Mälarpaviljongen | Social Media Campaign 2024
CLIENT
Mälarpaviljongen
LOCALITY
Stockholm, Sweden
DATE
March to August 2024
CATEGORY
Branding + Content Generation
TYPE
Graphic Design, Graphics, Branding, Content Strategy
SERVICE PROVIDED
Graphic Design - Y + Content Strategy - M
MEDIUM
Digital
STATUS
Completed
From March to August 2024, ZFMK Creative partnered with Stockholm’s iconic waterfront restaurant, Mälarpaviljongen, to shape its digital presence during its twentieth season. Our role encompassed social media management, campaign planning, and content creation across six platforms, aligning online storytelling with Mälarpaviljongen’s inclusive and vibrant identity.
Content Across Every Channel
Graphics & Campaign Assets
Throughout the 2024 season, ZFMK developed a series of campaigns to support Mälarpaviljongen’s events, entertainment, and community initiatives. These projects combined photography, video, and graphic design for both print and digital channels, ensuring consistency across platforms while amplifying the venue’s inclusive brand. Below are highlights from major campaigns and promotions
We designed a series of print and digital advertisements for both Mälarpaviljongen and partner events. Highlights include features in Alm & Möller magazine, QX Magazine, and the Stockholm Queer Map Guide, as well as posters distributed across the city. Standout campaigns promoted Electra’s Tucked Stockholm performance and song release, a concert with Arja Saijonmaa, and Mälarpaviljongen’s Celebrate Love Pride 2024 lineup. Each campaign was tailored to its audience, balancing brand consistency with creative flair.
Entertainment & DJs
To promote weekly and seasonal entertainment, we produced a library of social media graphics featuring DJs and performers. Most designs followed Mälarpaviljongen’s content stream color system to ensure cohesion throughout the season, while larger or special events received bespoke themes for greater impact.
To streamline the information flow from the numerous performers, we implemented a Zoho Form system, allowing artists to upload their bios, photos, event details, and social media handles. This ensured that accurate, up-to-date information was always available, significantly reducing the need for back-and-forth communication. We also created templates for the performers to post, including a section for them to update the date and time. This allowed them to share on their accounts and enabled us to share, expanding reach through collaborations.
Dagens Lunch
To drive weekday visits, we created a weekly Monday carousel series highlighting Dagens Lunch (today’s lunch special) for Monday through Friday. The first slide featured an original food photograph to keep the feed visually engaging, followed by text graphics showing the full weekly menu. Daily stories were shared showing what each lunch was before opening. This approach reinforced the Food content stream, maintained a balance between visuals and text, and proved highly effective — lunchtime traffic increased to the point where certain dishes began selling out, and we stopped the promotion.
Celebrate Love – Mälarpaviljongen Pride 2024
Pride week is a cornerstone of Mälarpaviljongen’s identity. For 2024, we developed a new theme and graphics system for Celebrate Love, used across main event posters, digital promotions, and social media stories. Campaign assets were also shared with artists, performers, and partner organizations to amplify visibility. The week culminated in daily posting and live coverage, ensuring a vibrant and consistent digital presence during one of the venue’s most important celebrations.
Wine Supporting Regnågsfonden
We produced a dedicated photoshoot for Mälarpaviljongen’s house wines, with each bottle styled individually and as a collection. These assets were intended for a campaign highlighting that proceeds support Regnbågsfonden (The Rainbow Fund), an international LGBTQ+ rights foundation co-founded by Mälarpaviljongen’s owner. While the campaign was not fully implemented, a preview post was shared, and the photos and video clips remain available for future use to strengthen awareness of this charitable connection.
Twenty Years of Mälarpaviljongen
To mark the venue’s twentieth season, we created a celebratory graphic identity, featuring a custom 20-year badge that was used across social channels. The anniversary launched with a three-day “Invigning” event, supported by unique promo graphics for each day. Posters, digital ads, and merchandise (event t-shirts and sweatshirts) reinforced the milestone, while the badge on graphics signaled the start of a new visual era.
first graphic with the 20-year badge celebrating the beginning of the season
OVERVIEW: Brand Alignment & Expansion
Mälarpaviljongen is one of Stockholm’s most recognized summer destinations — a floating restaurant and garden bar that has become an international symbol of inclusivity, community, and celebration. Entering its twentieth season in 2024, the venue faced the challenge of refreshing its digital presence to match the vibrancy of its physical space.
From March through August, ZFMK Creative served as Mälarpaviljongen’s Creative Design Manager, overseeing six active platforms and building a digital identity aligned with the newly established 2024 branding guidelines. Our work spanned content creation, campaign planning, and social media management, but also extended into behind-the-scenes systems that helped the organization run more smoothly: restructuring the online file system, creating posting calendars, and onboarding staff into shared tools and templates.
At the heart of Mälarpaviljongen’s identity is a message
that blends place, community, and purpose.“An idyllic, verdant oasis
under the colors of the rainbow “This vision shaped both the graphic system and the seasonal storytelling through highighting the vibrant destination for food, music, and inclusivity.
At the heart of the project was the goal of unifying brand alignment — ensuring that everything from menus and posters to Instagram reels and event stories carried the same graphic language, celebratory tone, and message of inclusivity. This meant balancing atmospheric photo and video storytelling with designed assets for events, menus, and campaigns, so that both everyday experiences and milestone moments felt cohesive.
The result was not only a refreshed online presence but a scalable foundation for future team members to continue building on Mälarpaviljongen’s reputation as a cultural and social landmark.
GOALS of the Project
Mälarpaviljongen’s twentieth season presented an opportunity to elevate the venue’s online presence and strengthen its connection with both loyal visitors and new audiences. The social media campaign was designed to achieve several key objectives:
1. Grow Audience Reach & Engagement
Expand visibility across platforms by creating content that felt authentic, inclusive, and vibrant — turning casual browsers into engaged followers.
2. Align with Brand Identity
Apply the refreshed 2024 branding guidelines across digital channels, ensuring that graphics, event posters, and social media content carried a unified graphic language and tone consistent with Mälarpaviljongen’s values of love, peace, and tolerance.
3. Celebrate the Twentieth Season
Document the summer as a “visual diary,” capturing the people, events, food, and atmosphere that made the anniversary year and business memorable.
4. Drive Awareness for Key Services & Events
Highlight weekday offerings, such as Dagens Lunch, to increase foot traffic, while promoting major seasonal events, including Pride and the 20 Years Invigning celebration.
5. Create Scalable Systems
Establish templates, workflows, and shared tools that could be continued by future team members — from the Zoho Form intake system for DJs and performers to a structured social media calendar and organized shared drive.
6. Empower the Team
Train on-site staff to contribute to content capture and posting, ensuring continuity even when the Creative Design Manager may not be available.
Approach
To bring Mälarpaviljongen’s brand identity to life online, we focused on creating authentic and vibrant storytelling that reflected the venue's atmosphere, while ensuring consistency across all platforms. My approach balanced visual creativity with systems thinking to make the campaign scalable and sustainable.
1. Content Streams for Structure
Building on the refreshed 2024 branding guidelines, I developed a framework of seven content streams (five outward-facing: Food, Drinks, Garden, Events, and Purpose/Community). Each was color-coded for clarity and consistency, making it easy to plan posts in advance and maintain a balanced feed. This ensured followers experienced Mälarpaviljongen’s full identity — not just its food and drinks, but its people, garden, history, and inclusive purpose.
2. Visual Identity & Seasonal Branding
We introduced a 20-year anniversary badge and integrated it across graphics, menus, and social media. This created a clear visual marker that separated old content from new and signaled a refreshed graphic language for the anniversary season. Event posters, story templates, and social banners all carried this new identity, reinforcing brand alignment across touchpoints.
3. Storytelling Balance: Graphics + Atmosphere
To avoid the feed feeling like constant advertising, we balanced designed assets (event posters, lunch templates, Pride graphics) with atmospheric content — photos, reels, and stories capturing guests, staff, performances, and the lush summer garden. This created a visual diary that felt engaging, inclusive, and true to the guest experience.
By sharing the content calendar with the office team, which included color-coded overlays of the content streams, everyone could see what was scheduled for the coming days and weeks. This allowed for adjustments or priority shifts as needed, but always within a planned and cohesive framework.
4. Campaign Planning & Execution
We developed targeted campaigns such as Dagens Lunch (which boosted weekday attendance to the point of selling out dishes), What’s in the Garden? (educating visitors about seasonal blooms), the 20-Year Invigining celebration and Pride 2024. Each campaign combined photography, design, and video to maximize reach and impact.
Each campaign was designed with a clear funnel in mind:
Awareness
Advertisements in QX Magazine, Alm & Möller, and the Stockholm Queer Map Guide; Google Business updates; event posters distributed around the city; and digital-first content like reels and introductory posts showcasing what guests could experience on-site.
Engagement
For the first time, we actively engaged with visitors online — responding to comments and messages, resharing customer stories, and acknowledging user-generated content. Campaigns also offered interactive touchpoints: polls, Q&As, “What’s in the Garden?” features, and collaborative posts with DJs, artists, and vendors. Cross-promotion ensured our reach extended well beyond Mälarpaviljongen’s own channels.
Conversion
Posts and stories were timed to move people from intent to action. Event countdowns, save-the-date reminders, and day-of promotions encouraged attendance. Daily lunch carousels and stories drove weekday traffic to the restaurant, while weather-based posts (“come early to beat the queue,” “heaters and blankets available today”) translated digital engagement directly into foot traffic. Even swim culture and waterfront lifestyle content reinforced Mälarpaviljongen as a destination worth visiting.
This funnel-driven approach ensured that content wasn’t just decorative — it consistently translated into higher attendance, stronger sales, and deeper brand loyalty. This layered approach meant followers weren’t just scrolling past content — they were guided toward showing up, participating, and purchasing.
5. Systems & Collaboration
To support consistency, we created a shared content calendar, a digital filing system, and templates that could be reused by the team. We built and integrated Zoho Form intake systems for DJs and performers, streamlining the process of collecting bios, photos, and social links. This not only reduced administrative friction but ensured that each performer was promoted accurately and professionally.
6. Empowering the Team
Recognizing the importance of continuity, I trained team members on how to capture content and use templates for posting. This enabled Mälarpaviljongen’s online presence to remain strong even during times when we were not directly managing the accounts or for spur-of-the-moment posts. It also freed up capacity to focus on larger goals — such as developing new campaigns, refining brand identity, and finding additional ways to highlight the property and its offerings.
RESULTS
The 2024 season delivered more than just eye-catching content — it transformed Mälarpaviljongen’s digital presence into a reflection of its vibrant, inclusive atmosphere. By combining authentic storytelling, brand-aligned visuals, and structured systems, we built momentum that translated into measurable growth both online and on-site.
Beyond the numbers, these results represented a cultural and operational shift. For the first time, Mälarpaviljongen’s digital presence matched the energy of its physical space — colorful, welcoming, and consistently aligned with the brand’s values of love, peace, and tolerance.
The systems and templates established during this season ensured that content could be captured, scheduled, and shared seamlessly, even beyond our direct management. This allowed the team to focus more time on enhancing the guest experience and developing new ways to showcase the property. The campaigns developed this season also left a foundation for future growth, with assets and strategies that could be continued beyond our direct involvement.
Together, the assets and content proved that with the right strategy, even a seasonal venue can achieve lasting digital momentum and lay the groundwork for future growth.
REFLECTIONS
This project demonstrated the power of aligning brand identity with authentic storytelling. By combining atmospheric photography, video, and carefully designed campaigns, Mälarpaviljongen’s digital presence came to reflect the same vibrant, inclusive energy that defines its waterfront pavilion.
Equally important was the foundation built behind the scenes — from streamlined systems and content templates to collaborative tools that empowered the team. These structures not only supported the success of the 2024 season but also ensured the brand could continue to grow beyond my direct involvement.
Together, the results highlight how thoughtful strategy, creative execution, and operational design can transform social media into more than marketing — into a living extension of place, culture, and community.
