Dan Burdeski

Art Direction & Design

Maroon Shirt® campaign

Roles:
Creative Director, Production artist, Photographer, Videographer

The Challenge

  • Create a unique, limited-edition t-shirt
  • Develop a social media campaign that incorporates video
  • Produce a wide variety of photos that represent our alumni base
  • Redesign the promotional website and enhance the email communication
Maroon Shirt sample

The shirt design

The Maroon Shirt® is the official members-only shirt from the Alumni Association. The limited-edition shirt is released each fall with a new design and vaulted before the end of the year. In 2017, a U of M alumna approached the UMAA with her idea: create a fun, unique shirt only for members to kick off the school year that raises money to ignite student success. This year, we are offering a gold version of the shirt to also cater to the people that want something other than maroon.

The Marketing

When lining up models for the shirt, I felt it would be the perfect opportunity to cross promote our alumni-owned businesses and utilize our highly engaged base. This gives us the ability to authentically humanize the shirt with with real alumni as well as show their University of Minnesota pride.

In support of the shirt, we employed several marketing efforts to raise awareness:

coaster and laptop sticker
maroon shirt table top banner

The Digital Marketing

Due to the ability to rapidly deploy content through digital channels, it was the perfect opportunity to portray the Maroon shirt® in a multitude of different life stages.

coaster and laptop sticker

The Minnesota Alumni Market website

Due to the ability to rapidly deploy content through digital channels, it was the perfect opportunity to portray the Maroon shirt® in a multitude of different life stages.

Instgram reel video

final header

The Final Product

What was accomplished?

The campaign was a huge success, exceeding in all membership level goals as well as current member shirt sales.

This campaign was recognized in GDUSA magazine.

image of a folder maroon shirt
Dan Burdeski