Chad Coleman has given social media a lot of thought — which is saying something for an environment prone to thoughtlessness. Since taking flight as Callaway Golf’s social media manager in 2012, Coleman — a 2011 graduate of the University of Arkansas — has been one of Golf Twitter’s most prominent voices. But his work has extended well beyond the art of mastering 280 characters: he was a frequent podcast guest, video personality — hell, he even caddied on the Web.com Tour — and all the while, a tireless advocate for an equipment company that enjoyed a rebirth during his tenure. In late 2019, Coleman left Callaway to join Dude Perfect as the group’s digital mastermind in Dallas, Texas.
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LYING FOUR: So here’s the most important question — what is the state of Arkansas Razorbacks football nation? Where are people on Sam Pittman?
CHAD COLEMAN: It’s kind of crazy, right? Because of Kiffin and Mike Leach getting hired in the SEC, we’re kind of the odd man out, in the sense of having a head coach with head coaching experience. At first, it kind of caught me off guard, but the more I read into it and did some research — it sounds like he’s a good guy, and it sounds like he could be a really good fit. And it sounds like people are pretty fired up for him. He has a lot of respect. But it was the same with Chad Morris, right? People were fired up; he was supposed to be good, and it was one of those things where nobody really knew what to expect. So we’re trying to convince ourselves that maybe this is good, and maybe it will be. But there’s just a lot of uncertainty. There’s just a lot of uncertainty right now.
LYING FOUR: I read a story that mentioned you started a social media account for a froyo store while you were still in college. The thing that you said in that interview that impressed me was that you didn’t say it would be good for the business — you said it would be good for brand loyalty. You seemed to be saying that social media might not directly affect the bottom line, but that it could affect the bottom line indirectly. I thought that was really insightful.
CHAD COLEMAN: Ah yes, the Great Fayetteville Froyo Wars of 2010-2011. It was kind of funny. I started working at this local frozen yogurt shop, and this was back when self-serve frozen yogurt was booming. The first one was kind of right on campus, right on Dickson Street. So I got a part-time job there, schlepping yogurt; it was right next to our fraternity house. Eventually, the general manager quit, and the guy that owned the place lived in Tulsa. And he said, “Hey, do you want to be the general manager? We really like what you do,” and he couldn’t be there all the time. So I was like, “Sure. I’m still taking full-time classes and trying to graduate, and I have zero experience managing a restaurant of any sort — but sure, I’ll give it a go.” The paycheck sounded nice. So basically I didn’t have a senior year, because I was either studying, going to class, or working until midnight there. But it was a good learning experience, because we were open for a few months, and then a TCBY or something started to build on campus. So I sent him an e-mail one day, and I said, “Hey, what do you think about getting on social and doing some promos?” We had a lot of loyal students that had come to us for a long time, because we were the only one on campus. I thought we needed to do this to keep that loyalty whenever this new shop opened up. And the owner didn’t really understand social media at all, but he said, “Sure, go with it. Do what you want.” That was kind of a cool learning experience — obviously on a smaller scale, but it gave me the ability to try things: run campaigns, see what worked, see what didn’t. And that’s kind of when I really felt the power of what social could do for a brand, a restaurant, or whatever it may be. That’s when I started going down that path, realizing that I had some sense of what works and what doesn’t. And obviously I’ve been a golfer my whole life. So the ideal route for me was to get into the golf industry, doing that in some capacity.
LYING FOUR: I was listening to a podcast where you talked about how you got to Callaway, and that it was part of their effort to bring social media in-house at a time where companies were only starting to see the value of that. And now, I don’t know if there’s anyone in golf who does social media as well as Callaway does — certainly not on the equipment side. What was it about Callaway’s corporate culture that allowed that to take off?
CHAD COLEMAN: The biggest reason was the freedom. From Day 1 at Callaway, I had a lot of freedom to run with it and do what I wanted. Part of that was due to the leadership at that time not knowing what they needed or wanted anyway. This was a brand new thing for them. Social media was a brand new thing for the company; this was the first position for it in the company. They trusted me from the beginning: “This is your baby. Do what you want with it, just don’t screw up.” Having that kind of freedom to just run with it, and not having to get posts approved by three people before I post them, or to get concepts approved — that kind of hand-holding ties a lot of people down, or at least did in that day. And that allowed us to be quick, nimble; it allowed us to experiment. A lot of things didn’t work, a lot of things did work, but a lot of it was really bad and some of it was good. So if it was bad — no worries, just move on to the next thing. We were able to be experimental. That was the main thing: at that time, for a company of Callaway’s size, for them to be pretty hands-off — if you think about it, any post I put on any social channel was basically speaking on behalf of the company. It’s a big burden. And I credit a lot of that to Harry Arnett, who was kind of my force field, if you will, in the sense that he gave me that freedom and nobody really questioned it. When you’re in that kind of environment, the creativity starts to flow; the ideas start to come, and you can try some things to see what works and what doesn’t, and then do more of what works and less of what doesn’t. From there, it just kind of blossomed.
LYING FOUR: Did you ever watch Mad Men?
CHAD COLEMAN: Oh yeah, absolutely.
LYING FOUR: The season finale of Season 1 is where Don makes his pitch to Kodak, and he talks about advertising creating a bond between a customer and a product. In my golf bag, probably 95 percent of my equipment is Callaway. And this sounds ridiculous, but I think you could draw a line connecting Callaway’s social media and that equipment being in my bag. It wouldn’t be a straight line, but it would be a line.
CHAD COLEMAN: That’s how we realized social for Callaway was so important back in 2012, when I started. At that time, Callaway was seen as your grandpa’s brand; it was not seen as the brand that was innovative and for the best players and for elite amateurs, that kind of thing — it was more game improvement; “your grandpa plays this.” Harry and I came in at the same time, and we saw that we needed to change that stigma. We had the biggest R&D team in golf, and we made amazing products for players of every skill level, but that’s not how we were seen. And so we realized that social was going to be the quickest way to change some of those perceptions. That’s why we took such an aggressive approach to that. And I think you see the trickle-down effects of that: not only did our entire social media content strategy change in 2012, but our products started getting better. And when you have really good products to back up what you’re doing from a marketing and social perspective, that makes our jobs a lot easier. That was another part of this: we were trying to change the perception of Callaway, to make it seem cool and relevant — basically socially acceptable to play again. And if we got to that point where people would consider Callaway when they walked into a golf shop and tried out a new driver, we were confident that we were gonna win nine times out of 10 in the hitting bay.
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LYING FOUR: Let me ask you about No Laying Up. I am insane about those guys.
CHAD COLEMAN: Same.
LYING FOUR: Fifty years from now, when people are writing college textbooks about sports journalism in the early Twenty-First Century, I think those textbooks will have a chapter about No Laying Up. They’ve broken molds in two industries that defy mold-breaking — golf and journalism — and they’ve done it over and over. On your last day at Callaway, they tweeted that you came to them in 2017 with this idea of going big. What was your idea, and how did you get Callaway and No Laying Up on board with that?
CHAD COLEMAN: A lot of the credit is due to those guys. We were big fans of what they were doing from the very beginning. They just had a way of communicating with golfers that was authentic — and it was young, but for the most part it was just authentic. It was totally different from any of the golf media coverage that you were accustomed to seeing. And we wanted to be associated with that in some way. So when we came to them, the idea was, “Hey, the last thing that we want to do is to make whatever we do seem forced, or to make it seem like we’re just buying ads.” We wanted it to seem like our content was integrated; we wanted it to showcase the personalities at Callaway, because we had a lot to show there. And we thought that was a big part of our culture: the people behind the brand, and we wanted people to get to know us on that personal level too. So we came to this idea of sponsoring the podcast, because that was the biggest vehicle for awareness for us, because that’s where they got the most listens. But we said, “Let’s think about how we do podcast reads in a different way. Let’s try not to make it such an abrupt break, where it’s just an over-the-top sales read for a product. Let’s try to make it more where you guys are sharing your experiences with the product, and make it more conversational.” And we were doing original, branded content with them. We were inviting them out to our ad shoots, and letting them come up with three or four quick-hitter concepts that they could execute with our players; we’d fly them out, provide them with access to our players, and we let them create the content that they’d want to create with any player. And then we try to mould the two, and make sure it’s fun and entertaining. Then it’s the best of both worlds: we’re both getting something out of it. That’s kind of what led me going on the season of Tourist Sauce in Ireland: “Hey, let’s not just slap a Callaway logo at the beginning of these episodes and call it a day. Let’s try to showcase the personalities at Callaway.” So having me there as the Callaway representative was a good and natural way to work in some product and make people feel a little bit closer to the brand than just putting on our logo and saying, “Presented by Callaway.” So that was the overarching idea: “How do we make a partnership together that helps No Laying Up maintain their authenticity in the golf space?” And I think we did a pretty good job of that.
LYING FOUR: That’s the genius of that partnership, from my point of view. No Laying Up’s strength is its authenticity. And in order for Callaway to get the most out of that partnership, it consciously had to keep No Laying Up at arm’s length. Because if it was a full-on embrace, then that could cost No Laying Up its authenticity, which was the thing that was most valuable to Callaway. That’s a delicate balance, but for the most part, I think it’s been pulled off.
CHAD COLEMAN: And I told them from the very beginning, “Listen. I know the golf OEM landscape, and you’re not gonna find another equipment partner that is willing to work with you guys in this regard.” Any other company would have been like, “No, you’re reading this advertisement exactly how we want it, and that’s how it’s going to be,” whereas we were the only ones that would provide that level of freedom in the sense of, “Let’s not make everything an over-the-top ad read. Let’s help people feel like we’re family and not just sponsors.” That’s a big risk to take from a brand perspective, too. We invested heavily in them, and we wanted it to get in front of their audience in a natural way, and we were fully on board with doing that in any way that we needed. We were the ones who were willing to take that risk, and in the end, we could say that it absolutely paid off. We had probably three years by the time I left, and it was just getting better and better each year. It was definitely a success.
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LYING FOUR: Let me ask you about Dude Perfect. Before you went to work with them, I was aware that this is a thing, but I wasn’t aware of what a huge thing it is.
CHAD COLEMAN: Oh my gosh, me neither.
LYING FOUR: So for all the middle-aged dads at home, what is Dude Perfect?
CHAD COLEMAN: It’s kind of difficult to explain. I worked with Dude Perfect at Callaway. I had an idea back in 2015 to do a golf trick-shots video with them and Jamie Sadlowski — like, long-drive trick shots. That was the first time we worked with them, and we ended up doing another video with them as well. So I had kind of kept up with them over time, and we loved what they did. They had a massive audience, and we wanted to do something different in the golf space. There’s just so much “sameness” in golf equipment marketing, so the essence of pretty much every decision we made was, “How can we do this differently?” So we partnered with them, and I’d kind of kept in touch with them over the years. I knew they had a huge audience, obviously; we’re closing in on 50 million YouTube subscribers, 10 million Instagram followers, 18 million Facebook fans, 3 million followers on TikTok. It’s blowing up. So I knew that the numbers were there, and I knew they were resonating and had a big fan base, but it wasn’t until I got here that I realized just how crazy it is. Every other day when I walk out of work, there’s a kid out there with his dad, taking a picture of the sign out in front of the office. The other day, this dad and his son drove from south of Waco, all the way up just to take a picture in front of the sign. It’s insane. They have a massive, massive cult following — obviously a younger demographic. They started off doing basketball trick shots, and what really made me want to join the team was that when I got to talking to them, I understood that these are really smart business guys. They didn’t just luck their way into this. You can’t build the empire they have just by luck. There’s a lot of those trick-shot people out there, and they were one of the first to do it, but the fact that they were able to figure out a business model and how to sustain that and how to break into other categories — now we’re doing live shows, a summer tour, selling out arenas, and we’re doing another one this summer and probably Europe next summer. They’re really smart at finding ways to stick to what they’re good at, but also find new avenues for how they can be entertainers in the sports space.
LYING FOUR: This has got to be the exact opposite of what you walked into at Callaway. Callaway was a company that had been around for decades, but its identity on social media was still in its genesis, with relatively few followers; on the other hand, Dude Perfect is a relatively new creation, but with a massive Internet presence.
CHAD COLEMAN: That’s a really good point. In a sense, they’re opposites.
LYING FOUR: With that in mind, how are the challenges different working with Dude Perfect, as opposed to when you started at Callaway?
CHAD COLEMAN: It’s totally different, because they already have this established, massive audience. The crazy thing is that Cody Jones — the tall guy — he’s been managing all Dude Perfect social media since Day 1 as his side gig. It’s still such a small team here: it’s five guys, a couple of video editors, and now me, basically. It’s crazy how tight they’ve kept it. But Cody has amassed this huge following on all social channels, just by throwing stuff out in his spare time. There really hasn’t even been a strategy behind it. That was one of the most appealing things to me, when I learned that: “Holy cow, imagine how big this could be if there was a full-time resource dedicated to thinking of what the content strategy was for each channel, and how we engage the fans differently on each channel, and creating custom content for that.” They just didn’t have time for it. Cody was just kind of winging it, and he was doing a great job. But it’s crazy how they’re so huge, and they haven’t even really put a ton of time into it. So that was one of the most attractive things. It was another one of those environments where they were like, “Look, we know what you do. We want you to come join our team, because of that. And we’re not gonna hold your hand or breathe down your back. From Day 1, we’re gonna give you the passwords and trust you to do your thing.” And that was another thing that was really appealing to me: having that freedom that I’m used to. That really allows me to thrive. It just made all the sense in the world.
LYING FOUR: So what does growth look like for a group that has 10 million Instagram followers and nearly 50 million YouTube subscribers? Is it more followers, or is it something else?
CHAD COLEMAN: It’s definitely more followers, but also more engagement and finding ways to engage differently on each channel. So, as opposed to just repurposing trick shots and using them everywhere, how do we actually have an identity on TikTok, and how do we have an identity on Instagram? And if people are following us on all these different channels, we want them to have a different experience and not just see the same thing everywhere. That’s the first thing: a little bit of housecleaning, in terms of coming up with a structure for how we’re going to engage on these channels — what’s our voice going to be, and how do we get the most out of it? Obviously, YouTube is our baby; that’s our bread and butter. We launch a video every other Monday. But how do we showcase more of the personalities from the guys? Whether it’s behind the scenes, shooting videos — we do a lot of traveling, and there’s this whole world that is really untapped in the social space, just because they haven’t had the resources.
LYING FOUR: It really is kind of amazing — 50 million YouTube subscribers, and this guy is just doing it in his spare time.
CHAD COLEMAN: Yeah! It’s a totally different world, because the fanbase is world. With a little bit of structure around it, the possibilities are endless. I just posted a video on Instagram right before we got on this call, 30 minutes ago — and it already has 100,000 views.
LYING FOUR: Good grief.
CHAD COLEMAN: The audience is there. That was kind of mind-blowing to me: I built Callaway’s audience from the ground up with a lot of blood, sweat, and tears, going into an Instagram account that had 700,000 followers when I left. And I was really proud of that. Then, all of a sudden, I inherit a 10-million-follower Instagram account, and 18 million on Facebook and all these other things. It’s totally a whole different beast.
All images: credit No Laying Up
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