Marketing your
neighbours actually
talk about.
I'm Dan. I make real, hard-to-ignore campaigns for new and small businesses across Nova Scotia — posters on actual walls, stunts people photograph, things your town remembers.
Halifax
Chester theduck approves
The menu
Project-based, priced up front, no consultant fog. Pick a starting point — we'll scope the rest in a 20-minute call.
Launch campaign
Exist in your neighbourhood overnight. Street posters, an opening week, a hand-addressed mailer, the works.
from $5,000Neighbourhood takeover
Own one block for a month. A coordinated creative push with the five businesses around you.
from $7,500Stunts & installations
One unforgettable idea, built to be photographed and shared — and end up on the local feed.
from $3,500Made things
Murals, merch, zines, sandwich boards people actually want to keep. Real objects, made with local makers.
from $2,500Want it ongoing? Quarterly campaign retainers from $2,000/mo.
Receipts
Real campaigns, real walls, real reactions — the kind of work people stop, photograph, and post on their own. Every tile here actually happened.
Free advice
(Chester the duck listens too)
Real questions from real Nova Scotia business owners, answered in plain English. Stuck on something? Rubber-duck it with us before you spend a dollar.
How do I get people into my new shop in Bedford?
Three things that work in a suburban strip before you spend on ads — and one that almost never does.
Read Dan's answerIs print mail still worth it for a Dartmouth bakery?
Short version: yes, if you do the unglamorous part nobody else bothers with. Here's the part.
Read Dan's answerI've got $2k and two weeks before I open. What do I do?
A bare-bones launch plan that punches way above its budget, hour by hour.
Read Dan's answerA competitor opened down the street. How do I stand out?
Don't out-spend them. Out-specific them. What that means in a small market.
Read Dan's answer
That's Dan
Chester the duck · QC
Hi, I'm Dan.
I've spent years doing marketing the polished, corporate way. The best stuff I ever made wasn't a funnel — it was a poster someone stopped to photograph, a stunt people told their friends about, a thing that felt like it came from a person.
So that's what I do now, for new and small businesses across Nova Scotia. Handmade, place-based, made to be remembered. No stock photos. No AI slop. Just real ideas, built by hand, for your actual street.
That's Chester the duck, by the way — the world's most over-qualified rubber duck and my unofficial head of quality control. Nothing ships until I've explained it to him out loud. Surprisingly, it works.
— Dan
The lore of
Chester the duck
Every studio needs a head of quality control. Ours is a six-foot rubber duck with a real Halifax ad-world backstory — and a name that carries some weight.
- Name
- Chester
- Named for
- Chester Goluch, founder of Chester + Co
- Origin
- Ordered for a pitch — without approval
- Species
- Rubber. Inflatable. Enormous.
- Title
- Head of Quality Control
- Record
- Outlasted the agency. Never spoke.
Chester started life at Chester + Company, a Halifax creative agency a great many of this city's marketers came up through. Pitching a Government of Nova Scotia RFP — the concept: everyday childhood things, built adult-sized — a very junior account coordinator ordered a giant rubber duck without a single approval. The client passed. The duck stayed.
Years later I was an Account Director there when the duck resurfaced. As the agency wound down it came home with me, and somewhere along the way it earned a name: Chester, for the agency's late founder, Chester Goluch. Through the video-call years of lockdown, this six-foot rubber duck was the consummate icebreaker — and he's been my unofficial head of quality control ever since.
These days nothing ships until it passes the Chester Test: said out loud, in plain words, to a giant rubber duck. If it doesn't make sense to Chester, it won't make sense to your customers. He's never been wrong. He's also never spoken. I read the silence as approval.
Chester + Co only lives on the Wayback Machine now — but a good chunk of Halifax advertising came up through its doors. The name honours Chester Goluch, who lived and breathed the advertising business.
Tell me what
you're up to
No "request a consultation" runaround. Answer three honest questions and I'll come back within two business days with whether I can help and a rough number.
My promise: I'll never recommend something I wouldn't pay for myself, and I'll tell you if your money is better spent somewhere other than me.