Summertime by George!

Summer Concert Series | Nonprofit

Summertime by George! is an annual weekly summer concert series created and hosted by the Rotary Club of St. Cloud. Founded in 2010 with a mission to bring the community together at a free, family-friendly event to enjoy live music, tantalizing food & drinks, and the company of each other. This beloved community event serves an average of 8-10,000 guests every Wednesday during the summer.

Role

Marketing Strategy | Planning | Creative Direction | Media Purchasing & Placement | Website Design & Development | Copywriting & Editing | Photography | Social Media

Goals

  • Clearly communicate and set community expectations,
  • Maintain audience attendance, and
  • Raise funds through beer garden sales and other purchases.

I worked closed with the volunteer organization to create, execute, and monitor comprehensive marketing strategies successfully reaching their goals.

Expert Coordination With Meticulous Attention-to-Detail

Along with a completely custom theme development, each year required the highest level of attention to detail and organization ensuring 20+ bands and 25+ sponsors were recognized accurately, consistently, and as expected across multiple forms of media.

Media Planning, Buying, & Art Direction

With strategy at the forefront and continuity of brand experience integrated throughout every touchpoint, each year a comprehensive marketing plan was developed. This plan included media negotiations and direction including:

  • Billboards,
  • Radio advertisements,
  • Dynamic digital advertisements,
  • Social media,
  • and more!

Integrated Brand Campaign

Each season the brand campaign is carried through multiple forms of media, advertisements, and cross-functional platforms. This is a particularly exciting challenge ensuring the brand was represented consistently and well across all platforms.

For example, the annual theme design was applied to three different shirt colors for event guests and volunteers. Coordinating this effort required a keen eye for detail and clear, consistent communication.

Dynamic & Responsive Website Design

Along with a refreshing and exciting rebrand in 2021 celebrating the event’s 10th season, a full redesign and development of the website was launched. This website was inspired by the bright and enigmatic energy felt at each concert event bringing the community together.

Mindful of a seamless and inviting user experience, each page was carefully designed to guide users through all the information they want to know about the upcoming season.

To further highlight the community and those who enjoy these concerts year after year, the design was carefully constructed using event photography and no stock imagery.

This fully customized website incorporated:

  • illustrations,
  • graphics,
  • photography,
  • navigation for lineup pages,
  • and copywriting.

You won’t find anything canned or copy+pasted here!