marketing DESIGN

HiBob Paid Advertising

HiBob is an all-in-one HR platform with aggressive growth ambitions — and a fiercely competitive market to match. In 2023, I joined as a Performance Marketing Designer, responsible for conceiving, designing, and iterating on paid ads across global campaigns. My work was driven by performance data, though a recurring challenge was establishing reliable A/B testing processes that didn't yet exist. The evergreen campaigns shown here speak directly to HR managers' pain points, highlight key product features, and position Bob as the tool that makes their day-to-day effortless.

A/B testing and data

Together with my manager, we introduced a more rigorous A/B testing framework for the paid acquisition team. The approach was simple but effective: first isolate the variable. We'd test copy by running two identical designs with different headlines, then test creative by running two different designs with the same headline. This made it possible to draw cleaner conclusions from the data and reduce guesswork in future iterations.

A/B testing of photography usage / only typography:

A/B testing of 2 different designs with the same copy:

High performing nostalgia

One of our highest-performing campaigns was a 90s-themed bottom-of-funnel push. Through an internal brainstorm, we developed creatives that leaned into nostalgia to cut through the noise and capture our audience's attention. The results were remarkable — it became one of the top-performing campaigns in HiBob's paid history. The takeaway was clear: emotional hooks work. Nostalgia created a genuine connection that rational product messaging alone couldn't achieve.

Wild experiments

At a certain point, our ads were performing consistently well — but that consistency had become a liability. Audiences had grown too familiar with the HiBob look, and scroll-stopping power was fading. We were experiencing creative fatigue. The solution wasn't just to think outside the box — it was to deliberately step outside the brand. In 2025, we began running a series of bold experiments: unexpected green tones, gradients, 3D shapes, and photographic backgrounds. Each one broke from our established visual identity. The results proved the bet right: performance lifted across the board. Sometimes you have to stop looking like yourself to stay relevant.

Animated vs Static

Alongside the visual experiments, we tested animated ads against their static counterparts using identical copy and layout. As expected, animation consistently outperformed — driving stronger engagement across placements. A selection of examples below.

AI experiments

When generative AI began reshaping the industry, our team committed to genuinely integrating it into our workflow — not just experimenting for the sake of it. After months of testing tools, building prompt systems, and learning from plenty of failed attempts, we developed a process that consistently met our quality bar. One example: I used Adobe Firefly, trained on our illustration style, to generate a Japanese neko cat holding the Bob platform. I then fed the result into Kling AI to produce an animated version — a format we'd already validated as higher-performing. The outcome was a fully original, on-brand animated ad built end-to-end with generative tools.