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Four venues, and what I actually did.
An arcade I co-own and built from before opening, a small-town rebrand, a golf course made to earn in February, and a charity convention that needed more people through the door. Each one below says what I was hired to do and what the work covered. No borrowed numbers.
Four different problems. None of them was the ads.
Every venue came in asking for marketing. In each case the real job was something more basic first: a name people believed, a brand that didn't exist yet, a season with no revenue, a budget that had to be defensible.
The Arena
A new owner took over a building that had been neglected for the better part of twenty years. The hard part was never the advertising. It was convincing a small town that this genuinely wasn't the same business they had written off.
So the first move wasn't a campaign. It was a new name, a new identity and a new website, because you can't ask people to give a second chance to something that still looks exactly the same. From there the weight went onto social, which is where that community actually pays attention, including work with local creators. I still run this one.
What the work covered
- Naming and brand identity
- Website build
- Organic social
- Meta and Google ads
- Email newsletters
- Local creator partnerships
District Beta
I co-own District Beta. It's my own venue, not a client, and I'd rather say that plainly than dress it up as third-party proof. Read it as the place where I tried everything I now sell, with my own money, before I sold it to anyone.
I was on it from before the doors opened, which is the rarest place to start and the most useful. There was no brand yet, so I built one, then kept building it out year over year as the floor filled up: virtual reality, racing simulators, virtual escape rooms, a console lounge, table games and a licensed bar.
The engine was social, and not scheduled filler. The actual room, the actual games, the actual regulars. An arcade is one of the few venues where the content is the product, and it compounds if you keep showing up.
What the work covered
- Brand from scratch
- Website development
- Organic social
- Paid media
- Search engine optimization
- Email campaigns
Kingswell Glen
New owners bought a golf course that had been let go for years and wanted the community to know straight away that something had changed. Their first project was the part most golf courses don't have: an indoor facility with simulators, a putting green, indoor soccer, nerf battles, a licensed bar and party space.
The brief was to make a Canadian golf course earn in February. Once that first winter worked, the job widened to the whole property year round: the restaurant, leagues, tournaments, the pro shop, lessons and summer camps, marketed to golfers well outside the town. It ended when the course sold to a national management group with its own in-house marketing team.
What the work covered
- Positioning for a new ownership group
- Organic and paid social
- Newsletters
- Paid ads
- Search engine optimization
Sarnia Pop Culture Show
The ninth annual Sarnia Pop Culture Show, run as a non-profit for local charity, with attendance still soft after the COVID years. One goal, stated plainly: more people through the door.
Charity money changes how you buy. Every dollar had to be defensible, so the mix wasn't purely digital. Digital where it could be measured, plus print and radio, because that's still how a large part of a Sarnia audience finds out an event is happening. Knowing the market matters more than knowing the platform.
What the work covered
- Event marketing strategy
- Digital advertising
- Print media
- Radio
- Vendor and attendee acquisition
Why there are no numbers on this page yet.
Because they aren't mine to publish. Every figure on a page like this is a factual claim about somebody else's business, and most agency case studies quote numbers the client has never seen written down in that form.
The ones I can stand behind, with the owner's sign-off, go here. Until then this page tells you what I was hired to do and what I actually did. If you want it checked, ask and I'll put you in touch with the operators.