James R.C. Smith · Marketing & communications leader · North Vancouver, BC

Marketing that moves revenue. Social strategy that builds community.

I lead marketing and communications for B2B SaaS, consumer brands, financial services, and tech, with a specialty in social media strategy that turns followers into customers and customers into advocates. Then I go home and build the apps too. Ten years of turning strategy into results you can measure, and ideas into products people actually download.

Get in touch See the work

0%: social-driven revenue growth (BN3TH)
0M+: PR reach (Verge Agriculture)
0%: e-commerce growth (Urban Barn)
0: apps shipped, one with national press

Trusted with the work at

Coast Capital Savings
Nature's Path Organic Foods
Urban Barn
BN3TH
Cority
Verge Regenerative Agriculture
Ava Smart Gardens

Featured in

Men's Health
PR Newswire
Yahoo Finance
Sourcing Journal
Canadian Healthcare Network
North Shore News
Vancouver Is Awesome
Cantech Letter

Content creator

Brand partnerships and creator work.

As a content creator, I have also partnered with global brands, publishers, and artists for product features, campaigns, reviews, and original content.

Apple
Netflix
Nova Lumenate
Amazon
Best Buy Canada
FujiFilm
Save On Foods
Bubly
Simon & Schuster
Stanley
Simple Plan
Our Lady Peace

The same operator, at every stage

The problems change depending on company size. The approach doesn't: find the real bottleneck, connect the teams and tools around it, and report on it in numbers a board will trust.

Siloed teams and tools that hide the customer.

I integrate the stack (Salesforce, social, service) so intel is shared and reporting is automated for the C-suite.

Proof: Coast Capital Savings, reporting time cut 95%.

Enterprise
Siloed teams and tools that hide the customer.
I integrate the stack (Salesforce, social, service) so intel is shared and reporting is automated for the C-suite.
Proof: Coast Capital Savings, reporting time cut 95%.
B2C
Brands that need reach and revenue, not just impressions.
I run PR, social, and commerce that shows up on the P&L.
Proof: Urban Barn, 288% e-commerce growth; BN3TH, 700% social-driven revenue growth.
B2B SaaS
Complex products that need a clear voice and credible authority.
I lead launches, PR, internal comms, and thought-leadership content.
Proof: Cority, full rebrand plus award-winning comms; Verge, 60M+ PR reach.
Startup
Small budgets that need outsized cultural relevance.
I land celebrity and sports partnerships, creator networks, and press that punches above the spend.
Proof: BN3TH x Jason Momoa, NFL team collabs, 300+ creator network.

Selected work

Six stories, each with a problem, what I did, and what changed. The numbers are real and, where possible, publicly verifiable.

Financial services · Enterprise

Coast Capital Savings

The customer service team fielded calls in one standalone system while marketing handled similar customer questions on social. Neither side could see the other, and reporting was manual.

Developed, integrated, and migrated a new platform into Salesforce so the customer dashboard and intel were secure and shared across departments. Released website status notifications, fed social trends and topic notes to the service team, and tied social profiles to customer care where it made sense. Reporting went from a manual process to live, automated, and scheduled: downloadable reports delivered to the C-suite and board.

0%: drop in downtime complaints
0%: growth in social audience
0%: less reporting time

Reporting time: manual vs automated

95% reduction.

Downtime complaints: before vs after

90% drop.

Consumer / DTC · Startup to scale

BN3TH

A challenger underwear brand needed cultural relevance and outbound PR for product and category launches.

Ran outbound PR for launches, built collaborations with NFL teams (San Francisco 49ers and Miami Dolphins), landed celebrity endorsements and partnerships including Jason Momoa's So iLL x On the Roam line, and ran athlete gifting programs. Built and managed a 300+ creator and affiliate network.

0%: social-driven revenue growth
0+: creators and affiliates in the network
National and international press pickup: Qualitative outcome

Grid of social stories from the BN3TH athlete gifting program, showing athletes unboxing product — Athlete gifting stories, captured and reshared across the brand channels.

Retail / home · B2C

Urban Barn

The best in-store moments, expert-led after-hours events, only reached the people who could physically attend.

Introduced Facebook Live streaming and a live video shopping hub, turning in-store expert events into online shopping events. Hosts included on-air talent known from shows like the Marilyn Denis morning show.

0M: views within one week, including replays (12M to 16M)
0: average live viewers at peak (10,000 to 15,000)
0%: e-commerce growth

Urban Barn viewership, one week

Live audience compounds into replay reach.

CPG / consumer · B2C

Nature's Path Organic Foods

A wave of brand acquisitions of smaller local producers needed integrating, and the online shop was run externally at high cost.

Oversaw the brand acquisitions end to end: press releases, social media strategy and content production, team migration, account takeovers, and team development. Brought the online shop in-house.

$0: per month saved in fees and commissions
0%: global impression growth
Full in-house oversight and reporting: Qualitative outcome

Saved every month in fees and commissions

Annualized: $360,000 per year.

Global impressions

360% growth over the period.

AgTech · B2B / Startup

Verge Regenerative Agriculture

An emerging category needed a clear voice and cross-functional coordination to launch well.

Led social media strategy and content creation, and ran cross-team collaboration between Finance, Paid Ads, Content Copywriting, and a website redesign.

0M+: PR reach
0: teams coordinated on one launch

0M+

PR reach

One launch, four teams, one voice.

B2B SaaS / EHS software · Enterprise

Cority

A category-leading enterprise SaaS brand going through launches, hires, acquisitions, and a full rebrand needed comms that kept pace.

Led social media, PR, and internal communications for new product launches, C-suite hires and role updates, a complete website rebrand and overhaul, company acquisitions and mergers, and introduced thought-leadership video interviews and hot-topic talking-head social content.

Full brand overhaul, recognized with a REBRAND 100 distinction: Qualitative outcome
Award-winning product comms: Verdantix Leader, E+E Leader, OH&S Industrial Hygiene, New Product of the Year: Qualitative outcome

See the Cority award shelf

REBRAND 100
Verdantix Leader
E+E Leader Award
OH&S Industrial Hygiene
New Product of the Year
Full website overhaul

Award nominations that win

I run the outreach and nomination process that gets brands recognized. Across BN3TH, Ava Smart Gardens, and Cority: Red Dot Design Awards, Forbes recognition, Environmental Impact awards, and a long shelf of EHS and sustainability wins.

Products I've built

I don't just market products. I ship them. Each of these started with a real problem I watched people describe online, then validated and built.

iOS app

Flint: ADHD Daily Planner

A daily planner built for ADHD brains, private, simple, and calm by design.

I have ADHD, and I kept hitting the same walls: planners scattered across too many apps, subscription traps, and blank screens that cause freeze instead of focus. I heard the same complaints echoed across Reddit and social, then built the fix.

Stoplight capacity check-in
Brain dump with AI task extraction
Overflow Tray and Timeline view
Voice capture and Projects
Six built-in routines
One-time purchase, no ads
Local-only storage
Apple "Data Not Collected"

Launched during Mental Health Awareness Month and picked up by Canadian Healthcare Network, PR Newswire (CNW), Yahoo Finance, Cantech Letter, North Shore News, Vancouver Is Awesome, Castanet, and The Peak. Market context: the global ADHD apps market was USD 1.9B in 2025 and is projected to reach USD 6.7B by 2033.

View on the App Store Read the press

Three Flint app screens: a privacy-first overview, the brain dump capture list, and a day planned around a green capacity level

iOS app

WeatherBoard: Local Weather

Know what's coming. Know when to go.

Most weather apps are cluttered or alarmist. This one is calm and actually useful, with the safety layers North American users need. Made in Canada.

Worldwide forecasts
Activity planning
Air quality
Official alerts
Live wildfire tracking across North America

Get it on the App Store Read the writeup

WeatherBoard app screen showing a sunny forecast, hourly strip, air quality index, and a wildfire alert map

Web app

PhotoResizer.ca

The fastest way to get a social post to the right size, every time.

Creators waste time hunting for current platform dimensions and resizing one post at a time. PhotoResizer keeps the latest sizes on hand and batches the work.

Current social platform presets
Size, fit, background, and export chained on one photo
AI tools: expand, background remove, upscale, convert, compress
Freemium with paid tiers

Try it free

PhotoResizer editor showing social platform size presets, fit and background controls, and a photo preview ready to export

I don't guess. I go find the problem.

Before I build anything, I read where people complain. I scrape and study Reddit threads, app reviews, and social comments to find the missing feature, the recurring frustration, the workaround everyone's tired of. Then I validate demand and build the smallest thing that fixes it. It's the same instinct I bring to client work: solve the real bottleneck, not the obvious one.

01
Listen
Reddit threads, app reviews, and social comments, read closely.
02
Validate
Test whether the frustration is real, repeated, and worth paying to fix.
03
Ship
Build the smallest thing that fixes it, then launch it properly.

In the press

Coverage earned for clients and for products I built myself.

About

I'm James R.C. Smith, a marketing and communications professional in North Vancouver with more than a decade across B2B SaaS, consumer brands, financial services, and tech. I've led social-driven revenue growth, creator and affiliate networks, earned media, e-commerce, and AI-assisted content systems. I also build my own products: apps and platforms that solve problems I've watched real people describe. I run SocialDad.ca and the SocialDad podcast, and I'm currently open to director-level marketing and communications roles, remote or hybrid in the Vancouver area.

What I do

Strategy

Brand and comms strategy
Positioning
Go-to-market
Integrated launches

Communications and PR

Earned media
Social media and community
Celebrity and sports partnerships
Award nominations
Internal comms
Executive and thought-leadership content

Growth

Social-driven revenue
Creator and affiliate networks
E-commerce
Paid and organic

Systems

Salesforce integration
Cross-team workflow
Automated board-level reporting
AI-assisted content

Product

Research-led discovery
App and platform builds
Launch and press

Let's talk.

Hiring for a senior or director-level marketing and comms role, or want a builder who can also run the strategy? I'd love to hear about it.

Email James Connect on LinkedIn

James@Acoffeeshop.ca

Marketing that moves revenue. Social strategy that builds community.

Voice at scale, for people first.