RECHARGE.COM
→
CREATIVE STUDIO
→
RECHARGE.COM → CREATIVE STUDIO →
Role:
Creative Direction
Deliverables:
Campaign, Social, Print, Design System
Creative Team:
Alan Atty, Arthur Miller, Maria Clara Goldani
From 2021 to 2024, I led the Creative Studio at Recharge, a global hub for prepaid digital products. We grew from a small crew into a fast-moving in-house team, launching bold campaigns, evolving the brand, and helping drive the company toward its €400M acquisition by Coda, the largest fintech acquisition in the Netherlands. Here is what my team and I did.
Brand Refresh
After a year in the role, along with the marketing & growth teams, we realized the brand guidelines weren’t really guiding anywhere. Conversions were dropping, the design felt outdated, there were no scalable systems in place, and it lacked digital flair. That became the starting point for a smart, focused brand revamp.
What we've changed
→ Added violet as the new accent colour to the brand's ecosystem, as well as 10 new proprietary brand gradients.
→ Created a whole new study on flat shapes based on the logo's semi-circles, useful for campaigns and UI.
→ Developed a tailor-made system for tone of voice, adapted for each consumer channel.
→ Pivoted a new study on photography, 3D iconography, and typeface: more guidance for internal and external peers.
Brand Guide
One key decision was to keep it simple: no jargon, no fluff, no mystery. Anyone should get the gist, whether HR, Finance, UX, or creatives. The more people owning the brand, the sharper the feedback we'd get, and the fewer "Can you make some cool slides?" requests my team would field. Efficient, right?
Team:
Bruno Cisco (Creative Director & Copy)
Arthur Miller (Designer, Brand)
Lais Dornelles (Designer, Brand)
Alan Atty (Designer, Campaign)
Alex Bolumar (3D Artist)
The Pride Call
With over 300 carriers in 140 countries, Recharge.com is the go-to for digital top-ups. Many of its customers live abroad, so phone and video chats are their only means of staying in touch with family. During the 2023 Pride Weekend, I gathered Creative and Customer Care to help people have the talk.
SOCIAL
One Instagram post,
one simple message
The gist was simple: Wanna call your friends or family to share the news? Send us a DM with your info, and we’ll send a top-up your way. No promo, no hassle, no video case. And to add a bit of pride, we invited Recharge’s LGBTQIA+ teammates to run community management for the period.
Pride onto the walls
We also created collectable posters to extend the activation to offline environments.
In Numbers
•
In Numbers •
200
Available codes during the campaign
800,000
Views on organic + paid in one week
ZERO
Extra costs on production
Halloween Horror Tales
Halloween is a fun brief for creatives – yet, a low-priority date behind bigger ones like Black Friday and Christmas. To prove creativity can sell, I directed a campaign full of (not-so-) fictional horror stories about running out of credit right when you need it most.
From VHS to AI
Nothing sells horror like movie posters. So we brainstormed crazy “out of credit” stories – over-the-top, relatable, and movie-worthy ones. Using AI tools like Midjourney and Adobe Firefly, we crafted the visuals and polished them in Photoshop to nail the vibe.
/IMAGINE A guy trapped in a long and eerie mall aisle, full of gift boxes. 90s movie poster.
/IMAGINE A guy trapped in a long and eerie mall aisle, full of gift boxes. 90s movie poster.
/IMAGINE A kid playing an old version of his game. He was abandoned by his mates, who are playing the newest version of it. 80s movie poster.
/IMAGINE A kid playing an old version of his game. He was abandoned by his mates, who are playing the newest version of it. 80s movie poster.
/IMAGINE A guy and a girl. the guy ran out of credit, leaving the girl hung on the phone. 2000s movie poster.
/IMAGINE A guy and a girl. the guy ran out of credit, leaving the girl hung on the phone. 2000s movie poster.
Teasing the fear
Apart from the movie titles, one standout element of the posters was the teaser lines – short, chilling phrases hinting at each story. Inspired by ’80s and ’90s horror, we crafted them to convey the out-of-credit dread, then naturally expanded the narratives for emails and social posts.
Posters
Emails
In Numbers
•
In Numbers •
Top 1
Most successful awareness campaigns of all time
3x
On click-to-rate, comparing to previous years
$80k
On sales during the Halloween period
Running out is never fun
Reorder emails are key to any CRM flow. We couldn’t predict when users would run out of credit – but we knew it’d suck. That felt like a solid insight. So, I proposed that the team take a few steps back and consider: in what situations would you also be bummed about running out of credit?
SITUATIONS
Running out hassles
The first step was to break down the four main product categories and brainstorm situations where the fun would end if you ran out of those products. I’ve selected the ideas based on some premises: originality, consumer relatability, fun, and whether they could be expanded into a video script or social media pieces.
PRODUCTION
Pants in color
and motion
Scripts ready, look & feel locked – time to roll. I brought in Lucas Sales (Netflix, Spotify) and André Portnoy (TikTok, Google) for illustration and motion. Their playful styles were exactly what I had in mind.
Social videos
Emails
In Numbers
•
In Numbers •
30
Assets for email and social media
$4k
Total investment in production
∞
Possible iterations with the concept
