After several months on the Disney+ account, something was bothering me. Our advertisements, particularly in the US market, followed a consistent template: static, pricing-led creatives — clean cards that communicated subscription plans and pricing tiers. They were functional, on-brand, and completely unremarkable.

Meanwhile, I was watching what our direct competitors were doing. Netflix was using clips from their biggest shows — dramatic, emotionally charged, designed to stop a thumb mid-scroll. Prime was leveraging character moments and dialogue hooks. Mubi was running curated, cinematic stills that made you feel like you were missing something important. These were not ads about pricing. They were ads about stories.

And then the thought hit me: Disney owns perhaps the most recognisable character library in the history of entertainment. Marvel. Star Wars. Pixar. Disney Animation. National Geographic. And we were advertising with pricing cards.

If we shifted our creative approach from static pricing formats to character-led, content-driven storytelling formats, we would see an improvement in engagement metrics — specifically click-through rate — and a downstream reduction in cost per acquisition. People do not subscribe to Disney+ because the family plan is $13.99. They subscribe because they want to watch the next Marvel series, or because their children love Moana, or because they grew up with Star Wars. Our creatives should reflect that.

As a media performance analyst, my primary job was operations — not strategy, not creative direction. So I had to pitch this. And pitching a creative overhaul to a client like Disney, through an agency like Publicis, is not a casual conversation. It is a process.

I prepared a detailed brief — not a one-slide idea, but a complete creative direction proposal. I outlined the visual strategy: which characters and shows to lead with, what aspect ratios to use for each platform, how the music and editing pace should feel, what the opening hooks should look like. I referenced specific competitor examples and built a case that arrived at “here is exactly what we should try, here is why, here is how it maps to each platform, and here is what I expect to happen.”

The pitch process took approximately a month. It involved multiple calls with the offshore strategy team, several rounds of email exchanges, feedback loops between the creative team and the client, and a final review cycle with the end Disney team. I navigated pushbacks by keeping the conversation anchored to the performance data: our current CTR, our current CPA, our competitors' visible approach, and the gap between where we were and where we could be.

Once approved, the shift was significant — from static, text-heavy plan cards to dynamic, character-driven formats. Some were video edits featuring key moments from flagship Disney+ shows. Others were static but visually led — high-impact character imagery with minimal text overlay, designed to feel native to each platform. I was involved throughout the production and launch process: reviewing edits, ensuring platform specifications were met, coordinating creative delivery timelines with campaign flight dates, and QA'ing every asset before it went live.

The new creatives outperformed the previous approach. We saw a measurable improvement in click-through rate and a corresponding reduction in cost per acquisition. The character-led formats engaged users more effectively, drove more clicks, and converted at a lower cost than the static pricing creatives they replaced.

This was the most important project of my career so far. It proved three things that have shaped everything I have done since.

First, that the best optimisation in performance marketing is not always in the bid or the budget — sometimes it is in the creative. A better ad is worth more than a better bid strategy. Second, that being able to communicate across functions — from data to creative to strategy to client — is the skill that makes things actually happen in large organisations. And third, that if you want to grow beyond your job description, you have to be willing to do the work before anyone gives you permission.

The creative overhaul was not in my brief. But it was the right thing to do for the campaign, and I made it happen.