Leading brand and growth creative across product, marketing, and lifecycle
When I joined Credit Sesame, the company was an early innovator in credit management with 15M registered users, but the brand no longer reflected its scale or ambition.
Creative was fragmented across acquisition, product, and lifecycle. The visual language felt flat and purely functional. High-spend paid media drove traffic into an experience that lacked emotional resonance and trust amplification.
Visually and strategically, the brand lacked cohesion. Paid ads, landing pages, product UI, and CRM operated as separate systems. Trust signals were inconsistent. Creative fatigue was high. Conversion continuity was weak.
The opportunity was not only aesthetic. It was structural.
Rewriting the narrative before redesigning the brand
Before redesigning a single asset, we rebuilt the narrative architecture of the brand.
At its core, Credit Sesame needed more than a visual refresh. It needed a unifying story that reframed credit from a transactional metric into a personal growth journey.
Fintech often defaults to institutional authority or over-optimistic hype. We rejected both. Instead, we designed a voice built on clarity, optimism, and earned trust.
Using a Storynomics framework, we defined the brand’s strategic DNA, including:
A mission centred on empowering members to unlock their full credit potential
Core values rooted in simplicity, transparency, and forward progress
A personality that was clear, conversational, trustworthy, empathetic, and inclusive
Practical writing principles that ensured consistency across product, marketing, and lifecycle
This narrative system became the connective tissue of the company. Every touchpoint moving forward reinforced partnership over authority, clarity over complexity, and progress over perfection.
With the foundation in place, we translated strategy into a scalable visual system.
Designing a dimensional identity built for scale
Our goal was to create a trust-first creative architecture capable of supporting millions of members and enterprise-level growth.
We replaced the dated flat illustration style with a proprietary 3D visual language that was warm, modern, and instantly recognizable.
Hundreds of custom 3D icons
Modular design built for rapid iteration
Paired with a functional flat UI system for clarity and performance
This system increased memorability while enabling high-volume creative testing across paid and product environments.
Shifting from product marketing to goal-state storytelling
We shifted the brand from explaining credit mechanics to visualizing life outcomes.
Instead of marketing a tool, we showcased what credit unlocks: home ownership, financial stability, and peace of mind.
A curated lifestyle photography system reinforced aspiration while maintaining credibility, elevating the emotional tone across web, paid, and broadcast.
Turning brand into infrastructure
To ensure durability at scale, we established:
A modern typographic hierarchy
An accessible web color system
Modular layout frameworks
Cross-channel governance standards
Brand became infrastructure — consistent, scalable, and performance-ready.
Activating across the funnel
With the system built, we deployed it across every major touchpoint, creating cohesion from first impression to retention.
Extending the story to national broadcast
We extended the refreshed identity into national broadcast campaigns.
Cinematic storytelling aligned with goal-state positioning
Consistent assets and tone
Reinforced category authority at scale
Broadcast elevated brand perception beyond performance marketing and positioned Credit Sesame as a modern financial partner.
Rebuilding the website as the brand anchor
We redesigned the public website to reflect the new trust-first positioning and modern visual identity.
Elevated perception through cohesive storytelling
Strengthened trust signals and clarity in conversion paths
Scaled to 1M peak monthly views
The web experience became the central brand anchor, seamlessly connected to paid and lifecycle.
Scaling acquisition with a modular growth engine
We defined a modular system that supported $1M+ in monthly media spend and 650K annual conversions.
High-volume creative production
Reduced fatigue through asset combination
Clearer acquisition to product continuity
Performance improved because the brand system was built for velocity.
Transforming lifecycle into a revenue lever
We evolved CRM from batch messaging to intent-based journeys.
70M emails deployed daily
Contextualized offers aligned to user behavior
$60M in annual revenue attributed to CRM
Retention became a strategic growth lever, not an afterthought.
From brand refresh to growth engine
What began as a brand overhaul became a unified growth engine.
Before: a respected but utilitarian credit management product.
After: a cohesive, trust-led financial platform that grew from 15M registered users to a 19M+ member community
Preparing the business for long-term stability
The free credit model was inherently cyclical, influenced by interest rates, lending demand, and broader economic conditions. Revenue could rise and fall with market shifts. To build long-term stability, the business needed a predictable, recurring revenue stream.
We saw an opportunity to evolve from a free utility into a value-driven membership ecosystem.
Sesame+ was designed to deepen trust, expand value, and create durable revenue.
The brand foundation made it possible. Sesame+ made it sustainable.
→ Explore Sesame+ (coming soon)
