Marketing Coordinator · Space Monkey · Montréal
That's item eight on your list of duties. I didn't wait to be hired to start. What follows is a full campaign for a Montréal restaurant, built the way I'd build it for one of your clients. I'm applying for the permanent, full-time Marketing Coordinator role.
Arran James
VIT4L.COM
01 · The setup
Space Monkey names its niches out loud: hospitality, restaurants, events, catering. B2C service businesses. So the client here is a restaurant.
It's a composite, a 38-seat bistro assembled from problems that are true of almost every independent restaurant in Montréal. The business is invented. Everything downstream of it is real work: real research design, real strategy, real copy, real production notes.
I'm telling you this on the first screen rather than burying it, because a portfolio that quietly implies fake clients is worth less than no portfolio.
02 · Quantitative and qualitative research
The obvious answer to an empty Tuesday is "make it cheaper." The obvious answer is usually the expensive one.
So the first thing made isn't copy. It's a six-question instrument, short enough to sit in the bill fold and to run as a two-tap follow-up email. 142 responses over three weeks.
The read: only 19% named price. Sixty-five percent named memory and occasion. They like the room, they simply have no reason to think about it on a Tuesday.
That isn't a menu problem and it isn't a pricing problem. It's a calendar problem, and calendar problems belong to marketing.
Cutting price to fix a memory problem would have cost roughly $4,100 a quarter in margin and solved for the smallest segment on the chart.
A four-course menu, $52, Tuesday through Thursday. Rewritten every fourteen days. Never repeated. Full price, and a reason to look at the calendar.
03 · Portfolio of marketing materials
Tuesday to Thursday · 38 seats · $52
Every second Tuesday our kitchen writes a new one. Four courses, one price, no substitutions, no repeats. On the fourteenth night it comes off the board and it doesn't come back.
This isn't a deal. It's the same room, the same cooks and the same wine list you'd get on a Saturday. We've simply stopped pretending that a Tuesday needs to be an ordinary night.
Menu 01 runs from the 9th. Thirty-eight seats a night, three nights a week. When they're gone, the next one is two weeks out.
Mardi au jeudi · 38 places · 52 $
Un mardi sur deux, la cuisine en écrit un nouveau. Quatre services, un prix, aucune substitution, aucune reprise. Au quatorzième soir, il sort de l'ardoise et il n'y revient pas.
Ce n'est pas un rabais. C'est la même salle, la même équipe et la même carte des vins qu'un samedi. On a simplement cessé de faire comme si un mardi devait être un soir ordinaire.
Le menu 01 commence le 9. Trente-huit places par soir, trois soirs par semaine. Une fois parties, le prochain est dans deux semaines.
We've started writing a new four-course menu every second Tuesday.
One price, four courses, three nights a week. Fourteen days on the board, then it's retired and the kitchen starts again from scratch.
Menu 01 opens this Tuesday. You've only ever come on a weekend, so this is the reason to try a Wednesday.
See Menu 01 →
Menu 01 comes off the board Thursday week.
For what it's worth, the second course is the one the dining room has been talking about. We've run out of it twice.
Tuesday and Wednesday still have tables. Thursday is filling.
Book a night →
Two nights left, then Menu 01 is done for good.
Menu 02 is already written and starts a week Tuesday. If you miss this one, that's the next one. But this one you won't see again.
Last tables →
A campaign is only as repeatable as its record-keeping. This is the tracker the whole cycle runs off. One tab, filled in on Friday, readable by an owner who has ninety seconds.
| Cycle | Menu | List | Opens | Clicks | Attributed covers | Midweek total | vs. baseline | Note |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| C1 | Menu 01 | 610 | 34% | 6.1% | 38 | 171 | +18% | Ran out of course 2 twice. Prep up. |
| C2 | Menu 02 | 664 | 31% | 5.4% | 31 | 166 | +15% | Reveal post went out late. Schedule it. |
| C3 | Menu 03 | 702 | 36% | 7.8% | 44 | 188 | +30% | Subject A/B won by 5pts. Adopt. |
| C4 | Menu 04 | 731 | 33% | 6.9% | 41 | 184 | +27% | Thursday now the strongest night. |
04 · The rest of the posting
A demo that only shows the fun parts is a demo that's hiding something. So here are the other eight, in your words, and what I'd actually do with each.
This role is more operations than it is brand work. I read that in the posting and I'm not going to pretend otherwise. It's most of why it interests me.
Covered by the five deliverables, in your words
And the eight still to go
05 · Your tool list, answered honestly
06 · One more thing
I couldn't find a public portfolio or case-study page. This is one version of what that page could demonstrate.
A case study gives a prospect a useful answer when they ask “like what?” The structure here is brief, research, decision, work, and numbers. Swap the invented bistro for a real client and the proof point is ready to share.
07 · Why this job, why now
The permanent employee role is the actual ask. I want steady client variety, collaboration, and hands-on execution inside a small team, without carrying every agency-owner function myself.
If the permanent headcount is unavailable, VIT4L gives us a more bounded way to work together. That is a fallback, not a competing ask. We can shape the scope around the problem you actually need solved.
The employee role is the actual ask. If the headcount is unavailable, I'm open to a later conversation about another shape, but I don't want to blur that distinction here.
08 · The obvious questions
No. Invented, and said so on the first screen. Nothing on this page is a real client's confidential work dressed up as a sample, which, for what it's worth, happens in portfolios more often than anyone admits.
The research design, the strategic reasoning, the copy and the reporting structure are all real. The bistro is a stage for them.
A CV tells you where I've been; this shows what I can make. It also shows the range the posting asks for: research, strategy, copy, email, social, database hygiene, and delivery. If you'd like a conventional CV for your files, I'll send it.
VIT4L is the current version of my independent practice, built on earlier independent project work. I'm applying for the permanent role because I want steady client variety, collaboration, and hands-on execution without carrying every agency-owner function myself. The employee role is the ask.
It's a real limitation and I've put it on the page rather than in an awkward pause at minute forty of an interview.
What I can do: produce FR copy through a proper adaptation workflow, catch the conventions that make translated work look translated, and build the native proof pass into the schedule and the budget instead of hoping nobody notices. What I can't do is be the person on a French client call. If that's the actual requirement, I'd rather you know now.
For what it's worth, your posting lists the language of work as English, so I suspect this is a smaller problem than it looks. But you know your client list and I don't, so I'll let you be the judge rather than assume.
Easy, is the honest answer. I've worked remotely across different projects and time zones, so I over-communicate on purpose, I write things down, and I don't need managing. If something's going sideways you'll hear it from me first rather than from a deadline.
Outside of work I'm deep into health and performance, hiking, travel, and gear I can't fully justify owning. I have opinions about coffee. I'll make you laugh in a meeting and still send the thing on time, which I'd argue is the whole trick.
09 · Over to you
Or have a look at VIT4L.COM, which is the current version of my independent practice. The Labs are experiments and working concepts, while earlier independent project work sits behind the same habit of making things useful.