker quote-tweeting an Atlanta Hawks post about Trae Young deserving an All-Star spot — Posts that spoke the culture, so the league’s own voices replied.

Instagram story of live Hawks vs Kings game footage with the play-by-play scorebug — Cutting live game footage in real time while the play was still happening.

Instagram story showing the Hawks social team on a video call while publishing to Twitter during a game — The social room on a game night. Five platforms, one pair of hands.

“Working in professional sports taught me that the best brand strategy isn't simply about what a brand wants to say. It's the intersection between what the brand needs to communicate, what the audience cares about, and what makes sense for the channel.”

Why it matters

The same muscle behind having strong opinions on format, channel fit, and what's worth a busy professional's time.

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