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, photoshoot 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 audeince, 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.
Shot on iPhone
Creative Strategy
Format: Reels · Total Views (Across Both Reels): 1,187,990 · Accounts reached: 375,053 · Shares: 3,945 · Saves: 2,750 · Likes: 62,306
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.
Grand As The Room Itself
Film Production
The phone content proved authentic moments could carry themselves, however the cinematic work asked a different question: what does Le Windsor look like when it's given the scale it deserves?
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.
Corporate Needn’t Be Boring
Campaign
Not every winning idea starts with a brief. This one started as a joke in a group chat, what would The Office's Christmas party, or Elf, or Home Alone, actually look like if it happened at Le Windsor instead. Turned out the joke was worth making properly.
Each post paired two images, an AI reimagining of the film or show's most iconic Christmas moment relocated to Le Windsor's own ballrooms, next to a second graphic carrying sharp, knowing copy that made the connection explicit. Familiar scenes, a venue people hadn't necessarily pictured themselves in, and just enough wit to make someone stop scrolling and actually imagine their own event there.
It wasn't built to sell a booking. It ended up winning one anyway, proof that sometimes the most effective pitch is the one that doesn't look like a pitch at all.
The Results
Fifteen months in, a 21x increase in monthly views, and 2.46 million views later, the numbers confirm what the strategy was designed to prove. The room was never the story. The moments inside it always were.
Brand Strategy · Creative Direction · Brand Identity · Content Strategy · Social Media Strategy · Campaign Development · Copywriting · Film Production · PhotographyThe 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!