What this Ad and Promo senior thought would be a summer internship made up of managing Ozarks Amphitheater’s social media quickly turned into a position of much more responsibility. Beyond Facebook posts and Instagram photos, Madelyn Freeman spent her summer producing a television commercial, writing radio spots, creating website advertisements, overseeing events and more.
When Ozarks Amphitheater began looking for a summer intern, they started their search at all the Springfield universities to find a local college student. The highly selective process included a phone interview followed by a face-to-face meeting where Madelyn was able to share her creative ideas for promoting concerts and increasing social media interaction. Only after she was given the position did she realize their hiring process was so long and elaborate. “They told me that I was very lucky to have been chosen,” Madelyn said.
Upon starting the internship, Madelyn’s job was to help with marketing with an emphasis on social media. After only two weeks on the job, the owners decided to get Madelyn much more involved. As a privately owned outdoor venue only on their third season, their full-time employee base was fairly small. This gave Madelyn the opportunity to work on all marketing aspects.
The Ozarks Amphitheater, located at the Lake of the Ozarks, is an outdoor venue that can hold up to 10,000 attendees. Since the venue is still relatively new, they limit themselves to 5,000 visitors per event. To fill those seats, Madelyn helped produce a television commercial that aired on local stations as well as wrote radio spots to advertise upcoming events.
Digitally, she fine-tuned her Photoshop skills to create web banners and advertisements. As her first time running a business’s social media, she mainly focused on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter by writing and publishing fresh content regularly. When she was ready to branch out, she introduced a Snapchat Geofilter for the theater. This was very successful and an inexpensive way to engage customers while spreading awareness. Surprisingly, the Pinterest page she launched was also a big hit. Here, Madelyn shared examples of outfits people can wear to a concert saying, “It’s amazing all the questions people will have and how you can direct them to something like that. It helps drive traffic to ticket sales as well.”
On concert days, Madelyn spent a lot of time in the front of house. Each day of show she was in charge of the front of house staff, which was often more than 75 employees. The owners worked backstage so Madelyn also acted as a customer service representative for all 5,000 customers and took care of artists to make sure their rooms were “happy.
Now at the end of the summer, Madelyn is back at Missouri State. She still helps out with social media and shows until the end of the season. Once the Ozarks Amphitheater enters the off-season, Madelyn will continue to post content on social media.
What started as a summer internship quickly turned into an unexpected opportunity. Madelyn says, “It was the definition of an internship. You’re figuring it all out as you go along so I really got to learn every aspect.”