MY ROLE
Design Lead
Retention Creative Strategy · Creative Direction · Art Direction · Campaign Systems · Team Leadership
As Popsa grew, its communications needed to evolve with its audience. The existing visual language was predominantly functional and product-led, with limited room for emotional storytelling and brand-building. At the same time, the volume of weekly campaigns demanded a more consistent, flexible creative system.
I evolved the CRM creative direction to accommodate emotionally driven brand campaigns alongside promotional and product-led communications. I also developed reusable creative frameworks that gave the team greater consistency and flexibility across markets.
A more versatile creative direction and scalable campaign system, supporting a broader range of creative and commercial objectives. CRM campaigns regularly reached audiences of 1–2 million per send, with Black Friday campaigns generating RPMs of £80–142 during peak trading periods.
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Briefed to improve asset effectiveness, I led a cross-functional research initiative, interviewing product, customer service and leadership teams, and running blue-sky sessions with the creative team. I synthesised the findings into a strategic creative roadmap that shaped briefs across the entire creative function, not just CRM, expanding how Popsa communicated its product, features and value across channels.
A key insight was that the physical photobook's long-term emotional value was rarely reflected in marketing. This informed a broader creative roadmap exploring how to communicate both the product's features and the experiences it preserves.
The research translated into briefs I wrote and distributed across the creative team, including product photography, creative feature visualisation, 3D motion and illustration.
I developed the creative strategy for monthly promotional campaigns, using layout, pacing, product focus and creative concepts to build momentum across each sequence – from offer-led launch through product storytelling and cross-sell to increasing urgency and final call.The resulting system provided a repeatable structure while keeping each campaign creatively distinct.
Building on an existing photographic vision, I evolved the direction towards something more cinematic and premium — then led its implementation across CRM through my team.
Within a fixed annual campaign architecture, I progressively elevated the creative year on year – refining composition, lighting and depth to move the aesthetic from overtly retail towards something more premium.
I art directed a product photography shoot to showcase the full range of photobook formats and finishes in a way that hadn't been done before.
Books were shot vertically from above and placed side by side for direct size comparison – a first for the brand.
I worked with a freelance art director on the day, then handled all post-production myself: retouching, editable mock-up templates and clean extractions to enable the team to use AI background generation across channels.
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A suite of icons developed in alignment with the product team's existing icon library, extended to support CRM communications across multiple languages and markets.
