Let Summer Take You: Building a Digital Marketing Campaign for Monos

This summer, I had the opportunity to build a full digital marketing campaign for Monos , a premium Canadian travel and lifestyle brand. I am a store manager at the West Loop location in Chicago. The campaign, "Let Summer Take You," was designed to capture the feeling of intentional summer travel and introduce two of Monos's newest launches: the Mira eyewear collection and the Monos x Reformation collaboration. What started as a assignment became something I genuinely cared about, because I know this brand, I work in this store every day, and I wanted the work to actually reflect that.

The Concept

The campaign idea came naturally from my environment. Working at Monos West Loop, I have a front-row seat to how the brand lives, the product, the aesthetic, and the energy of Postcard, the in-store café and music lounge that anchors our location. Postcard is one of the most unique things happening in retail in Chicago right now. It's a space where people come to slow down, listen to music, have a drink, and happen to fall in love with a piece of luggage. That energy felt like the perfect starting point for a summer campaign.

I wanted the campaign to feel lived-in and real rather than like a polished brand shoot. Starting the hero video inside Postcard before pulling out into the wider world of travel felt like the right way to open as it grounds the campaign in a specific, real place before expanding into a universal feeling. The tagline "Let Summer Take You" was chosen because it's inviting and it doesn't tell you where to go, it just gives you permission to go.

The Assets

Nine deliverables made up the full campaign, spanning video, photography, graphic design, web advertising, and written content.

For video, I produced three pieces. The hero video runs 30-60 seconds and opens at Monos outside the West Loop store, transitioning into travel lifestyle footage before closing with the campaign tagline and Monos wordmark. It was shot on iPhone and edited in Adobe Premiere Pro and CapCut, with ambient music underneath to match the brand's minimal, elevated tone. The 15-second vertical ad was designed specifically for Instagram Reels and TikTok a fast-cut packing reel featuring the Reformation collab cosmetic pouch being packed. Text overlays read "Pack with intention" over the footage, closing on the Monos logo. The 30-second story ad follows a more narrative arc, ending with a branded card featuring the campaign tagline, store address, and website.

For static graphics, I shot two ads designed for Instagram. The first features the Monos x Reformation collab — the Storm Carry on styled with the cream quilted cosmetic pouch and luggage tag. The second is a lifestyle variant featuring Aaron, one of our team leads at West Loop, wearing the new Mira sunglasses inside the store. Both were designed at 1080x1080 in Canva with minimal copy overlays, campaign tagline, Monos logo, and a Shop Now / new collection CTA and banners. The A/B approach lets the campaign test whether product-focused or lifestyle-focused creative performs better with the same audience.

For web advertising, I designed two display ads in Adobe InDesign. The leaderboard banner at 728x90 features the aluminum carry-on on the left, the campaign tagline centered, and the Monos wordmark on the right , clean, minimal, and immediately readable at small sizes. The 300x250 display ad uses an overhead yacht shot as the full background, with destination-focused copy layered on top. This ad leans into the aspiration of summer travel rather than featuring a specific product, which creates visual variety across the campaign's touchpoints.

The Audience

The target audience is urban professionals between 25 and 35 who travel intentionally and care deeply about how they do it and not just where they go. They are aesthetically driven, brand-conscious, and discover new products through Instagram, TikTok, and curated email. They're the kind of people who research a hotel for weeks, pack thoughtfully, and want their gear to reflect their taste. Monos already speaks to this audience naturally the brand's clean design language and premium positioning align perfectly with how this demographic thinks about travel. The campaign's job was simply to meet them where they are and make summer feel like the right moment to invest in how they travel.

This audience also responds to authenticity. Shooting inside the actual Monos West Loop store, featuring real team members wearing real product, and grounding the campaign in a specific Chicago location makes the content feel credible in a way that a generic studio shoot wouldn't. That authenticity is a strategic choice, not just an aesthetic one.

Platforms and Distribution

Instagram was the primary platform for both video and static content. The hero video and story ad were formatted for Instagram feed, while the 15-second packing reel was optimized vertically for Reels. TikTok was a secondary platform for the packing reel, given how well aesthetic, satisfying packing content performs on that platform organically. The static ads would run as sponsored posts on Instagram, with the A/B variants tested against each other to determine which creative drives more engagement and clicks.

The InDesign display ads were designed for placement on travel and lifestyle websites IE: publications like Condé Nast Traveler, Departure, or travel-adjacent editorial sites where the Monos audience is already reading. The promotional email would be distributed through Mailchimp to an existing customer list, with the goal of driving both online purchases and foot traffic to the West Loop store. Email is especially valuable for a brand like Monos because the customer has already opted.

Tools Used

Video was shot on iPhone and edited in Adobe Premiere Pro for the hero and story ads, and CapCut for the 15-second reel. Static social graphics were designed in Canva at 1080x1080. Website display ads were built in Adobe InDesign at the standard IAB sizes. Photography was all original, shot at Monos West Loop and on location. The campaign was published and presented on my portfolio at ashleywilde.org.

Budget

For a real-world execution of this campaign, I'd estimate a total budget of approximately $3,000-$7,000. The majority of that would go toward paid social promotion and boosting the hero video and static ads on Instagram and running TikTok spark ads on the packing reel. Production costs in this case were kept extremely low by shooting in-house, using store product, and leveraging existing access to the location. A realistic paid media breakdown might look like $2,000 for Instagram paid promotion over a 4-week period, $1,000 for TikTok, and the remainder allocated to display ad placements on one or two editorial travel sites. Email marketing through Mailchimp at the scale of a brand like Monos would be a relatively low incremental cost on top of an existing platform subscription.

KPIs

The campaign's success would be measured across several key metrics. For video content, primary KPIs are views, reach, and average watch time, particularly for the hero video, where watch time indicates whether the creative is holding attention. For static ads, engagement rate and click-through rate are the most important signals. For the display ads, CTR and cost-per-click would be tracked to evaluate placement efficiency. For email, open rate and click-to-open rate would indicate how well the subject line and preview text are performing, with conversion tracked by how many email recipients visit the website or redeem a store-specific offer. Across all channels, the overarching goal would be to drive qualified traffic to monos.com and increase foot traffic to the West Loop location during the summer travel season.

Takeaway

Building this campaign from the ground up concept, creative direction, production, design, and strategy gave me a real appreciation for how much intentionality goes into even a focused brand moment. Every asset had to serve the same idea: that summer is better when you travel with purpose. Working at Monos gives me a perspective on the brand that I don't think you can get from the outside, and I tried to bring that into every decision I made from opening the hero video at Monos to shooting Aaron in the Mira frames inside the store. The campaign is grounded in a real place, a real team, and a real belief in what this brand stands for.