Live Music Marketing, Social Strategy & Community Architecture
The Mandate: Giving a Neighborhood Staple a Mega-Festival Bullhorn I directed the digital marketing, venue voice, and community-building strategy for Showdown Saloon—a cornerstone Portland live music venue dedicated to Americana, folk, country, and independent music culture. My core challenge was executing high-velocity, daily social promotions to drive physical ticket sales while seamlessly bridging the venue’s neighborhood-bar personality with the prestigious, larger Pickathon Presents ecosystem.
The Creative Execution & Digital Strategy: Operating at the intersection of music journalism and digital demand generation, I built a repeatable, high-engagement promotional engine from scratch:
Daily High-Velocity Content Engines: Managed full-cycle daily social media promotions, transforming abstract tour routing data into highly visual, energetic show announcements, countdown campaigns, and artist-lineup drops.
Artist-Centric Copywriting: Rejected generic event listings to author highly tailored, narrative-driven promotional copy for both touring acts and recurring local residency artists—making every single gig feel distinct, exclusive, and essential for Portland music fans.
Systematized Show Formats: Built structured, conversion-oriented social templates optimizing crucial logistical details (artist tags, venue guidelines, ticketing infrastructure, and genre-specific discovery hashtags) to minimize friction and maximize ticket-buying velocity.
Ecosystem Alignment & Synergy: Coordinated strategic messaging that honored Showdown Saloon’s gritty, standalone neighborhood brand identity while amplifying its premier association with Pickathon, driving cross-promotional traffic and cultural relevance.
The Result: Through disciplined aesthetic curation and a casual, authentic venue voice, I turned digital scrollers into real-world venue patrons. I proved that hyper-local music scenes are built on consistent, narrative-driven touchpoints—ultimately scaling the venue's digital footprint and packing the floor under the neon lights night after night.