Russell’s St Paul
Mar 2025 - Present
Russell’s opened in November 2024 on historic Grand Avenue in St. Paul, Minnesota, and became my first long-term client partnership. I was initially hired as a server during the restaurant’s opening, which gave me a firsthand understanding of its operations, customer base, and carefully defined brand identity.
As the team began navigating challenges with graphic design and social media marketing, I recognized an opportunity to contribute. With a background in marketing and experience collaborating with Jessica on creative projects during our time on a student media team, I proposed supporting Russell’s marketing efforts in a more formal capacity.
What began as an internal solution evolved into a long-term partnership that strengthened my confidence in client-facing work, creative collaboration, and managing campaigns within a highly specific brand vision.
Grand Old Day
Our first major campaign with Russell’s centered around Grand Old Day, a one-day summer festival celebrating the history of Grand Avenue. The restaurant wanted to increase foot traffic throughout the day and asked us to develop social and print materials promoting a themed “Cocktail Party” and the launch of a new happy-hour menu.
My Role
I led client communication, starting with in-depth conversations to understand their vision, goals, and the atmosphere they hoped to create. They imagined a vibrant “Cocktail Party” within Russell’s with drinks, music, and laughter where festival-goers could cool off and gather.
From those discussions, I translated their ideas into a clear creative brief and collaborated closely with Jessica on concept development and execution across social posts, email marketing, and in-house print materials.
Challenge & Adaption
As campaign materials were being finalized, Russell’s management reconsidered the “Cocktail Party” positioning, feeling it skewed too upscale for the tone of Grand Old Day. We pivoted the campaign to focus on launching their new “Grand Happy Hour” menu while maintaining the celebratory spirit of the event.
To preserve some of the original experience, I proposed transforming their private event space into a casual lounge for festival attendees. The idea was enthusiastically approved and became a popular feature of the day, with families and small groups gathering throughout the event to enjoy drinks, appetizers, and relief from the summer heat.
The Holiday Room
As our partnership with Russell’s grew, Jessica and I were asked to lead one of my favorite campaigns to date. In the last summer of 2025, the restaurant began preparing for the holiday season and needed promotional materials for events hosted in The Holiday Room, their private dining space. While the final deliverables were cohesive across mediums, we were given significant creative freedom in shaping the campaign’s framing, which made the ideation, creation, and revision process especially rewarding.
My Role
While I continued leading client communication, I stepped into a more hands-on role in the creative process by developing initial drafts and concept directions before collaborating with Jessica on refinement and execution. This shift allowed us to move more efficiently and became a natural part of our workflow as the partnership progressed.
Russell’s wanted materials that felt elevated and refined while still inviting warmth and playfulness in the messaging, which was a balance we worked to intentionally craft throughout the campaign.
Challenges and Results
Russell’s maintains a highly specific and carefully defined brand identity, which can make creative alignment challenging and often requires multiple rounds of revision. Through this campaign, however, we developed a clearer understanding of their visual and tonal boundaries, allowing us to get closer to the mark in earlier drafts on future projects.
Following the campaign launch in September 2025 across social media, email marketing, and in-restaurant materials, The Holiday Room saw consistent bookings throughout the season. From mid-November through early January, the space hosted events on 86% of Russell’s operating nights, which is a strong indication of demand during the promotional period.