Tony Hawk's #HawkHunt Creative Social Media Scavenger Hunt

Yesterday professional skateboarding legend Tony Hawk unleashed an amazing display of social media authority. The guy who landed the first 900 degree spin in a vert ramp. He is also known for the THPS (Tony Hawk Pro Skater) video game series amoung many other accomplishments that have lead to him becoming very well know worldwide. Personally, I am a huge fan of Tony Hawk because of his roots with the Bones Brigade which you can learn all about in their new documentary. Because I follow Tony Hawk on twitter, vine & Instagram I found out about his #HawkHunt event that went down Sunday, April 7th 2013. I want to highlight the event and outline the basic social media strategy that was used for the scavenger hunt style event.

What Went Down at the #HawkHunt

The event took place all over the world through the use of Social Media driven by Tony and a small team of assistants. Boxes marked up with #HAWKHUNT hashtags were hidden all over the world filled with cool items and collectables from Tony himself and the sponsors of the event. Then, scavenger hunt style, clues would be given through Tony Hawks personal twitter, instagram & vine accounts broadcasting prize location hints. Tony used a simple wordpress landing page on Tony’s personal website to promote the event. There was also another wordpress mobile friendly site, www.hawkhuntupdates.com, used to list the clues about where the boxes are placed.

Importance of a User Base and Being an Influential Figure

At the time of writing this Tony Hawk has 3.4 million twitter followers and 600,000 followers on instagram. That obviously helped make this event a success all over the world. If you wanted to try to do a social media event like this one you might need to keep it a little more local to where you are at, unless you are as well known as the birdman.

Success of the Event

Seeing as none of the boxes got picked up by airport security and Tony Hawk is not in jail for suspicious activity I would say it was a success. Tony did get a few upset people complaining about him ‘blowing up their feed’ but on the event page he lets his followers know they are just one click away from unfollowing him for the day. It’s worth mentioning Tony and his team did a great job of setting up the rules and guidelines of the contest to proactively prevent problems which was very smart of them. One particular rule stood out which shows how you can have fun with this type of contest:

BE SAFE: don’t speed, trespass or play Frogger in traffic. Also, don’t run with scissors.

Reach of the Event

A lot of people know Tony Hawk. In turn, Tony Hawk knows a lot of people. Not only was he able to reach his followers with this event but also the followers of all the sponsors which greatly multiplies the reach of the event. In the photo to the right you can see all the contributors and it becomes obvious this event was very well supported. One particular sponsor on the image that caught my attention was Mullet on the Go which you should probably check out. On a more serious note one logo you don’t see on that image is that of the Tony Hawk Foundation which is worth an honorable mention.

I hope to see more creative uses of Social Media in the marketing arena in the days, months and years ahead. Surely it will be the case and this was only a great example of what’s to come. Thank you Tony Hawk for hooking up all your followers and putting on an awesome display as usual.