Director of Operations
Oct. 2016 - May 2020 | Athens, Ohio
About
Brick Life Entertainment is the largest event promotion company in Athens, Ohio. The company specializes in events at various uptown Athens bars and Athens fest season events, including an annual 3,000 attendee music festival. Brick Life also provides production logistics for any events that require it.
Experience
As director of operations, I oversaw a staff of 8 DJs, 5 photographers, 2 designers, and other various support staff members. My responsibilities included marketing, public relations, content creation, social media, and more.
Each month, I worked with DJs and bar owners on marketing campaigns for their events. This involved directing the design team on how flyers should look, creating and posting photo/video content to social media, and working with local influencer accounts to increase general awareness of the event.
My weekly responsibilities included giving feedback on designs, scheduling photographers at various events, and meeting with new potential clients.
Our annual end of the school year (April) event was a 3,000 attendee music festival, with multiple sponsors, a third party production company, and a 10 DJ lineup. I would begin planning the event in November.
Before I held the title of director of operations, I worked in the company as a social media specialist. Each week, I would create photo galleries from events which would then be uploaded to Facebook. I also shot video content which would be edited into promotional material for upcoming events.
Contact
Kaylen Spears, Talent Manager (2018-2020)
(614) 495-6033
Red Brick Tavern
Red Brick Tavern was Brick Life’s biggest customer, booking DJs from 6 p.m. to 2 a.m. (closing time) every Thursday to Saturday. My weekly responsibilities including coordinating with bar management on what times the photographer should be there, assigning DJ shifts, and posting photos from previous weekends to promote the upcoming weekends. We also worked with the bar’s social media team to ensure we posted the correct drink deals when marketing the events.
Red Brick Tavern, April 2021
Athens Fest Season was a series of block parties taking place each weekend from spring break to the end of the semester.
Mill Fest, 2017
Top: Palmer Fest, 2017 | Right: High Fest, 2017
Brick Life’s role during fest season, was to create the schedule and oversee the marketing campaign for it. This included generating engagement leading up to the release of the schedule and working with local media to ensure the schedule release received proper attention. We would also coordinate with other influencing accounts such as Barstool Ohio, and post it to social media at the same time. The week before the first fest takes place, we would also release a promotional video through Barstool Ohio.
In my final year at Brick Life, I produced the promotional video shown above using a mix of archived footage I shot in the past and new material shot specifically for the video. The shoot involved four camera operators and took place over the span of a weekend. The video took another week to edit.
In addition to the schedule release, I was also responsible for working with houses on fest streets that wanted to book a DJ. Once bookings for a fest were finalized, I would work with the design team to create flyers that clients could post on social media. I would also assign photographers to houses as needed for the day of the fest.
Palmer Place Fest was the largest event we produced each year, with over 3,000 attendees according to local media reports.
Planning for Palmer Place Fest would start 6 months prior to the event, in November. I would meet with the venue owners to ensure any requirements they had would be met. From there, I would send out sponsor packets to potential sponsors, including local and national brands. Different sponsorship tiers had different perks, some included the event MC reading a short message from the sponsor during the event, banners with the sponsor’s logo, flyers posted on social media with the sponsor’s logo, and even sponsored events in between DJ sets. As the event got closer, I helped finalize the lineup of DJs and I would begin working with a professional production company. The final year I was responsible for overseeing the event, we were able to book 6 sponsors which provided the necessary funding needed for the production setup we envisioned. I also worked with the venue owners to help promote their business as a leasing company during the event. With a lineup of 10 DJs, the event began around noon and lasted until 10 p.m. It was estimated that over 3,000 people attended the event. The following year, we had an even larger interest from sponsors until Covid-19 forced us to cancel the event.
