As the Social Media Supervisor for Guitar Center and Musician’s Friend, I was juggling two competing brand’s identities that were very similar and vying for a share of the same market space. My main focus was our organic social strategy and execution where I became, by default, an art director, production manager, copywriter, would-be photographer, and production assistant. I also spent time working on paid social strategy and execution, creating ad campaigns to support tent-pole events, sales, new products, and various areas of the business. I managed a small-yet-scrappy team of two coordinators who assisted in building ads, on-set support, tracking analytics, and managing comments on each social channel.
ORGANIC SOCIAL MEDIA—GUITAR CENTER
Like many other companies at the start of the pandemic, we had to think quickly and adjust to a life of restriction. The social and content team changed our typical strategy and pivoted to a social approach focused on content creators and artists who were making music from home, going behind the scenes, or just showing off their studios and work spaces.
Guitar Center’s organic social media voice was friendly, informative, and usually had a quippy one-liner or musician joke at the start of each caption. We strived for lifestyle photography captured in studios or in-store. The organic channels served as a driver for several key areas of the business. The main focus was showing off new, best-selling, interesting, or vintage gear. We also supported tent-pole sales events, promoted new content such as artist interviews and new product demos, and spread awareness of new company services and initiatives. This meant working cross functionally with many different departments including creative, CRM, marketing, merchandising, visual merchandising, and many more.