You’re listening to the Marketing Attractions podcast. Conversations on how nonprofit attractions
are increasing attendance and sharing their missions through marketing. Your hosts are
Ryan Dick and Jenny Williams of Attend Media. Jenny, today we’ve got a spotlight episode.
Yep, today we are talking with Brana Shepherd, the Director of Marketing and Communications
at Tulsa Garden Center at Woodway Park. We invited Brana on the show because she or her
team recently won the 2024 APJ Marketing Excellence Award. They were able to launch
really a successful fundraising campaign during a time of community crisis. She’s going
to share it as how they were able to do that through successful storytelling.
Yeah, Tulsa Garden Center is a small operation. Ryan is a marketing team of one. I think
this is a good episode to listen to if you’re in that situation, limited funding, marketing
dollars, limited team size, how she’s maximizing what she can do across social media. Also,
I like the conversation that we have. They do have a little bit of money and they invested
it all in radio. We’re going to talk about the tactics behind that.
One other thing, if you’re out here listening, if you’re in marketing or leadership at
a zoo, aquarium, museum, botanical garden, and you’ve got something to share with the rest
of the community, the cultural attraction world, we’d love to have you on. So if you’d be
interested in being a guest and doing a spotlight episode with us, you can find our information
at marketingattractionspodcast.com. All right, let’s get into it.
All right, Brana. Thanks for making the time to join us here on the podcast. Welcome.
Thank you for having me. I’m excited to be here. Absolutely. All right, so tell us about your journey.
How did you get into the public garden space? Well, certainly wasn’t on my five-year plan.
I kind of found me in a way. So I come from an education background. I’ve been teaching English
as a second language to adults for about 20 years, then a little bit of that in the social work world,
and needed a change. And it was going through a million job listings, came across this one. I love
the park. It’s a special place for me. And this job listing really checked a lot of my boxes,
and I wasn’t anticipating that. So when I applied, I actually highlighted my volunteerism,
because it wasn’t my professional background that really maybe stand out for this role. It was my work
with a local cash shelter and doing a lot of their marketing volunteering for 20 years.
So when I sent in my cover letter, I said, “Sure pay attention to my professional work, but really
pay attention to my volunteerism.” And there was this history. I toured and they had a garden cat here
that had just moved in a few weeks before. And so when they offered me the job, I was like, “Well,
they’re just hired a cat.” So I mean, I can’t say no. I have to, I have to join. But I, in my education
background, I’ve been communicating about communication for almost 20 years. And so I’m using
that background in a very different way here, kind of analyzing word choice and how you
present things. And that’s what I’ve been doing in the classroom for so long. It’s, I think,
storytelling has been something I’ve always been interested in. That comes into play quite a bit
here. And just I have little memories of when I was a kid of little interactions. My dad and I
writing a bike up a hill and a gentleman writing his bike down in my dad and the man nodded at each
other. And seven years old maybe. And I thought, “What just happened? What did I just see?” Like,
there’s some exchange. I don’t understand what I saw, but I know they were exchanging something
with each other. And so I asked my dad, “Why were you all nodding each other?” So we’re just saying
hello without words. And I think that started my fascination with communication.
Yeah. And then with that education background too, I guess, talked just a little bit about how maybe
you’re able to bring the garden to maybe none, kind of, or maybe to those plant novices, right,
who don’t really know much about what the garden provides. Yeah. So I’m a perfect example of not knowing
much about gardening. I have always relied on my family, you know, “Hey, this plant’s doing this. I
don’t even know what this plant is. What do I do?” And here I’m learning. So I ask a ton of questions
and then I get my answers. And then I figure out how to present that information out to the public.
And in educational and entertaining, engaging way, I think the public is learning real time with me.
So that’s an interesting journey to go on. I love running into people in real life and they say,
“Hey, this thing you posted about the other day, I had no idea.” I’m like, “I had no idea either.”
It isn’t that amazing. So because I’m constantly learning here, I get the opportunity to
be figuring out how to share and teach these things in a way. I have a lot of great teachers
here that I work with, even if they may not consider themselves teachers, they all are.
That’s great. And then in your role as the director of marketing and communications,
this is it’s you, right? You’re the team of one. And I think that’s probably more common
across a lot of gardens and cultural attractions than large teams, right? So tell us about how you’re
able to accomplish all the things that you do in your day with just you. Yeah, well, yeah,
it’s just me, I’m a one-man man. So just today, for example, I make sure all of our signs are up-to-date
for what we’re promoting, like here on the grounds. I do a social media post every day and I do those
in real time. I don’t schedule them. I know people probably think I’m crazy, but I like it to be very
authentic. I want to be aware of what’s going on in the world and not have something post that is
not appropriate for what’s going on. So I made a post this morning,
conferred with team about different things we have going on. Then I’m doing this interview and
then I’ll travel and do an actual TV interview this afternoon. And yeah, so that’s a
this is a busy like talking day, but there’s also a lot of, like I do a lot of website back-end work.
I will talk with people in the park just that that one-on-one in-person communication that you
don’t plan for, it just kind of happens. Sometimes we’ll lead tour groups through. Yeah, there’s
lots. I make lots of graphics, very that’s not my like expertise. I’m not a graphic designer,
but I can I can close some things together. And so I do a lot of flyers and stuff or are
bouncing classes and you know, checking out on social media. And that’s kind of a broad overview of
what it looks like. And then just experimenting with different things. I like I said
being an outsider, I have a like I’m constantly learning, but I’m also thinking about how would
how would I find out about this information? How can I get like what we’re doing out to more people?
So our social media before I came, there were accounts, they were not very active,
they were not consistent. And so we do lean really heavily into the social media world.
And that’s proven to really be great for us. And I can talk a little bit about that. Later if you
want me to kind of help me. Yeah, let’s talk about that. Do you have kind of like your go-to channel?
Is it Facebook? Is it Instagram? Or is it kind of all across the board? If you can only live with
one social media channel, what would it be? And why? Well, I personally love Instagram, but I’m a very
visual person. So the we weren’t using Instagram before. And we were barely using Facebook.
Those are the two that we use. I maybe someday we’ll learn the others, but these two seem to be serving
as well. So we post every day. I make sure the content is not the same every day. So I’ll keep it nice.
And I feel like keep it balanced. So some historical pieces, some things about what’s happening in
the garden, anniversaries, just fun events that we have coming up. I even try to balance like our
colors. I’m not doing like the three picture sunset things or anything like that, but I do I want
to make sure that I’m not like, you know, really pink heavy for my last eight post. But I just need
that visual balance there. So we cross post everything to Facebook. And we really lean heavily into
the Facebook events. We’ll do the collaborative post on Instagram, which are great. And
the additional post on the Facebook events, I think is fantastic. You just have to kind of hand hold
and some people who may not know to look for that and to accept that. But that increases your
visibility, not just your market, but your audience, but their audience as well. So we have
16 plant societies that operate out of here. And so we try to give them as many tools and support as
we can through those social media channels and beyond. I’m actually getting ready to do a bootcamp
for them. Like a social media website bootcamp. So I sent out a big survey about where do you feel like
you’re lacking? What support do you think you need? Do you what do you use? Do you have any social
media channels? Do you have a website? I’m don’t even have a website. And so right now I’m analyzing
kind of where it seems they need the most help. And then we’ll have a big meeting. This is where my
teacher part comes in. We’ll have a big boot. I’m climbing a bootcamp. I don’t know if that’s the right
way to phrase it, but we’re going to have a big kind of training where they bring their computers. They
can bring two officers from the club. And we’re going to we’re going to help them out. I’m going to
send them home with homework as I do. And tools to help them kind of stuff up their game online.
Even if that I mean that could just be photos. You know your photo doesn’t have to be taken
today. It could have been taken a month ago and you can share it today but you don’t have to tell
everyone that. I mean just simple little things like that that people don’t realize.
You don’t it doesn’t it doesn’t have to be as difficult as we make it. It’d be nice and simple and
organic. So in this bootcamp that you’re providing I kind of got two takeaways already. You mentioned
Facebook events and then you mentioned you kind of have to nudge your audience and it kind of
want to make sure we hit that a little bit on this show. What’s the difficulty with Facebook
events and what do you think maybe your audience gets a little lost in that conversation process?
I wouldn’t say it’s necessarily our audience. I think it’s the people that we’re trying to co-host
events with. They may not be savvy on on those platforms. And even when I get co-hosts request I
have to have to make sure and look for it. It’s easier for me to see on my computer than it is on my
phone and maybe that’s just me. But just a lot of the plant societies right now are older generations
that aren’t as comfortable with some of the social media platforms. And this goes back to my
cash shelter volunteerism. There’s a very similar demographic. And so getting them on social media
and kind of just guiding them until they feel comfortable to start to navigate these things on
their own. As an adult language teacher I know there’s a lot of patients it needs to be involved
when working with adult learners of language of social media of whatever it may be.
So just not getting frustrated and really like step by step showing them you know just open this
and click here and that’s it you did it. Yeah you see that was easy. So just giving them the tools
to feel confident to go on these platforms and they may have like preconceived notions about it.
They may get really overwhelmed by it. So I think there’s a lot of stigma that can come
out along with using certain platforms and some people are resistant to that. So just
you don’t have to have these accounts. You don’t have to buy into all the other stuff. You can
just use it for the sole purpose of your business or your organization. And I think another takeaway
that I got was keeping the color palette within your Instagram feed differentiated like I like that
that any more thoughts like just don’t make it all pink or yeah and but you know it’s it’s so if we
think of fall or winter in the garden we kind of think more like browns or nothing right but there
is actually a lot of color like living in those seasons. You just have to look a little more for it
and so really like right now I could be doing tons of color and of course there is a lot of color
happening but I also want to balance that with you know some just pure greens or some of our
our facilities on the ground. So that just for me that’s going to keep me scrolling like if I go
on to a page and if I go on to an Instagram profile and I just keep seeing the same post over and
over and over and I see like I don’t know there’s three months of one style and then it shifts into
another style like oh well there’s they got a new person on staff or like they have a new plan
or something like that but if it’s if it’s varied visually and content wise it’s going to keep
me more engaged to keep scrolling and then want to hit that follow button and then I continue to see
those updates. Yeah I think you’ve said this a couple of times probably but it’s putting yourself in
that visitor or shoes right what they’re they’re looking at what they’re engaging with and I think
sometimes we can kind of miss out on marketing because we’re looking at the research looking at the
data what it says and we’re forgetting about what the consumer or ourselves really enjoys and wants
too so that’s great. You’re listening to the Marketing Attractions podcast conversations on how
nonprofit attractions are increasing attendance and sharing their mission through marketing.
Your hosts are Ryan Dick and Jenny Williams of attend media. Attend media is a media planning
and buying agency specializing in zoos aquariums gardens and museums. For more information please
visit attend.media now back to Ryan and Jenny. So Brianna your team had got the honor of winning the
Marketing Excellence Award for Small Gardens at the APGA in 2024. Walk us through that campaign
what what was kind of the big idea and you know why did you win that award? Yeah so I’m quite an
honor very exciting. We our campaign was called when the win when the win came sweeping down the plane so
we have an Arboriedem that was started in 1964 and it’s I think three acres quarter mile path
through it’s a beautiful space and before I started an Arboriedem restoration capital campaign was
in progress and I had like drafted up a big e-blast to go out we’ve got a nice
I had this email campaign drafted up ready to go for Monday morning and in the early Sunday morning
hours of June I think was 18th last year as Father’s Day we had a Durecho come through
the Talentolsa which were sustained 100 mile per hour wins which were used to tornado wins but those
are like over like that 100 mile an hour wins for 20 30 minutes were not used to that at all and it
wrecked our our trees in Midtown I mean completely uprooted a lot of the tree canopy and our Arboriedem
took a really hard hit and uprooted in 1964 original plantin pin oak and then we also lost a black oak
but the pin oak was a monster and the park was closed basically all of Talentolsa was closed
everything was shut down there was no power anywhere and we had to pause that that campaign we
can’t ask money for trees when everyone’s got a tree on their house in their car and we so but we
also couldn’t pause that because this was an active campaign we were we were needing to raise
this money for all these improvements and so what we did is we we figured out a way to merge the two
so to continue the Arboriedem restoration but to also incorporate the storm effects the damage the
the grieving the optimism that it would be okay and so we merged all of that together and and honestly
it wasn’t until after we’d gone through all of this that we looked back and we said oh hey
we we did that it wasn’t like we were having sit down meetings right after the storm and we were all
without power we all had damage at our homes there was everyone was dealing with all sorts of things so
it the way we shifted the campaign to merge the two the the original intent and the
what had happened to our city it it allowed us to continue to raise money in a way that didn’t
disrespect I’d say the park the community the trees and yeah we were closed to the general public
for six weeks so people couldn’t even come in the park we had a park and staff had a park outside
of the park and walk in we had to wear branded shirts so only select people could get to come in and
so just continuing to show like this place is still here it’s okay um you know the public green spaces
are so important and I think that was especially highlighted during COVID um it was and
green spaces were one of the few places that people felt safe for a long time to be able to go and
be and not being able to go to this place it’s many people come here multiple times a day they
walk their dogs they this is part of their routine and to not be able to go there this can be
disruptive not just to your routine but to your mental and emotional health and so being able to show
them that it’s all still good and we’ll be back you’ll be back um it it was successful and successful
so for me we’re we’re to use for it all um it kept people connected in a really special way so
a deep way and what kind of channels like tactically how did you communicate your message what kind
of channels were were utilizing yeah so our e-blast our e-news letters um we did end up eventually sending
that one that I had drafted with many tweaks in it I said he had to give me like 48 hours let me
sit with it figure out how to how to how to share this um we there were lots of new stories um and
so we share space we’re a city park we’re a nonprofit in a city park and so there were lots of new
stories that um that we did and that the city park gardeners did as well so there was a lot of
local media um I’d say I mean it was all over the news um and we’re kind of the our park is like
the part of Tulsa um and it’s the second oldest park just by a few months um so it’s a really
special place so it does get a lot of attention um and did get a lot of attention during the media but
social media of course um we shared some really hard photos of some um major damage I mean I I did
a post one day of the the pin oak down and I likened it to a like the size of it that it was
very humbling and it was like you can’t really imagine the scale of these until you’re standing next to
it and I’ve never been next to like a beached whale but I imagine it would be similar to standing next
to that where you’re like I had no idea it was so big you know it’s um you you can’t
fathom what it’s like until you’re right next to it in that different situation I also when I wrote
this post about this down to pin oak we were going through a familial loss my um we lost a family member
that day that I wrote that post and um it was like I am not the person that’s going to always
separate like my world and my work world I very much so have everything integrated take that as you
will um that something I’ve learned and accepted about myself so going through that I think um
that also allowed me to kind of dig in um just sharing in really human um like true ways
and then how about um you know kind of bringing that story telling through for your new campaigns
you’ve got your find your spot campaign that’s been pretty successful as well yes okay
so um I’ll kind of go back to the arboretum just from um at the end of that storm the pin oak got
chopped up taken away except for the rootball the rootball remained and we ended up launching
another campaign marketing campaign at the very end of that so the rootball is much much taller
than I am I mean I’m not super tall but it’s considerably taller than I am
we’ve posted some signs around it and we put this on our social media so we set up an email address
um for my spot so we use a hashtag that is find your spot at um find your spot of Woodward Park
and so we made an email address that was my spot at woodwardpark.org and that was a space for people
to share their old photos their stories their everything that was special to them
um because this park is it’s it’s an old park right there’s a lot of there’s a lot of stories it
it is not just our park that work the people that work here right now it is generations and
generations of people that have been involved here all the different groups all the different
different city employees the the staff at Tulsa Garden Center the Tulsa Historical Society’s
right next to us as well so there are all these people that over the years this is all of our stories
so we want to collect kind of an uncurated collection of the communities stories memories photos
and so we set up an email address it actually is not the domain of the email is not the same as our
website because we don’t even want it connected to people to have the idea that it’s just going to
Tulsa Garden Center we want it they’re talking to Woodward Park which is bigger than just Tulsa Garden Center
um and we’ve gotten such beautiful submissions um these really cool old photos
and these amazing stories and because the the park’s story is it’s the community story
and so we just wanted to have a nice or nice easy way for people to share those um those bits and I know
there’s so many more stories and photos out there um and I can’t wait to keep receiving them like
nothing makes me more excited when when that email inboxes things like that’s that’s the most exciting
thing um but I got that idea from a park and maybe it was a forest in Australia or New Zealand um they
this organization they made email addresses for each of their trees for people to report damage
I think it was a large enough space that they couldn’t survey everything all the time
and so they set up these email addresses so people would be like hey there’s a hanger up there
need to get that down or this this tree looks like it needs some TLC but people started emailing
their love stories to the trees and they had no idea that that was going to happen um and I heard
that story and I was like that is beautiful and so it kind of became like the natural next step
after we lost the pinnacle in that storm was to set up a collection space for for our community
stories and yeah it’ll continue as long as we need to and so this content that people are emailing you
are you repurposing that or are you are you sharing that on social media as well or great question
so we do a few things with it um we catalog it so um I’ve got a little bit of oral history background
as well and so I’ve learned some archiving tips and so I’ve uh we have all those photos they’re cataloged
digitally um we have all the details from the people who submitted them in a spreadsheet
and every once in a while we’ll share them online um on our social media and then we have a
newsletter that we sent out quarterly um and I say newsletter I actually I know this is a podcast
of people I don’t be able to see this but it’s like a it’s like a magazine um so we send that out
quarterly uh it’s probably audience it’s a very good look at magazine thank you that’s another part of
my job I put that together and that’s very very fun um so we’ll do full page um focuses on these
photos and these stories and so people get to see their submissions and print and that’s really
exciting as well and then of course we’re using that to promote the email address the collection project
um yeah but it’s really important to us we we try like there were three families that lived in
this mansion that i’m in and they will share photos with us that we’ll scan in and then we return
back to the family so we are doing a lot of archiving because it is important to us to not lose
that history um and i love doing things like that i just that’s just one of those things that really
very happy i’m thinking about all those marketing teams out there that like oh man what are we
gonna what’s our content schedule what’s our content calendar gonna look like next month so
i like that why not just have your audience your your visitors fuel that content for you i’m sure
you’ve got just a library of things that you can pull from um so we talked about kind of like some
freeways you know to market and and and tell that story but you you guys do have limited marketing
funds like just pure advertising funds how are you guys investing those advertising funds what’s
kind of your strategy yeah so our marketing budget is next and nothing um so that allows for a lot
of creativity which i think creativity is really it really grows within constraints um so i love that
challenge um some things that we’re trying right now so we have been doing um underwriting on our
local national public radio station um and that’s been really cool um we do three like ads
a month and or they’ll run for a month and i think it’s 30 plays a month three different ads they
cycle through and then every month we get to choose one day to be underwriter of the day where
we choose one ad that will air every hour um and we’re in our starting our last month of that six
month like let’s give this a shot um period and you know doing radio is interesting because they
they’ll give us their metrics they’ll tell us how many people that are listening but there’s not
something for them to click on there’s not like are they writing it on their hand when they’re driving
are they talking into their phone seeing Siri Google Tulsa Garden Center like what how how are they
remembering this information how do we know if they’re following following through with what they hear
um i don’t have the answer to that um but what i do know is that people are telling us that they
i heard an ad the other day um it’s definitely like if we’re marketing to the people that are already
involved in the park like they’re hearing it because we’re hearing that they’re um that they’re hearing it
so beyond that um i don’t know um but it’s been a really interesting
like experiment and what we do it again no no um i feel like it’s been successful
i we love supporting public radio um so it feels like a really good fit for us um we also sponsor
a Oklahoma gardening show so that is through um a local college here or state college of
Oklahoma State University and um it’s i think Oklahoma gardening’s been on the air for about 50 years
and because of our partnership with them um and it airs on our local PBS station so very similar to
um public radio um it because of our partnership we have a lot of episodes filmed here um we’re
highlighted um off and on and so it’s and people love that show um i i i’ve been on i’ve been on it
once um and i got so many text messages that i had no idea how many people watch that once
i think it’s under one’s no idea until i was on it and i got all these text messages like hey you’re
on a home gardening me talking about gardening i mean that’s that’s amazing but um so that’s a really
been a great partnership um also you know we spend a little bit of money there um and then aside from
that uh marketing wise like putting money towards things we’ll do some Facebook ads here and there um
very sparingly though i am a big believer in like organic reach and not paying for those ads um but
for our big fundraisers we will do that every once in a while um but yeah really really small budget
so you said you got kind of a few events that go on you know you’re obviously free to the public except
for some of these ticket events so you’ve got this six-month radio schedule or the NPR schedule that
you’re you’re working on to help drive awareness of the garden center but also these specific events
that you’re driving ticketed revenue for um you know i i love i think when you’ve got limited funds
there’s only so much that you can do with it so really ensuring that you’re investing in one
channel or one station you know we talk a lot about we’d you don’t want to spread yourself too thin
in any particular channel so better to go strong all in on one channel than than to you know too
low across several um but uh but yeah you’re you’re really looking at kind of building frequency with
that core audience that you talked about that will come to each one of these events throughout
that four six-month period um to think that’s smart uh and then obviously you guys are doing a great
job on the organic side with being able to um share those stories so combining that with a
format like radio that can also help you know creatively share those stories i think is a great idea
with Jenny we don’t really haven’t talked much about radio um on an episode so maybe we’ve got to put one
uh in the in the hopper for that but you know it’s an arboretum it’s a botanical garden it’s so visual
why would somebody lean to just a completely non-visual medium like radio right but i love the idea
you just talked about frequency but i love the idea of like supporting those events it’s that constant
reminder i think what radio does a very good job of is providing that that awareness that
reminder then boom i’m gonna come over the top with a big event like this is the reason you should come
this weekend or next weekend whatever it may be so i i love radio for our world i i know
Jenny you do a lot of radio but i just want to kind of validate the radio idea even though it’s non-visual
yeah great for story time but and you know i love that point too um we think about i mean we’re
recording a podcast right now like how much people listen to people talking all the time
uh we actually explored a grant for a podcast last year to kind of tell some of the historical stories
of the park with deep dives of experts doing this through the humanities uh in Oklahoma and i love like
i think some people are they’re audio people right they want to hear and so um yeah i think there’s
so much value and just you’re able to do things with your hands you’re able to garden um but you just
put your headphones on and listen to the radio or listen to a podcast uh i think it’s it’s great
i love this one. i’m a podcast fan myself too.
all right so our kind of go-to question to wrap things up here um reanna what should non-profit
attractions be doing more or less of in their marketing um what’s your take on that?
yeah i i think that partnerships are gold and um hopefully gardens are doing this a lot already
but you know partnering with other gardens just you can do that on social media you can do a kind
of challenges back and forth to each other um partnering with your local artist and makers we’ve
been doing a lot of that bringing them in for some of our programming um we partner with our plant
societies um but i just think partnering because when you have no marketing budget
you when you i think i mentioned this earlier when you’re both sharing your your events your things
that are going on the people that are invested in both of your audiences are are going to hopefully
being engaged want to come uh want to to buy into what you’re what you’re selling to what you’re
offering um and you’re just doubling your audience with those partnerships and i think it also shows
more credibility as well like hey this organization is enjoying partnering with this organization like
i love this one i’m probably gonna love this one too so i think there’s so much value in that
as well that you have partnerships yeah i like that because you’re like leveraging an existing
audience within you know your partner right so having that kind of play to come on over to this
side and this kind of ties into some of the tactics that you were sharing earlier you know educating
some of these organizations on utilizing social media you know getting that co-host on the Facebook
events thing so that ties it all together there well guys Brianna we really appreciate your time
thank you so much and uh i hope you guys will win award next year oh thank you thanks for having me i
enjoyed this thank you for listening to the marketing attractions podcast if you have a suggestion
for a topic or would like to be a guest on the show please visit our website at marketing attractions
podcast.com
