Le Windsor Ballrooms
Brand Strategy · Creative Direction
Stop selling the ballrooms. Start selling the moments.
Le Windsor is one of Montreal's most iconic venues. A historic landmark in the heart of the city, home to black-tie galas, corporate events, fundraisers, grand weddings and the actual place where the NHL was formed. For years, its social presence did what most venues do: post photos of empty rooms and hope frequency does the rest.
The strategy I brought was a reversal. Nobody falls in love with a room. People fall in love with what happens inside it, a first dance, a toast, or the room mid-laughter. So the content stopped showcasing the space and started capturing the experiences that fill it.
My role covers the full digital operation: strategy, film, photography, social, newsletters, and email. As Marketing Manager, filmmaker, content creator, and social media manager in one. Concept to camera to inbox.
The Feed
Strategy
The shift was from documentation to desire.
Out went the static room photography posted for the sake of posting. In came a content engine built on two registers working together: 1. cinema-grade films and photography for the brand moments and 2. fast, candid, phone-shot content for reach and relatability. Premium when it should feel premium. Human when it should feel human.
The measure of success was never follower count. A venue doesn't need an audience, it needs to be discovered, repeatedly, by the people planning their next event. Every creative decision optimised for reach beyond the existing following. At its peak, 89% of all views came from non-followers. The account became a discovery engine.
Format: Reels · Total Views: 1,044,715 · Accounts reached: 275,378 · Shares: 3,192 · Saves: 1,936 · Likes: 49,515
Not every moment needs a cinema camera. Sometimes the strategy calls for premium production. Sometimes it calls for a phone in hand and the instinct to know something worth keeping is happening right now.
Two examples of what happens when the content goes fully human. In The Sleepy Groomsman, a father carries his baby boy down the aisle, the child gamely losing a battle against sleep.
In Italian Wedding Energy, a reception erupts into the specific, unmistakable joy of an Italian celebration in full swing.
Both filmed on a phone. Both reached far beyond the account's usual audience - proof, not the exception, of what happens when the moment is left to speak for itself.
Shot on iPhone
Creative StrategyIf the phone content proved the moment could carry itself, the cinematic work asked a different question: what does Le Windsor look like when it's given the scale it deserves?
The instinct was the same as everywhere else on this page. The room is not the subject, the room is where the subject happens. But here, the camera had time. Slow, deliberate movement. Careful light. The kind of frame that makes someone stop scrolling not because something surprising happened, but because something beautiful is unfolding, and they want to watch it finish.
The brief, if there was one, was always the same: find the most candid moment in the room, and give it a cinematic frame worthy of it. Not staged grandeur. Grandeur, found.
This is the work built to create desire before anyone has set foot inside, the kind of content a couple sends to their partner, or a company sends to its board when the decision they're making is where a night they'll remember should happen.
Grand As The Room Itself
Film Production
Format: Digital Carousel · Views: 29,457 · Accounts reached: 6,628 · second most shared content in account’s history
Social media builds desire from a distance. But at some point, someone has to decide, sign the contract, book the date, commit real money to a room they haven't stood in yet. That decision happens on the website, and it happens faster when the website has already done the convincing.
I redesigned Le Windsor's website end to end, then built the visual system to support it: photography of every event setup the ballrooms can hold, 360 virtual 3d renders of the ballrooms each one shot to show not just the space but its range and a hero video for each individual ballroom, giving a visitor the closest thing to walking the room themselves before they ever book a viewing.
The job here wasn't to be beautiful for its own sake. It was to remove doubt. By the time someone reaches out to Le Windsor, the website has already answered the question social media raised: what would it feel like to hold my event here.
Corporate Needn’t Be Boring
CampaignThe Results
12 months. One location. Zero paid spend. An 80% increase in followers, over half a million views, and a brand that people in Montreal, and increasingly beyond, genuinely belong to. The numbers confirm what the strategy was designed to create: not an audience, a tribe.
Brand Strategy · Creative Direction · Brand Identity · Content Strategy · Social Media Strategy · Campaign Development · Copywriting · Film Production · Photography
The best work here came from knowing the brand well enough to push it, not just service it. If you're looking for that kind of creative partner, let's talk contact@adagio.film or WhatsApp me!