Brand: Snap Finance
Role: Creative Director
Team
Creative Director: Isabel Lopez
Production: Stories with Purpose
Scriptwriter: Tiffany Ellzey
Storyboards: Manny Pantoja
Designer: Fio De La Flor
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Challenge/objective
The challenge:
With saturated media space and a brand still emerging in national recognition, Snap needed a campaign that would humanize its fintech offering and break through noise, especially among consumers with low credit who often feel overlooked.
With saturated media space and a brand still emerging in national recognition, Snap needed a campaign that would humanize its fintech offering and break through noise, especially among consumers with low credit who often feel overlooked.
Objective:
Launch Snap’s first TV/streaming campaign in a way that drives brand awareness, emotional resonance, and measurable response while being consistent with digital and lifecycle channels.
Launch Snap’s first TV/streaming campaign in a way that drives brand awareness, emotional resonance, and measurable response while being consistent with digital and lifecycle channels.
Constraints:
Limited brand equity in national media, tight budget, and the need to maintain clarity around Snap’s product value without overpromising.
Key Insights:
Our audience doesn’t resonate with “credit” messaging, but they do resonate with stories of life unfolding: unexpected costs, repairs, moments of need. Snap has historically being thought of as an emergency solution, so we decided to focus on empathy over “buy now” urgency — positioning Snap as a supportive partner.
Creative concept & execution
💡 Big idea:
“When life happens, Snap is there to help”.
“When life happens, Snap is there to help”.
We dramatized short scenarios (car repair, appliance failure, home emergency), known to resonate strongly with our audience, with a blend of realism and warmth. Not dramatizing hardship, but normalizing it, and inviting trust.
Ideation, scripting, and animatic creation were all handled by our in-house agency, proof of our team’s growing creative depth. The concept tested exceptionally well with audiences and stakeholders alike, giving leadership the confidence to greenlight production. You can see the animatic below:
Bringing everything together
To bring the campaign to life, I led the creative vision and engaged our partner agency, Stories With Purpose, to execute production: casting talent, securing locations, assembling crew, and integrating product placement and in-store materials. In parallel, I commissioned a lifestyle photographer to capture authentic, emotion-driven imagery that extended the campaign beyond the TV spot into digital, social, and point-of-purchase channels.
Working closely across departments, I led the alignment effort to ensure every team, from marketing and product to sales and customer service, was connected to the campaign’s story and purpose. This was more than a production effort; it was a unifying moment for the brand—an integrated push that expanded Snap’s reach, strengthened customer connection, and gave our internal team a shared rallying cry they hadn’t had before.
Watch the campaign come to life in our national TV spot below!
Watch the campaign come to life in our national TV spot below!
Results and Impact
39x ROAS
The campaign delivered a measurable lift in brand awareness and aided recall, strengthened alignment across channels, and reduced message fragmentation, ultimately setting a new creative benchmark for the company.
By grounding the work in empathy and lived moments rather than product features, "When Life Happens" proved the value of integrated marketing campaigns at Snap, demonstrating how a cohesive narrative can move both people and performance. The success of the launch elevated the profile of our in-house agency, boosted team morale, and accelerated future production timelines through the reusable playbook we developed. It became a defining example of how disciplined storytelling, clear systems, and collaborative leadership can transform perception, internally and externally.
This campaign came to life through the vision, passion, and teamwork of an extraordinary group of creatives. I couldn’t be prouder of them!