POPSA
Brand Evolution & Creative Strategy
Repositioning a fast-paced consumer brand’s creative output with elevated visual direction, structured promotional systems, and meaningful storytelling.
OVERVIEW
When I joined, Popsa was a fast-growing consumer tech scale-up helping users turn their personal photos into beautifully designed physical products. As Design Lead, my role was to elevate the brand’s visual direction and introduce greater cohesion across high-volume, revenue-driving CRM channels.
THE CHALLENGE
At the time, the visual language prioritised functionality and playfulness but lacked the refinement and emotional resonance required to elevate brand perception and connect meaningfully with its target audience. Creative output across CRM was largely promotion-led, with limited storytelling and minimal original photography assets. As a result, the brand’s ability to position itself as a premium, emotionally driven keepsake product was constrained.
Brand evolution needed to be implemented within an established visual framework and structured approval process. With limited scope for a full refresh, the focus shifted toward incremental elevation — refining art direction, strengthening hierarchy and introducing greater cohesion across CRM output.
MY ROLE
—
in-house DESIGN lead
(2021 - 2023)
• Led a creative team producing branded content for retention marketing
• Defined visual direction and creative concepts across CRM communications
• Elevated the brand’s visual identity to support a more premium positioning
• Delivered high-volume creative hands-on within a fast-growing scale-up environment
• Led a cross-functional creative OKR, translating stakeholder insight into a structured roadmap
• Presented creative work to leadership and company-wide audiences
1. CRM Creative Strategy
Visual repositioning
As the target audience evolved, the visual language required greater refinement and emotional depth.
I led the repositioning of the CRM visual direction, defining and embedding a more elevated aesthetic aligned with the evolving target audience. Following initial exploratory collaboration, I continued to develop, refine and scale the direction across campaigns, securing executive alignment and long-term adoption.
The updated visual language was aligned at executive level and became the foundation for subsequent creative output.
From Functional Communication to Emotional Storytelling
Early CRM campaigns were largely product-led and feature-focused — structured around functionality, benefits and promotional messaging.
As the brand evolved, so did the role of CRM. Rather than acting solely as a conversion channel, it became an opportunity to reinforce the emotional value of the product.
Creative shifted from multi-module, utility-driven layouts toward more focused, narrative-led campaigns. Emails began with memory, occasion and feeling — positioning the product as a meaningful keepsake rather than simply a photobook.
This reframed CRM as a brand-building touchpoint, not just a promotional one.
2. STOCK IMAGERY Art direction shift
As a photo product brand, CRM relied heavily on stock imagery to represent moments and memories.
In collaboration with the Creative Lead, I helped define a more elevated photographic vision for the brand — moving away from generic, staged imagery towards candid, memory-led storytelling. I then led the research, sourcing and long-term implementation of this direction across CRM, embedding clear selection principles and refining the approach over time to ensure consistency and emotional depth.
3. Design evolution
Black Friday: Raising the Standard Within a Fixed Structure
The core campaign architecture remained fixed across annual cycles. Within those parameters, I progressively elevated the craft — refining realism, depth, lighting and compositional balance to move the aesthetic from overtly retail toward a more sophisticated, premium expression.
4. Creative strategy & Design roadmap
CONTEXT
Alongside evolving Popsa’s visual direction, I led a creative OKR aimed at improving the effectiveness of marketing output and expanding the visual ways in which the product could be communicated.
At the time, most marketing communications focused primarily on the ease of use of the app — highlighting how quickly a photobook could be created.
While this remained a central value proposition, there were opportunities to broaden the narrative around the product experience.
CROSS-TEAM RESEARCH
To better understand how the product was perceived and communicated internally, I initiated a series of cross-team interviews with stakeholders across:
• Product
• Digital product design
• Print production
• Customer support
These conversations helped uncover gaps in how key aspects of the product were represented in our communications — including the creative possibilities of the app and the quality of the printed photobooks.
Key insight
While the app is used briefly during the creation process, the printed photobook often remains in customers’ homes for years as a lasting keepsake.
However, this long-term value of the physical product — as well as the creative freedom offered by the app’s customisation tools — was rarely highlighted in marketing communications.
Creative opportunity
Based on these insights, I developed a creative roadmap to introduce additional visual narratives that could complement the existing messaging.
These included themes centred around:
• creative expression within the app
• the quality and finish of the printed product
• the emotional value of preserving memories
Outcome
This framework guided the creation of new visual assets and communication formats that could scale across multiple marketing channels.
The initiative also created opportunities for designers across the CRM and acquisition teams to explore new creative approaches — including motion, illustration and 3D — expanding the visual language of Popsa’s marketing while showcasing the team’s work across the organisation.
Product Photography & Art Direction
As part of expanding the visual toolkit for Popsa’s marketing communications, I art directed and oversaw post-production for a product photography shoot designed to highlight the quality and finish of the printed photobooks.
The resulting imagery was used across multiple marketing channels, including lifecycle emails, social media and acquisition campaigns.
5. Direct Mail Creative Direction
Reframing Promotional Mail as Personal Communication
I led the creative direction of direct mail campaigns designed to re-engage existing customers around key commercial moments.
In the two projects showcased below, rather than relying on conventional promotional formats, we reframed direct mail as personal correspondence — presenting offers as letters and postcards from the CEO to cut through marketing clutter and elevate perceived value.
Working within format constraints, I developed tactile, considered layouts that balanced authenticity with commercial clarity. These campaigns became some of the strongest-performing CRM direct mail initiatives to date.
