Social Media work while at Pandora Media Inc., 2015 - 2018
Tasked with the job of producing a shoot with members of rap group A$AP Mob to promote their new mixtape, ‘Cozy Tapes Vol.2: Too Cozy,’ I came up with the concept “Getting Cozy with A$AP Mob.” The artists would sit in a cozy environment and tell us about things that made them feel cozy. This was shot with a one day lead, thrown together in the office.
This concept and video performed so well it scored an 8/10 on the ad relevance scale on facebook. A typical score for a Pandora video is in the 3-6 range. Because of its success, this video kicked off a movement in both creative and marketing to build campaigns around short, creative social videos with artists, and was the impetus for a broader discussion on templetizing a suite of concepts we could plug and play with artists.
EXAMPLE LINKS:
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/p/BYWc39nD63f/?hl=en&taken-by=pandora
Twitter: https://twitter.com/pandoramusic/status/902260757462564864/video/1
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Pandora/videos/10154903841916344/
Pandora at SXSW is Pandora’s biggest music event of the year. In 2017 we had four days of music with an audio livestream of all performances. I created and led the entire social strategy from RSVP to post show, overseeing assets from our photography, video, graphic design and social team.
The brand goal of SXSW is to drive brand perception, remind listeners that Pandora is their go to destination for new and emerging artists, and induce FOMO for those who aren’t there. Posting on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube or Snapchat for each of our 30+ artists with my custom copy and creative direction, we “”won” the festival,” increased our reach by 166%, increased our engagement by 222%, and increased our brand mentions by 643%. (https://blog.sprinklr.com/sponsorship-marketing-at-sxsw-2017/)
EXAMPLE LINKS:
https://www.instagram.com/p/BRpc4UbjYo3/?hl=en&taken-by=pandora
https://www.instagram.com/p/BRtJWDVjrN3/?hl=en&taken-by=pandora
To drive cultural relevance and align with a major and popular cultural moment in time, Pandora celebrated Women’s History Month through an integrated marketing campaign the contributions of women to music. As the project manager for this campaign, I drafted the creative intake form, briefed the team, led asset production, reviews, approvals and distribution of final assets to marketing channels.
Although a smaller campaign, I partnered with creative and the music curation team to look at genres that we don’t normally talk about and artists who might not be in the top 40’s or well known. Through this effort, the post engagement became more genuine and celebratory for the artists and the cultural moment in time.
EXAMPLE LINKS:
https://www.instagram.com/p/Bf8zJqlj3_m/?hl=en&taken-by=pandora
As part of our growing focus with social media as a highly important marketing channel for driving listeners into platform, the creative strategy team and the social media team collaborated on creating a suite of concepts that we could pitch to artists. As part of these programs artists receive different levels of paid media support based on production value and caliber of artist.
This suite of concepts came from the desire from my social media team to get more time with artists and do more creative videos. At first we brainstormed concepts for individual artists, making a unique concept every time. This became a collection of templatized programs that we could make slight adjustments for each artist depending on their album name, theme, what they are interested in. What started out as one off brainstorms and video shoots with iphones (which still occur from time to time depending on resources), became pitch decks of pre-built ideas that we produced multiple episodes of.
EXAMPLE LINKS:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rF4tm1VYfmU&list=PL0mFYE4jFBJwN2u2c6rKDVX3ctkvwIua3
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL0mFYE4jFBJx2yOJqQe41dSnDBYPc0Hgl
https://www.instagram.com/p/BhMy--xDqOZ/?hl=en&taken-by=pandora
https://www.instagram.com/p/Bc5nu_1jL1U/?hl=en&taken-by=pandora
Promoting artists and their music is Pandora’s top priority. We are constantly developing new and unique ways to work with artists on social media and in marketing programs, from video liners to gifs.
The social media team and I collaborated to bring the best insight into social media app updates and knowledge of which content performs best on which platform. Over time, we worked with the creative org to transform our promotion of artists from simple iphone photos to the necessity to have a photo studio in every office and at every event. From boomerangs to a video and animation team creating our assets. What started out as experimentation, we now have templates for videos, gifs, stills for artist asset production. We have scripts for artists to record interesting soundbites both in an out of the office. We’ve raised our standards for artist content to successfully compete with other streaming services across social media.
LINKS:
https://www.instagram.com/p/BhrlGOOh7jA/?hl=en&taken-by=pandora
https://www.instagram.com/p/Bf_kYXLDYZU/?hl=en&taken-by=pandora
https://www.instagram.com/p/BcDjxLnDFp6/?hl=en&taken-by=pandora
https://www.instagram.com/p/BbDANR4DGs2/?hl=en&taken-by=pandora
I was tasked with concepting easy to execute ideas for artist capture at our end of year holiday concert in NYC. With no budget and minimal time with artists, I had them each perform simple celebratory movements that we turned into GIFs.
These GIFs became the inspiration for evergreen social content asks with artists’ content moving forward. They were perfect examples of how capturing effortless content could be used time and again for cultural moments such as holidays, artist birthdays and record releases. To this day, artist GIFs are built into the social capture strategy for every event, artist visit and production shoot based on the success of the holiday GIFs.
Pandora hosts free music events throughout the year, ranging from intimate single artist performances to football stadium size day long music festivals for tens of thousands of people. For each event there is a marketing strategy to promote the event and a social media content strategy to bring the event to life for those who cannot attend. I have been in charge of the social strategy to activate the events on social media through photo, video and live stories. I partner with the creative team to match our social assets and design packs to match the look and feel of the event. On-site, I direct a team of photographers, videographers and graphic designers for how and when content is posted.
These events demonstrate Pandora’s close relationship with the artists we work with, and the creativity and imagination behind each event. We craft a new and bold story around artists, cities and themes , pulling our followers in through our social posts.
EXAMPLE LINKS:
Summer Crush: https://www.instagram.com/p/BJE-jYljgGP/?hl=en&taken-by=pandora
Sounds Like Country: https://www.instagram.com/p/BVBZTC7DV4E/?hl=en&taken-by=pandora
Sounds Like You: NYChttps://www.instagram.com/p/BWyp0M4jaWb/?hl=en&taken-by=pandora
Sounds Like You: Summer: https://www.instagram.com/p/BXG9a5EjnaS/?hl=en&taken-by=pandora
Sounds Like You: 2017: https://www.instagram.com/p/BcX52FxjnAp/?hl=en&taken-by=pandora
Pandora has partnered with a few Goldenvoice festivals over the years as a super sponsor with the opportunity to capture artist content and “activate” at the festival. With this opportunity the events team builds out a video/photo/audio capture space and a brand activation and we do outreach to schedule artists for capture throughout the day for the entirety of the festival (usually all three days).
For these festivals I drove social media content strategy for pre, during and post festival attendance. For pre-fest: coming up with the strategy to promote our presence, festival station or livestream. During the festival: mapping out what content we are capturing when, which artists we want certain content from, and what creative treatments each asset will get. Plus coming up with copy for all posts. For post-festival: ensuring organized content and accessibility for future use, and fulfilling required festival promotions.
I partnered with both our internal creative team and external agency to develop packs of creative assets, with a unique look and feel for each festival that can easily be used on top of photos on-site by my design team and photographers.
EXAMPLE LINKS:
Stagecoach: https://www.instagram.com/p/BTZvEurDUKR/?hl=en&taken-by=pandora
Life is Beautiful: https://www.instagram.com/p/BKqxW_HAAq8/?hl=en&taken-by=pandora
Hangout Fest: https://www.instagram.com/p/BFsJXrOvHQ-/?hl=en&taken-by=pandora
I was tasked with creating a social media style guide using the company’s new branding. The goal was to set rules in place to establish consistency for how Pandora brands all social media assets across the company. I partnered with our creative agency, Swift, to define every possible asset from every corner of the company. I led the guide through reviews and approvals. Upon completion, I presented it to every creative at Pandora and acted as the POC for all style guide questions.
To this day most of the rules we set in place with the guide still exist. I continue acting as the POC for any questions that arise on branding placement and best practices for social media assets. The style guide has seamlessly integrated itself into our creative processes, contributing to a unified look and feel with our branding.
