Index
Case
02 of 05
Xeneta
2024 to 2026
From static to motion
An ongoing move from static to video, testing how much a dense platform can say in seconds.
Role
Brand & Design Manager. Creative strategy, art direction, motion design, copy and messaging, film production.
Context
Product launches, GTM and always-on campaigns.
With
Product, product marketing, demand generation and campaigns.
Year
2024 to 2026
A screenshot of a data platform asks a stranger to do the analyst’s work.
Xeneta’s products are built for people who spend hours in them, where the value is in what you find after working through the data. Marketing works on the opposite timescale, so we have been moving the default from static to video and testing what it can carry.
Image · Before and after. The 2022 identity against what preceded it.
Context & challenge
The difference was real and nobody could see it
Xeneta’s products are analytical interfaces. A specialist scrolling a feed gives any of it a few seconds, and in that window a screenshot of a data platform reads as complexity rather than capability.
Static was our default and it was not carrying the products. Paid click-through was running at 0.2 to 0.5 per cent, and awareness of what differentiated Xeneta from long-established competitors was low. So we set out to test properly: whether video worked for this audience at all, which formats held attention, and which kind of storytelling landed, in copy as much as in visuals. The point was to come out of it with real insight into what makes creative effective here, not one campaign that happened to perform.
The challenge for the brand
Make the difference and our value legible in the seconds our target audience sees the material.
My role
I take the GTM strategy and the product’s technical case and translate them into campaign messaging for materials we can test. I work with product marketing to agree the value proposition for each piece before design starts. From there I own the creative: art direction, motion design in-house, copy, and hero films with an external production house, where I run the brief, creative ideation, supplier sourcing, art direction and project management.
Approach
Messaging first, then simplify the interface
The work runs in the same order every time. Establish what the product does for the person buying it, then establish what makes it different from how they work today, then design. Starting from the interface produces a tour of features. Starting from the value proposition produces something with one thing to say.
Simplifying the UI is the second step, not the first. I evaluate each screen around the single finding it delivers: one movement, one comparison, one gap. The interface stays recognisable, so the viewer knows they are looking at a product, but they are handed the answer rather than the tool that produces it. The third step is the comparison to the status quo, because most of this audience already has a way of doing the job and the key is to ensure capitalise on what makes us different.
Ocean SCHEDULES & IRM PRODUCT LAUNCH VIDEOS
OCEAN SCHEDULES HERO VIDEO
Considerations
Volume at pace. The programme needs a continuous stream of assets across campaigns and quarters, not one hero execution a year.
Performance cannot cost the brand. Creative optimised for click-through can erode the positioning it runs under. I set consistency with the 2022 identity as a constraint rather than a trade-off.
Highly technical source material. The product case was strong, detailed, and unreadable at feed speed.
Design decisions
Motion as the default. Short looping sequences that carry a finding and show a market moving, rather than transitions applied to a finished layout.
One idea per asset. Anything that needed a second sentence to make sense went back to messaging rather than into the frame.
Format as a variable. Format is not settled in the brief. Running variants against one another has accounted for more of the improvement than any single execution.
Video treatment on a limited budget. Working with a production house on a small budget means deciding in the brief what has to be filmed and what can be carried in post, rather than discovering it in the edit.
AIR PRODUCT LAUNCH VIDEOS
How it evolved
Motion-first from the brief, format as the variable
The first quarter established the motion system and messaging hierarchy. The second iterated on format — longer social cuts, shorter paid, carousel variants tested against single-frame. The third built the infrastructure for volume through AI-accelerated production.
OVERALL XENETA & BUDGET SEASON CAMPAIGN VIDEOS
Results
The programme did two things. It moved performance, with click-through running up to twice the average. And it produced the thing we actually set out for, which is evidence about what works: which formats hold attention, which hooks and structures earn the next second, and how far the storytelling can move away from product features before it stops being clear.
That last point is the one that changed the work. The strongest assets are the ones led by the outcome a customer gets rather than by what the platform does, and having tested it we can now brief that way with confidence rather than as a preference.
Up to 2×
Storytelling built on what the customer gets rather than what the product does
Click-through against average
Proven format
Video established as a format that works, with the case to invest further
Hooks and structures
Tested insight into which openings and story structures hold attention
Outcome-led
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