Boosting Awareness and Support for Sarasota Orchestra’s Music Center

Challenge

For 75 years, Sarasota Orchestra has inspired and entertained music lovers across the region and visitors from around the world. In a region known for its vibrant arts community, numerous organizations share limited performance and rehearsal spaces, and the need is urgent for a new home where the Orchestra and its partners may better serve the growing community with more concert dates and greater variety of experiences.

The Orchestra’s ambitious answer to this challenge is a new Music Center that will increase capacity and also bring the community something it’s never had – a concert hall purpose-built for acoustic, non-amplified musical performances. It will be the first such concert hall on Florida’s Gulf Coast and fourth in Florida.

The Orchestra hired Curley & Pynn in 2022 to manage a multiyear community outreach strategy, with goals to build awareness and understanding of the Music Center and concert hall, build affinity and support for the project, and to set the stage for a significant fundraising campaign. Entering the 75^th anniversary season in 2024 brought additional opportunities to celebrate the Orchestra’s legacy and emphasize its value to the community while building excitement for a future in which the Music Center will play a central role.

Objectives

Our objectives were, and remain, to build awareness and affinity for Sarasota Orchestra, drive community support for the creation of a new Music Center and acoustic concert hall (including outreach beyond the existing patron base to draw new fans), and inspire support for future fundraising efforts.

Solution

Since 2022, our strategies have encompassed a wide variety of public relations programs, tools and tactics as part of a comprehensive strategic communications campaign. Highlights include:

• A region-wide survey that confirmed broad support for the Music Center among Sarasota-Manatee County residents.
• Development and management of a webpage and ongoing Music Center Updates that share details of the vision and regional impact of the Music Center, reinforce the support the Music Center enjoys among local residents and partners, and provide a home to other tools, such as testimonials and videos.
• A legacy-building communications campaign engaging audiences in a public celebration of the 75^th anniversary year through social media, media relations and presentations.
• Development of a video series to educate audiences about the uniqueness of a concert hall and how the Music Center will transform the region. Videos include detailed “explainers” of how a concert hall works to transform the guest experience, testimonials on the impact the concert hall will have on the region, and interviews with musicians and orchestra leaders regarding their experiences with concert halls around the globe.
• Collaboration with PUSH on an integrated marketing communications campaign to raise awareness of the Orchestra among new and younger audiences across the region.

Results

The Music Center communications program is ongoing with both short-term and long-term objectives. In the short term, our work has already helped to secure significant media and public awareness for the Music Center and concert hall, demonstrated in 2023 by 17 positive stories in regional news media about the Music Center project.

Our message platform has been adopted by and used consistently by staff and board leaders to emphasize a message of community impact and communicate around key milestones such the local government approvals for zoning changes necessary to construct the concert hall.

Perhaps the best measure of success is what our Sarasota Orchestra client partners have to say about our firm and our work:

“Curley & Pynn brought us out of OUR world and into THE world,” said CEO Joe McKenna.

“One of my favorite aspects of Curley & Pynn is that I truly like every one of the associates on this team. The culture of Curley & Pynn is just so wonderful that they bring really great people to the table who we enjoy working and collaborating with,” said CMO Gordon Greenfield.