Die-Hard 76ers Fan Lands Job with Team After Launching Clever Twitter Campaign

Jerry Rizzo’s love for the Philadelphia 76ers is paying off. Literally.

The 23-year-old got a job working in social media with the team after he and a friend took to Twitter to help the franchise reach out to fans as part of a contest to help choose a new mascot.

Rizzo and his buddy, Hunter Coleman, created Twitter accounts for some of the finalists to help promote them. The men were behind accounts for two finalists, @PhilEMoose and @BFranklinDogg. Rizzo and Coleman began sending out tweets in the hopes of generating fan interest. For their efforts, they were rewarded with box seats to the 76ers’ home opener and season tickets as part of an exchange with the team.

That was only the beginning for Rizzo, though. He was also given a full-time social media position with the team. The “social media sponge,” as he calls himself, got the offer after speaking with Sixers’ CEO Adam Aron about his professional experience and love for the team. Rizzo called it “a dream job for me.”

Aron was impressed with Rizzo’s initiative:

“Jerry impressed us not just with his clever Twitter campaign, but he had also created a website that was just loaded with content that demonstrated his creativity and drive and that he is a good writer and knowledgeable about social media,” Aron said. “He did online what people have done in job-searching efforts for decades — put his best foot forward and demonstrated what he can bring to an employer.”

[Mashable]