Event Recap: Love & Basketball with Deeshyra Thomas

This blog originally appeared on the ProStories blog

Note from Tyler: So grateful to Deeshyra Thomas for opening up and sharing her story as a hooper, but more importantly a mother with a mission.

Experiential marketing events aren’t just special for athletes and brands, they’re also crucial opportunities to bring communities together to create real impact.

Recently we hosted an event called Love & Basketball, featuring DBBL finals MVP Deeshyra Thomas of Alba Berlin, Lululemon and local basketball brand Comrade-Berlin. Our goal was to bring awareness to Deeshyra’s journey as an athlete and a new mother, while also giving our brand partners an opportunity to align with a powerful story.

Here are some of the event takeaways that we’re excited to continue to explore.

Blending community pillars

One of the highlights from the event was meeting Robert, an Alba Berlin season ticket holder whose daughters love basketball and look up to Deeshyra. He told us how special it was to learn about Deeshyra’s interests and passions beyond what is typically seen at games or team-organized meet-and-greets.

Through our digital activation, he was able to support Deeshyra’s foundation, learn more about the brand partners that Deeshyra spoke highly of, and share event content with his friends and family.

Cultivating a new type of fan experience—one that goes beyond the team and a surface-level familiarity of the player—is possible with events that focus on community building, not just reach and engagement.

Unlocking real brand awareness

Most athlete influencer campaigns are produced and published in a vacuum. Brand sends athlete a product, athlete creates content with the product, brand publishes the campaign. There is no real-time or in-person element that brings the audience into the world. 

The story and connection of experiential marketing events aren’t just feel-good experiences, they’re also powerful assets for brands who want to make a lasting impression. It’s part of the reason why so many performance marketers are shifting their priorities to brand building.

For our primary sponsor Lululemon, Love & Basketball offered a unique way to activate fans. Seeing Deeshyra’s Lululemon outfit not only drove traffic to Lululemon’s products, it also reinforced Lululemon’s commitment to supporting athletes both on and off the field.

Especially if you’re a company that doesn’t have a large brand-only budget, you can tap into local communities and create experiences rather than trying to make someone feel you through their phone. This was also the case for our other Love & Basketball brand partner, Comrade-Berlin.

Our audience got to see the ball’s quality, take part in a raffle, and explore their products through the ProStories app.

By creating a natural mesh between the brands, the location, the city, the people, and the message, it became more than selling or entertainment, it was about creating a lasting impression.

Stronger base for longer term impact

Undoubtedly the event’s most powerful moments were Deeshyra holding her newborn Skye on stage, talking about how every parent should experience joy with their newborn—no matter if their child has special needs or not—rather than be conditioned into fear.

We talked about the initiatives and businesses that Deeshyra wanted to start, already starting to plan and tap into a network of people who are interested in her as an entrepreneur and member of the community, not just a player for Alba Berlin.

In some way, these moments are possible using only digital platforms, but the feeling and emotion felt by the people in attendance (many of whom took action in donating to the foundation that Deeshyra shared) is hard to replicate.

There’s really nothing like meeting athletes. It could be because they’re super-human in height, build or look, or the exact opposite—being so unassuming and “normal” that it’s almost surreal knowing that they are a world-class killer on the court.

While communities can be purely digital and global, there is something about being in the same room as other people with the same values that bring you together. It’s the reason why sporting events are so powerful. And it’s the same for athlete marketing. We’re excited to continue building impactful moments like this for communities around the world.

Check out the event recap below!