When Tricia Melton ran marketing for TBS, she spearheaded a campaign for the off-network debut of HBO’s Sex and the City that included a multi-choice question: “What is a ‘yogasm?’ (a) a type of yo-yo trick, (b) sex with Yogi Berra or (c) what Samantha has with a guy from yoga class.”
When Berra, then 79, saw that ad splashed across New York City buses and billboards, he promptly filed a defamation lawsuit against TBS. But such is Melton’s charm that it didn’t even phase her then-CEO and boss, Steve Koonin.
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“We were sued for 10 million bucks and I still loved her,” said Koonin, now CEO of the NBA’s Atlanta Hawks. “Tricia is all about passion. She’s incredibly bold and takes risks, but they are smart risks. She is somebody who tries to find the knockout punch. She doesn’t want to play around the margins.”
Since then, Melton has gone on to oversee such campaigns as Freeform’s “A Little Forward,” TCM’s “Where Then Meets Now” and Cartoon Network’s “Redraw Your World.”
People really have to believe you when you say that nothing punitive is going to happen if you pitch crazy moonshot ideas.”
Tricia Melton
“She’s a tireless advocate for great ideas,” Linda Ong, CEO and founder of cultural consultancy Cultique, said. Ong first met Melton when Melton was a young marketer at New York-based Channel One Networks and then hired her at Oxygen, which was just starting up. “She is really tough in the best way possible,” Ong said. “There’s no ego involved in it for her — she’s really about the work and the people involved.”
After Oxygen, Melton moved to another female-focused network, Lifetime, and then on to TNT, TBS and Turner Classic Movies, where she was senior VP, entertainment marketing and branding from 2003-2014.
After a brief stint running her own consulting company, she joined Freeform in May 2017 as senior VP of marketing, creative and brand.
“What I found with her at Freeform was that she’s an amazing blend of strategic and creative mind, and that’s a rare blend,” said Tom Ascheim, who until recently was CEO of Warner Bros. Discovery’s Kids, Young Adult and Classics group. At the time he was president of Disney’s Freeform. “When we were building the Freeform brand, we needed to inject some emotional energy to lift people and the organization and help them believe. She’s a great co-pilot in belief — helping people to see the vision and making them laugh along the way.”
At Freeform, Melton rebranded the network with its “A Little Forward” campaign and gave the brand a strong voice on social media. “She’s an early embracer of new technologies and not just trying them out, but mastering them,” Ong said. “Freeform’s voice was created on social. That was her leadership.”
When Ascheim left Freeform in 2020 to go to WarnerMedia (now Warner Bros. Discovery), he brought Melton with him. “Tricia is fierce and funny, which are two really good qualities when you are trying to get people from here to there,” Ascheim said. “She’s keenly smart but with an incredible sense of humor.”
Favoring the Bold
While Melton is known for backing bold campaigns, it’s her backing of bold people that really sets her apart. “She’s truly able to get the best out of people and develop them as leaders,” Koonin said.
But she also sticks by her word: “People really have to believe you when you say that nothing punitive is going to happen if you pitch crazy moonshot ideas.” And when Melton says “moonshot,” she means that literally. For the fifth-season premiere last summer of Adult Swim’s cult animated hit Rick & Morty, Melton and her team launched a model of Rick’s space cruiser 150,000 feet into the air, complete with an iPad that played the first episode from space.
“I’m like a kid in a candy store,” Melton said. “I am privileged to have some of the most iconic brands and characters to work with, an amazing abundance of incredible [intellectual property], and franchises with more than 100 years of history. The fun part is we get to constantly find ways to make these legendary franchises relevant for totally new audiences.” ▪️
